Gimme an R, gimme an I, gimme an F. . .

What's that spell? RIF! Reduction in Force! Woo!

Okay, so not actually something I'm cheering about. I have officially joined the ranks of those millions of Americans who have been laid off at one time or another. And, I'm a Charlotte Observer headliner: CMS sends out layoff notices to 739 educators. Big news. That's about 8.5% of teachers in the district, if my math is right. But, budget crunches mean cuts, and when you're a public employee, that's the way it goes. It's just really unfortunate that this particular budget cut means there are 739 fewer people teaching our kids. They've upped the student-teacher ratio too, so kids are going to have bigger classes. The superintendent has stopped pretending we can do more with less. Everyone admits this will hurt kids. It sucks. They need everything we can give them. They deserve a lot more than having their teachers fired and their classes get larger. I'm upset for my kids.

And, it's a hassle for me. It would have been a lot easier to have the security of knowing I've got a job in August while I relaxed all summer.

But I've been really touched by the way all the teachers in my department called, texted and facebook messaged last night to see how I was doing (after they heard I had a meeting with the principal.) And today folks stopped by my classroom, asked how they could help... I guess I'm not used to having people concerned about me (I've never had anything to be especially concerned about) and I guess to a lot of people a layoff is a big, devastating kind of deal. But, as I've been telling people, I'm fine! No tears were shed; I just went home and starting looking for jobs.

Nobody likes uncertainty, and of course now this means I have to spend time looking for a job, and I have to be a little more careful with my money, but I've been there, done that. I had to find my art teaching job, then I was jobless and homeless in Chicago until I found Grosvenor, then I spent a lot of time hunting down NC jobs until Teach for America came through. . . so I feel like a pro at the resume and cover letter thing. I've been saving my money to have my regular paycheck amount, plus some cushion, over the two months I don't get paid in the summer. So I've got about three months before I have to start worrying about paying the rent. I'm not really worried that I won't be able to find a source of income by August, but I don't want to have to take a job I'm not excited about just because my savings is running out.

Apparently, the county will be approving their budget in June, and the state in July. These budgets could potentially give the school district money that would allow them to re-hire people who have been laid off. That's the ideal scenario, obviously. But who knows.

I had every intention of finishing my second year with TFA, and still hope to make teaching a career beyond that. I'd like to either stay teaching apart from TFA or CMS, or get into education in some other way.

But, for right now, all I can do is stay on top of the local news, see what the county and state do with their budgets, and either I get my job at West Meck back, or I get another job within CMS, or I get another job entirely. I'm also thinking of taking the PRAXIS exam in some other subjects or grades, so that I could potentially teach other classes. But mostly I'm going to be updating my resume, writing cover letters, and raining job applications on every high school, and middle school, and educational institution in the Piedmont.

As inconvenient as this sudden change of plans is likely going to turn out to be, I feel okay about it. If there's some bigger, better opportunity out there, I'm going to trust God to help me find it. If I'm supposed to wind up back at CMS, well, then that's what will happen. If I'm supposed to pick up and move again (as big a chore as that would be) well, then that's what I'll do.

Keep your ears to the ground for me, folks. Anything involving teaching, or nature and the environment, or kids, or art, or a job where I get paid to grow vegetables and read books...

Diet Day 123 - F-ing Pork

I made these for dinner last night. Garlic parmesan pork meatballs. While I've ruled out beef, and ruled in chicken, pork hasn't made itself an obvious 'yes' or 'no' thus far in my continual arthritis-elimination diet experiment. But I'd been 100% symptom-free for 4 or 5 days straight (no intermittent morning knuckle stiffness even!) so I thought now was as good a time as any to re-test pork where I'd get a clear response, or non-response.

I bought a pound of ground pork from Windy Hill at the farmer's market on Saturday, and thought I'd try making them into meatballs. They're really too simple to be called a recipe, but they were AMAZING, so in case you're interested, here's what I did:

Mix:
1 lb ground pork
1 minced clove garlic
1/2ish cup grated parmesan (maybe less? I didn't measure)
a couple pinches salt
a bunch of black pepper

Heat some olive oil in a skillet.

Roll the meat lightly into golf balls without mashing them up or compacting them too hard.

Plop the meatballs in the olive oil, letting them brown on one side before rotating them around so all sides get brown (tongs!) By the time all the sides of all the meatballs are brown and crispy (a little of the cheese will melt out too and crust up nicely) they should be done inside. Plus all the fat from the pork will render out into the olive oil until they're frying in their own fat. . . mmmmmmm.

I wilted some spinach with garlic, a little heavy cream and parmesan to go with the meatballs. Beautiful, beautiful food.

Until this morning. I felt the stiffness start creeping up in my left hand until by noon it was noticeably sore to bend it back and forth. By 2:00 my range of motion was at about half, and now at 4:30 it's excruciating to move my hand out of a neutral position. Arghh. And there are leftover meatballs in the fridge that I was REALLY looking forward to eating!!

But no. Instead, I am angrily eating marshmallow/coconut fruit salad directly out of the tupperware and hoping my wrist feels better in the next 24 hours. Although, from past flare ups, it'll probably be Wednesday or Thursday before it's back to normal. I miss red meat. Lamb was okay, but it's so freaking expensive. Sigh. Well, if anyone wants my leftover meatballs, they're yours.

What I'll be reading this summer...

I'm posting this so that I will actually read all of these. Accountability. Also, I'm soliciting suggestions for further additions, since four of these I'm at least halfway through.

Since I've now watched every extant X-Files episode (thanks, Netflix, for stealing horrifyingly many hours of my life), I find myself much more ready to pick up one of the zillions of books I want to read. So, on the list for this summer are:

Born To Run, by Christopher McDougall - I'm halfway done this one, and just need to finish it. It's about the Tarahumara indians of some mountainy part of Mexico and how they run super long distances barefoot and eat chia seeds and corn.

The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan - I'm almost done this one. I read the first three sections (about the industrial food chain, the "industrial organic" food chain, and sane grass-based organic chain, but I got lost in the chapter on hunting and gathering). It's really good though, and it definitely makes you more aware of your food's source, and suggests that the source of your food actually matters.

The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander - I read about this book in some article someone posted on facebook, I think. Or maybe I read the article on the NYT's website and then I posted it on facebook. I forget. But its subtitle is "Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" and it's supposed to be about the tragedy and outrage of the disproportionate incarceration of black males, particularly as a result of the "war on drugs."

Let the Great World Spin, by Collum McCann - I don't remember who exactly recommended this to me. I feel like I saw it pop up on someone's little Facebook "bookshelf" application. I'm maybe two-thirds through but keep putting it down - it has some beautiful parts, but hasn't grabbed me yet. It's good enough that I owe it completion, though, so we'll see what I think when I've finished.

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Everyone and their brother has told me how gorgeous this book is. I read half of One Hundred Years of Solitude one summer during my lunch breaks at AIG, and although I didn't finish it (okay, so maybe I should add that to my list too) it was beautiful and strange and I loved it. So...thought I needed to give this a shot. I have high expectations.

Little Bee, by Chris Cleave - Another one that was suggested to me by person or persons unknown. I think it might have been one LVD, who has terrific literary taste, but I'm not sure. If I like the book, I'll be sure and thank her anyway, just in case.

Endgame, by Derrick Jensen - Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization. And yes, it's about exactly what the subtitle suggests. Civilization is inherently violent and destructive and unsustainable and destined for collapse. If we care about the future of humanity we should do everything we can to maintain a livable planet and mitigate/stop/repair the damage done to it by civilization, particularly in its current industrial form. And it is as crazy as it sounds. But not actually THAT crazy. He's a fantastic writer, both funny and transparent, and allows (forces) you to think without first having to agree with him. This was a gift from my friend Matt, who also recommended the next item.

Modernity and the Holocaust, by Zygmunt Bauman - I've only just started this one, but his thesis is that our approach to the Holocaust has been to view it as something that happened outside of "normal" society, an aberration, and something that can be understood as a self-contained historical event. It happened because Hitler was evil and crazy, and his henchmen were evil or coerced into evil. This guy's idea is that the Holocaust was not, in face, an event that arose in opposition to civilization, but that it "was born and executed in our modern rational society. . . and for this reason it is a problem of that society, civilization, and culture." It was "an outcome of a unique encounter between factors by themselves quite ordinary and common," and not some bizarre, inexplicable eruption of insanity and isolated evil. At least that what he's said so far. I've only read the preface.

Radical, by David Platt - I think I saw this on some blog or online magazine. I don't remember. But its subtitle caught my eye ("Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream") and so I snagged it. We'll see. That's what happened with Francis Chan's Crazy Love too: I saw it in some Christian article somewhere, and I was disappointed to find it written in really short, really simplistic sentences that repeated the same thing over and over without nuance. I am hoping this one's better.

Any critical omissions? Any suggestions for poetry (as the genre is notably absent from my list)? Things you've told me to read multiple times but I keep not reading?

I don't really know what to feel about bin Laden's death.

I saw a headline online today: “Musings on the death of a madman.” I know bin Laden has been called a mad man since he started blowing people up, but it makes me uneasy, calling him that. It’s certainly easy to do so. Easy to relegate him to the cast of historical crazies, men whose acts were so violent, so reprehensible, that they MUST have been mad, because sane people don’t do such horrible things. But as far as I know, bin Laden wasn’t crazy. He did evil things, but he did them for reasons that, to him, made sense. Hitler did too, for that matter. Both men had values that were accepted by many others, goals based on their ideals, plans to reach them. Each took the logical steps to reach his goal. If we write history’s monsters off as nut jobs, it keeps us safe from our own lesser darkness. It creates a high, thick wall between us and them. They can do those things because they’re crazy. We’re not crazy. We’re different. We don’t blow up buildings with the express purpose of killing thousands of civilians. We accept civilian deaths (we call it ‘collateral damage’) as part of war…but that’s different (and it is, but is it a qualitative difference, or merely a relative one? Does that matter?) We may use enhanced interrogation techniques…but that’s different; we don’t cut off fingers. We don’t execute political prisoners, but we execute those who ‘deserve’ it, insisting their guilt absolves us of ours.

Osama bin Laden deserved to die, by any rational human standard (inasmuch as any of us are in a position to make that call). He did cruel, violent and terrible things. More horrible than any of us can ever imagine doing. But he wasn’t crazy. He was a human being, who had been angered, inspired to believe fiercely in whatever it was he believed in, and who lived out those beliefs to their most extreme conclusion.

I wasn’t personally affected by 9/11. I lost no family or friends. I’ve lost no one in the armed services. I remember walking into Mr. Bird’s room that morning and seeing the towers fall on the corner-mounted TV. I thought it was another one of his movies (we watched Predator when we studied Beowulf) and wondered what book it “related” to. Even after being shuffled into the school gym with the rest of the 200 kids in my high school, after hearing our teachers tell us what was happening, it still all seemed like one of Mr. Bird’s movies to me. And, in a lot of ways, it has continued to. I’ve never been to Ground Zero. I have no tangible connection to those events. I’ve been emotionally moved watching newsreel footage, but the events portrayed haven’t changed my life in any noticeable way, really. So, given that, I feel in a poor position to even form an opinion on the rightness or wrongness of what’s taken place over the last 24 hours. I didn’t lose anyone. I don’t want vengeance. I haven’t spent the last ten years of my life hoping for justice.

But then I’m not so sure I know what ‘justice’ means, anyway. It is used, it seems, as a synonym for ‘retribution.’ An eye for an eye is just. A tooth for a tooth. Justice is getting what’s coming to you. Karma is justice. It’s an unsatisfactory-sounding justice, I guess. And maybe that’s the best we can hope for this side of eternity. But I hope that’s not true. Shouldn’t justice be making things whole? Or at least better? Maybe bin Laden’s death will, ultimately make things right, in some way. Or better. Or not as f-ed up as they have been for the last ten years. I don’t know, I mean, I hope it does. But I’m not celebrating it. I am in no position to rebuke those for whom bin Laden’s death means their child’s murderer is dead. Or their mother’s. Or their friend’s. But I feel unsettled and uneasy by the whole media bonanza of exclamation points and congratulatory phrases. I thought maybe writing out my thought process would ease my unease. It hasn’t, particularly. I like having an easy position to retreat to, a nice clearly expressible opinion on whatever the issue of the day may be. But I don’t.

Fire in a can! (and a baby bird update!)

Lookit!! So cute! When you walk in the back door, sometimes you wake them up and they start squeaking and you see their little mouths bobbing and reaching inside the door to the nest. Then mom (or dad) shows up and all is well. I took this photo a couple days ago, and today I looked in and saw their eyes are starting to open, and they're getting little feathers on the tops of their heads. I also did a little research, and discovered that Carolina Wrens may produce two or three batches of babies over a season. So these little guys might only be the first round...guess we'll see!

Apart from bird-watching, I spent a little time this week working on a plan for our Appalachian Trail hike, which was exciting. My friend Matt was staying with me all week, before heading out on his own AT hike, so I'm looking forward to his report to get me even more excited about my and Jill's trip! Matt showed me how to make a camp stove out of a pineapple juice can. We boiled water in my driveway (even with a sudden dousing of rain), and it only took a handful of twiggy sticks, and a chunk of paper bag.
Forty-seven days until I can take a break from working to just worry about living. Ahhh.....can't wait.

Banana bread, xanthan gum, and peppers

My spring break is winding to a close...sadly. This week of not-working has been a tantalizing reminder of what it's like to not have to spend 8 to 10 (to 12) hours of your day, five days a week, doing something that isn't necessarily what you would choose to spend 8 to 10 (to 12) hours of your day doing if you didn't have to pay rent and make student loan payments. Not that, on the whole, I don't like my job - some days I love it, some days I hate it - but overall I just think sometimes what it would be like to have the hours of my day be all mine, to do with what I want.

I spent last weekend with my Mom visiting here in Charlotte, then drove up to Delaware to visit with my Dad and my brother, stopped in Maryland to see my Nana, Aunt and little cousin, and today I'm back in NC with a whole, glorious day to myself.

So far today I have planted peppers (bell and jalapeno)...

made granola...

and taken my second foray into the world of gluten-free baking with a banana bread recipe I found online.

Here's what I've learned:

1) Xanthan gum is expensive. And Harris Teeter doesn't have it. (It's a binding agent, in lieu of gluten.)
2) Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free All-Purpose Baking Flour is made from, and kind of tastes like, beans.
3) Melted brown sugar makes anything taste better.
4) You can actually make normal-textured baked goods (or quick breads, at least) without gluten.

One of the items I brought home from Delaware with me is a kitchen scale. I was going to buy a digital one online before my dad dug this out of a cabinet. Sexy, no?

I keep reading how it's better to bake by weight when you're doing it gluten-free, because 1 cup of rice flour might weigh something different than 1 cup of almond flour which might weigh something different than 1 cup of buckwheat flour (buckwheat is not wheat). And if you do it by weight, then you can sub in whatever flours you have and like the taste of. And since gluten-free flours are like six bucks for a little one-pound bag, this lets you use what you've got, instead of being a slave to what the recipe calls for. At least so goes the theory.

Since the recipe I used called for a brand-name pastry flour mix, which I didn't have, I used the aforementioned Bob's, plus a little buckwheat flour. Buckwheat is grainy, but it doesn't taste like beans. And in fairness to Bob, his flour didn't really taste too much like beans after I'd combined it with the other flours and turned it into banana bread. Not TOO much like beans.

I haven't had anything remotely bread-like in weeks, so the one slice of banana bread I've had was incredibly filling. And tasted decent, if not remarkable. It wasn't really very banana-y, despite having two whole bananas in it. It was good enough you'd eat a second piece, but not so good you'll eat the whole loaf in a day. You can definitely tell there's something different about it (like, it's made out of BEANS), but it's in the flavor, not the texture, and I feel like the flavor can more easily be tweaked by using other flours.

As much as I'd love to have exact gluten-free replicas of every wheat-y food I've ever loved, I realize that isn't about to happen. I also know that, since I don't have Celiac disease, if I really wanted to eat a baguette or something, I could. I'd just pay for it with joint pain later. I'm hopeful that the longer I go without gluten (and onions, beef, and tomatoes...my other nemeses) the more likely it will be that I can eat them again in small quantities down the road. In the meantime, I will likely stick to foods that don't require xanthan gum to work. Things like roast chicken, and buttery kale, and baked custards, and Rice Chex covered in melted marshmallows a la Rice Krispy Treats.

And roasted red peppers, which hopefully I'll be able to make from my own peppers this summer.

Shrimp (heart) Petroleum

In an antique store in Asheville yesterday, I came across this poster:
After I blinked a couple times, I thought 'Wow, bet they don't have THAT festival anymore.' So, when I got home that afternoon, I googled it. And was wrong. The 2011 Shrimp and Petroleum Festival will be held this September, and claims the title of the "oldest state chartered harvest festival in Louisiana." Besides the bizarreness of the idea of an 'oil harvest,' I just can't quite get my head around the idea of shrimp and oil rigs happily frolicking (pumping?) together in the Gulf like best friends. It's been almost a year since this little event. And I'm pretty sure the little shrimps weren't enjoying their sudden, intimate encounter with their old friend petroleum. Is this some well-known festival that everyone has heard about except for me? Am I the only one who thinks this poster is bizarre and, hindsight being what it is, a bit ominous?