Can we stop the budget wars already?
Pandemic Panic
Around the nation schools and communities are reevaluating their budgets with an eye to cuts. Schools across the nation are laying off faculty/staff, issuing furloughs, and considering cutting vulnerable programs. We’re in a free-fall of monetary loss, and the Feds only seem interested in propping up the biggest of businesses/elitest of supporters. What’s a community rec center, school district, or institution of higher ed to do?
“Trim the fat!”
Problem is, of course, most of us have no fat left to trim.
I’m not the only parent losing my mind during quarantine…right?
Oh, hello there! Are you reading this on your phone while you hide from your children in the bathroom, by chance? Are you even crying a little while you shovel ice cream into your gobhole from your perch on the toilet because you know that, any minute now, a little person is going to push through the magic “Peace and Quiet” portal/door to find you?
Of course I’m speaking from personal experience! Where do you think I’m writing this fromksaud.bd —
Oops, dropped some ice cream there. …
Entitlement culture at its finest…
Masks are stupid. Who wants to walk around looking like a knuckle-dragging dumb-bum afraid of the freaking air? Not this bitch! I’m going to die bare-faced and breathing through my mouth like God intended! Not that I want to die. I don’t. I totally, totally don’t want to die! But when I do die (because I’m old and stuff, and NOT because some stupid supposedly “Super flu” killed me), that’s when I’ll die all bare-faced and shit. …
I promise it will be fun (and maybe a little weird…)
A while back I sent out a flurry of emails to friends, inviting them to collaboratively write poems, one line and one email, at a time. Sadly, I fear the messages went the way of the chain-letter… Some participated, but without guaranteed interest, poems died in the inbox of disinterested friends.
SO — we’re going to try this again, but with a little more structure and better rate of return!
How it works:
- Interested writers sign up (You don’t have to BE a writer to sign up — by…
The first “completed” poem in our first experimental writing project.
Nobody prepared me for this…
A sharply canted world blue skies empty streets solitude multitudes drowning in abruptly impossible air songs cheers sirens prayers, rising.
Nobody prepared me for this…
My neighbors hate my license plate, a house too big to heat, fenced in w/directions downloaded to the hospital, prayers rising.
Nobody prepared me for this…
My friend sent me a clip of NYC’s 7:00pm tribute to workers where they’ve begun singing, “New York, New York”; she was horrifically off-key, but it didn’t matter.
Nobody prepared me for this…
I live alone in my cocoon surrounded by the books I never got around to reading and framed photos of my memories
…so I prepared myself.
Written by:
Tiffany Antone
Jaisey Bates
Emma Goldman-Sherman
JC Sullivan
Joan Arenstein
I don’t know about you, but I’ve grown immensely tired of the “Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the plague” memes. Shakespeare had a patron, wasn’t suddenly tasked with turning an in-person class (or four) into an online class (or four) and he didn’t contribute a lick to home/childcare. So, you know, screw Lear!
I’m a playwright, but the only playwriting I’ve been able to do is drafting long-distance scene for my acting students to work with over Zoom. After all the teaching and child-caring has sucked me dry, the only creative things I’ve had the bandwidth for is baking and…
How do we fix everything? CAN we fix everything? Can we fix anything?
Curiosity
FEAR: Curiosity killed the cat…
TRUTH SEEKER: Zip it.
We have become a nation obsessed with defending. We no longer seek our own answers, but instead defend inherited systems because they are familiar.
Not knowing is uncomfortable.
We aspire to be comfortable.
Therefore we embrace the comfort of familiarity, whether we are truly comfortable or not.
We should reject the false comforts that outdated and unyielding systems feed us. These systems have been handed to us by generations long gone and do not allow us to evolve…
Poverty as a virtue? Please! Show me the money!
“The newborn made me do it” is a legit defense for 3am online shopping binges, right?
What did women do before iPhones and Neflix? How did they stay awake? How did they not go start raving bonkers from the monotony of near-constant newborn feeding sessions? I’m exhausted, and it’s all I can do to NOT fall asleep on my munchkin while he sleepily slurps on my nips. If I didn’t have technology to keep me awake, I’d have probably given up by now.
Which of course means my phone usage is up to insane amounts this week. Pre-baby, I was…
Even though he’s only been here for one week, my second child is already helping me heal from the trauma of my first son’s difficult start.
My first child made his debut three-and-a-half weeks early. He was also breech. I remember his arrival via necessary C-section as a pain-filled, panic-stricken delirium, dusted with new-found awe, love, and devotion. Our second arrived on time via scheduled cesarean, and brought with him a wave of calm clarity that I had no idea was even possible in the world of newborns.
Every day since has been awash with comparisons, and even though he’s…
Tiffany Antone
Thinking thoughts, writing them down… trying not to scream in the interim. Also: Playwright. Professor. Mom. Wife. Cat-Servant. Follow @LadyPlaywright
