Tag Archives: Yes we can

Flowers and Workplace Karma

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I took a chance and sent a funny email to the cubicle three feet away from me. Hey, don’t laugh. It’s far enough away that she has a window. Really! But anyway, she’s a regular reader of Compost Happens, and she appreciates my sense of, well, irony. She replied to my silly email:

Fellow cubicle dweller: Funny! Daisy, you always manage to put a smile on my face. Can I be known as “Rosebud”? 

That started it. I replied in the positive, of course, but I couldn’t leave it at that.

Me, Daisy: And who will be Chrysanthemum? How about (insert high school English teacher’s name here)? 

Description: Chrysanthemum

Rosebud: I always wanted to be called Rosebud! Don’t ask me why. I think she would enjoy being called Chrysanthemum. (Science teacher) could be Thistle and (Mr. Math) could be Dandelion.

Daisy: I’ll call (another colleague) “Clover” or “Marigold.”

Rosebud: Nice – Marigold seems appropriate. We’ve got the whole garden/plant theme going on here.

Daisy: You realize, of course, that I’m going to blog this.

Readers, are you wondering what started the whole thread? Karma. Pure Karma.

What goes around, comes around.

And you thought I’d made it through an entire post without mentioning the recall election.

 

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More Recall Tales for the Grandkids

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Where were we, youngsters? Oh, yes, I was about to talk about recalling the governor of Wisconsin. There were times when we had to seek out the humor in order to keep from falling apart. We found that Walker’s supporters had made a campaign sign that spelled governor wrong- spelled it with an -er instead of -or. Duh. We shared pictures of the misspelled signs and pointed out the idiocy of following a group of people like that, people who weren’t smart enough to proofread their work before posting it in their front yard. 

We were proud that recall volunteers for our side gathered more than double the number of signatures needed to call for the recall election. We needed to submit just over 500,000 based on voter numbers and a complicated formula. When the day came, the organizers trucked in more than one million signatures. One million! Oh, yes, we were proud. There were rumors  about bad craziness, like the guy who claimed to have signed 80 petitions in order to get the petitions thrown out. Turned out he hadn’t signed any – not even one. 

But the real signatures: the real voters, the disenfranchised (look it up, sweetie, it’s a useful descriptive word) and the average middle class workers, they came out of the woodwork. The recall offices downtown were busy places. People actually came to the office and asked to sign petitions. They didn’t wait for recall volunteers to come to them; they came to the volunteers. The momentum in gathering signatures just never seemed to slow down. I was a volunteer myself, kiddos. I wore the lanyard around my neck that announced “Recall volunteer,” kept two recall petitions in my vehicle, and made sure I parked on the street when I went to work so I wasn’t violating the policy on having political items on school property. We teachers had to be careful. 

We had to be careful because there were strict policies about political involvement. Yes, I know I’ve told you that teaching was a radical and political career back then. Our budgets, our reputations, and our pensions were subject to public perception. Public hearing were even held to determine which books students could read in classes. It bordered on censorship at times… but that’s another story. 

We teachers could park a car with a political bumper sticker in the school lots. We were allowed to wear a campaign button on our jackets on the way in and out of school. We could volunteer on our own time or donate money to a candidate of our choice, but we couldn’t discuss it during school hours or use school equipment (copiers or computers) for political purposes. That meant no  emails, no printing or copying of recall-related news articles, and no reading of blogs on company time. 

We managed, though. We collaborated and shared news during our lunch and our prep periods. We walked out the door together and talked them. We updated each other before the bell rang in the morning and after the kids left in the afternoon. We teachers, we who had dedicated our lives to making a difference, were forced to stand up for ourselves and say we mattered. 

And say it we did. Kidlets, take a break and read All the President’s Men for a little topical entertainment. When I wake up from my nap, I’ll tell you about the governor’s criminal defense fund. 

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Daisy’s Garden Takes Shape: Planting Peppers

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Episode Two in The Garden Takes Shape took place Saturday evening. I was busy in an air conditioned office during the afternoon shift, entering data from canvassing volunteers. It was unseasonably warm in Wisconsin with a recall race heating up, so I waited until I could work in the shade. Clever, eh? Worked in the election reference right away. If you’re alert, you’ll notice a few more references cleverly hidden in the context of the post.

Performance art or garden sculpture?

This corner , mainly inhabited by “walking” green onions, needed work. It offered cages to be removed & grass roots to pull, and you know the strength of grass-roots organizing. I took care of the space around the onions, and I was ready. Well, almost ready.

I use a variation on Square Foot Gardening. I plan my space, block off the squares, and then figure out how many plants or seeds can fit in the space according to the number of squares in the grid.

What grid, you ask? I’ll show you.

This grid.

My grids are not faithful to the trademarked Square Foot Gardening technique. My grid is fairly accurate (I measure), but it’s not permanent. It’s made of masking tape. By the time I’m done planting and I no longer need the guidelines, it’ll be stuck to my shoes or tangled in the topsoil. That’s all fine with me, since it’s biodegradable.

Saturday night, while the guys in the family shopped for groceries, I dug into the soil and placed my pepper plants in their places. Squared, cubed, or otherwise multiplied, these little seedlings have the power to produce the ingredients for many jars of salsa next August.

 

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What will I tell the grandkids?

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It was 2011 or 2012, you youngsters. I forget which year, but I can never forget what went down. And oh, boy, did it go down! 

Wisconsin’s newly elected governor decided to take a piece out of all the people who worked for the state in any way, shape, or form. His goal was to destroy our unions’ rights to bargain, to cooperate with our employers and negotiate. He focused in on teachers, but we (yes, that included me back in the day) weren’t alone by any means. All public employees began to feel like public enemies as he vilified (look it up, honey, there are still dictionaries in this home) vilified us for daring to earn a living from a public source, a.k.a. tax monies, instead of a private company.

As the recently-elected Governor Walker introduced and tried to pass his union-busting bill, claiming it was a budget issue, he needed a quorum in order to call for a vote. Sweetheart, do you know what a quorum means? No? What are they teaching these days…. never mind. A quorum is a set minimum number of people in a voting group who need to be present in order to vote on important issues. Budget issues, those that involve money, need a quorum. If that quorum is not present, the bill cannot go to a vote. 

So, my dears, in order to prevent this bill from reaching the floor for a vote, the Democrats in our state senate made a run for the border. They traveled to Illinois so the Wisconsin state police couldn’t come after them and force them to come back. Without the Democrats, the Republicans had their hands tied. They had to just sit there and look smug while the protests raged in and around the capitol. Clever, eh? It’s not that first time in history this runaway tactic was used, either. But back to Wisconsin’s drama –

Walker, it turned out, was acting as a puppet for his billionaire backers and a dangerous think tank named Alec. Or was the billionaire named Alec?  But anyway, he wasn’t doing his own thinking. His goals included not just destroying public unions, but putting women’s rights back a good forty years. His motto was Divide and Conquer. 

So what did we do? We did what Wisconsinites have always done: we looked at our progressive history, said to that guy in Madison, “Oh, no you don’t!” and we took to the streets. Thousands marched on Madison. Hundreds more participated in local marches and demonstrations. Ask your elderly neighbors about the demonstrations in downtown Appleburg. They were there. They were there sending a message: “Governor Walker’s got to go. This isn’t Wisconsin. If he thinks the citizens of our fair state are going to just lie down and go gently into that good night, he’s dead wrong. We won’t go quietly. In fact, we won’t go at all.”

And that’s when the recall effort began. 

Okay, kidlets, it’s time for my nap. I’ll tell you later about the tactics. It was an exciting and scary time to live in Wisconsin…zzz… it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…zzz. 

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A well-stocked pantry rules the world.

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Pantry Raid

Pantry Raid. It sounds so much more dignified than leftovers. Well, maybe. I came home one night just exhausted from school, unmotivated to cook. In the distant past, this feeling would have meant calling for pizza. Luckily, Chuck does the grocery shopping, and he does it well. All I have to do on any given night is put it all together.

I pulled together a package of fresh ravioli from the refrigerator, tomato sauce from a jar I’d started a few days earlier, grated cheese on top – and called it supper. I think we had a lettuce salad on the side.

This has become a point of pride in our home: the ability to create a decent meal without resorting to the phone or to convenience foods. The ravioli was pre-made, but it was from the dairy case, not the C-rations aisle. It was on sale, so Chuck bought it for just this type of day. The tomato sauce and the grated cheddar completed the dish. The more creative we can be in the kitchen, the less money we spend on take-out or delivery. And since my future financial security is in the hands of the weasel in Madison, anything that saves money and still feeds the family has value.

Did you really think I’d get through an entire post without mentioning the upcoming recall election? Hah.

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To educate or not to educate?

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Overheard: “Educated people aren’t as happy underemployed as uneducated people.”

Scary thought, isn’t it?

Educated people expect more. Educated adults tend to raise educated children. Educated people value education and vote for candidates who will fund and maintain successful education systems.

Educated people expect more. They expect results. They expect others to listen and learn from them as they listen and learn from others. Educated people want to raise the bar, not lower it, in most parts of their lives – including raising the bar for employment.

Educated people value education. They are more likely to work with their children on homework, enroll their children in supplementary activities such as drama, music, and sports, and encourage their children to reach for the stars.

Educated people value educators. Educators value education. They expect results and will extend themselves to get those results. Educators will find shoes for their students, write grants to improve their resources, and make sure their students get fed. Educators reach out to help meet students’ basic needs so students can turn their attentions to reading.

Educators, like other educated people, aren’t happy underemployed. Educators know their worth, and they’re not content to be disrespected. Educators, passionate about their work, aren’t happy to be the continual victims of name-calling by the uneducated.

Soon-to-be-former Governor Walker doesn’t value education. In his form of logic, he didn’t graduate from college; why should anyone else?

I submit exhibit one.

Actual sign: no photoshopping required

Educators proofread their work.

Educated people proofread their campaign signs.

Educated people vote.

Unfortunately, uneducated people also vote. I just have to hope that the former will outnumber the latter.

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Romney: none so blind

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My son, known to readers as Amigo, stands with his white cane and tells a good joke.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, isn’t funny. Mitt is gaining notoriety for his bullying behavior in high school, behavior he calls “dumb things.” I’d take it farther than just dumb or dumber.

He allegedly cut off a fellow student’s hair. No matter what the reason, holding a person down while cutting his or her hair sounds like assault to me. If Mitt instigated this attack because he suspected the classmate was gay, this assault falls into the hate crime catalog.

Mitt might claim ignorance with the excuse that he was a prankster, one who was mischievous and liked to push boundaries. Gang-tackling a classmate and cutting his hair while he cried and screamed is more than pushing boundaries. It’s mean. It’s hurtful. It’s traumatic. None of the members of this wolf-pack can pretend they didn’t know they were hurting their classmate. I said he might claim ignorance; I didn’t say anyone would believe it.

There’s a sequel to this story we might call The Tale of Mean Mitt. While at the same privileged private boarding school, Mitt the Mean tricked a blind teacher into walking into a closed door – while other students laughed. He took advantage of a disability for his entertainment. .

So far we’ve established that the teen Mitt preyed on young men with long hair and took pleasure in the discomfort of disabled adults. Do you see where I’m going, readers? I’m sure you can.

I’m both a disabled adult and a teacher. I’ve taught long enough to notice that a person’s character shows in his interactions with those he considers his inferiors. Think about it. Teen Mitt didn’t respect people who were gay or people who were blind. The adult Mitt doesn’t respect people who are poor or people who are female. I’d wager a guess that he hasn’t changed his mind about long-haired men or disabled teachers, either.

Friends and family are saying Mitt “…doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.” I don’t believe them. I don’t want him near me or near my blind son. And I most certainly don’t want him in the White House.

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The Compostermom Returns

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I know some of you are thinking “Daisy! Enough of the political posts already! How’s your garden?” While I ponder the symbolism of the grass roots that can’t be contained…. okay, I’m back in the dirt.

We had major rains for several days, bringing Lake Okaybyme back to the backyard. After a few breezy days and dry nights, Lake Okaybyme and its counterpart, Swamp NotsoOkaybyme, have receded far enough that I can wade through the grassland and reach the compost bin. I found, unfortunately, that someone small with opposable thumbs had gotten to the bin first. This bandit had pulled open the access panel and spilled decomposed matter and some not-yet-compost all over the ground. Growl. To make matters worse, the masked avenger had opened the opposite access panel from its previous forays into my compost.

In more than ten years of composting, last year was the first time I’ve ever had a problem with a fuzzball or two in black, white, and gray. Now they’re back, the dang varmints. I told you last year, you. Get outta my compost, punk!

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In which Daisy yells at the television set again

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I’m energized and ready to hit the campaign pavement. Meanwhile, I’m getting reacquainted with my dear darling husband, the dear one who had to work in Milwaukee on election night. He operated his company’s satellite truck so his station could cover Tom Barrett’s (as it turned out) victory party. So… we did what we do: we watched Jeopardy together.

Last week, as the teen tournament chose its finalists, there was a final jeopardy Q & A (or A & Q, if you want to get technical about it) asking the contestants to come up with a word that represented the killing of life, even while the term itself described a substance that could save a life. Antibiotic was the answer, er, question, of course. Two out of three teens answered antidote. Nice try, but close only counts in horseshoes, right? So there I was, remembering all the years that I’d taught sixth grade science, pointing at the television and stating loudly, “If you’d been in my science classes, you would have known that bio- means life!” Chuck just ignored me. Smart guy.

The winner in tonight’s teen tournament was a young lady who was very intelligent, quick on the buzzer, and an all-around strong contestant. She had a mannerism that bugged me, though. When she answered, in the form of a question as always, her body language and facial expression said, “Well, could it possibly be – nah.” This cutesie look could also be interpreted to say, “Oh, I’m sorry I’m right. I’m really sorry I’m so capable. Girls aren’t supposed to be smart.”

I thought we left these attitudes behind a long, long time ago. This inferior female apologetic act bit the dust about the time we earned the right to earn the same as a man doing the same job.

Oh, wait a minute. Soon To Be Former Governor Walker just reversed that equivalent salary gig. 

Never mind. You go ahead and be cute, girl. Just make sure you get informed and vote as soon as you’re able. Then your future employers can reward you for your intellectual assets, not just your lovely ones.

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Biding my thyme on election day

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Elections get me wired up. It’s not the adrenaline rush of a candidate running for office. It’s not the excitement of a journalist covering the story. It’s a little simpler than that, but at the same time, it’s more complex.

My profession is heavily affected by public policy. I am a public school teacher in Wisconsin, and public perception of my job can sway those who determine my salary, my benefits, my working conditions, and in general, my job itself.

Elections get me wired because the results matter. An election is never abstract for me. The people in office make decisions that govern (no pun intended) my everyday work. Be it state or federal, every single budget that passes contains elements that drive educational policies.

The polls are open from 7:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M. I like to vote early and get that task off my shoulders. Then I only have to worry about all the other voters. Will the turnout be strong? Will voters really understand the issues at hand? Will the election results be – well, will my candidates win?

I shouldn’t have been wired on the day of this primary election, but I was. On May 8th I was very tense, and I wasn’t alone in my sentiments. The air around the office (school, virtual style) was thick with moods and nerves and even an occasional strong discussion, er, argument. I kept busy with phone calls and grading. I made more calls than scheduled, held an impromptu lesson online with a struggling math student, cleaned my computer keyboard, drank too much coffee, suggested a photo essay on the variety of coffee mugs in the office, surreptitiously checked my coworkers for their “I Voted” stickers, and then finally reached the end of the day and went home.

At home, I checked the messages (only one, a reminder to vote), hugged the bunny, brought in the mail, threw out the junk mail, and then settled down. Sort of. Since the predicted rainstorm hadn’t moved in yet, I transplanted Chuck’s cilantro from its cute but tiny cappuccino mug into a larger pot and added more seeds. Next, I transplanted the thyme into a pot more suitable for its size. You’ve heard of moving heaven and earth? I just settled for moving thyme.

I watched the news, updated blogs, checked Twitter and Plurk, and shared yesterday’s post (did I call the gov a skunk? Nah) via Facebook. I watched Jeopardy. Nibbled on Chuck’s homemade guacamole. Took out the compost bucket, covered the pail of potting soil, brought in an armload of firewood – you get the picture. I couldn’t, couldn’t, could not stay still. I baked cookies! It was a huge batch of dough (not unlike the size of Walker’s campaign war chest), so it took a while to bake all of it.

Finally, I settled in to watch the election results. The rest of the nation is watching Wisconsin right now. What will they see?

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