Tag: rant

Rants and Gratitude

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Gratitudes, Musings
Cloudbird. It was too big to fit in the frame, so its wings leak off the edges.

Just saying: If you don’t read the newsletters and internal memos and emails for the place you work for, and you miss something critically important, you can’t go around telling people you weren’t briefed. I mean, it’s happened to me. I’ve occasionally missed something important because I skipped over the newsletter, thinking I would come back to it later. And it was my responsibility to keep myself informed, not the responsibility of someone else to pull it out and mark it with a highlighter, and remind me to read it. And I am not the president.

With that sort of grouchy rant to start my morning, I suppose I should say something nice.
1. I’m going to work today at Radiance! That makes me happy and satisfied.
2. We thought that the things Jon planted were sort of a bust after the deer and groundhogs and storms raged through, but last evening, I harvested some wonderful zukes and cukes and beans, and Jon got a nice binful of broccoli.
3. Yesterday I took an online conference on Online Teaching, which is kind of the LAST thing I ever want to do again, but now I feel like I really might be able to do it, if it comes down to that.
4. That sky bird in the clouds last evening.
5. The people who ground me, who hold the strings when I go kiting off on a rant, who remind me to be nice.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

“The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever.” ―M.T. Anderson, Feed

‪”I just watched a mosquito sip my blood, hover in the air like a ruby with wings, then leave the circle of my porch light for the dark trees. That’s me, that crimson speck rising like a campfire spark. My blood will feel at home in those perfect woods and my goodwill goes with it.‬” —Jarod K. Anderson, the Cryptonaturalist

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” —Alvin Toffler

”I think midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear:

I’m not screwing around. It’s time. All of this pretending and performing—these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt—has to go.

Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy of love and belonging, but you’re still searching and you’re more lost than ever.

Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are coursing through you. You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen.” —Brené Brown

“Oh, what we could be if we stopped carrying the remains of who we were.” —Tyler Knott Gregson

“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.” —Wendell Berry

Mostly Rantless

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Gratitudes, Musings

No rants today. I think that from here on out, today will be rantless for me (I can’t call the whole day rantless because I accidentally ranted a bit on Facebook this morning. Ranting is also good for waking up.)

I have a sadness: Our resident Great Blue Heron has died. We need to go do something to honor the body, at least place it serenely in the woods, so the People Who Deal with Death can do their work. The vultures and worms and their communities of goodfolk. I will take photos of the Beautiful One’s feathers. I just need to steel myself. I am not naturally brave with Death, although I value Her, and trust Her.

I also have a lovely happiness: I have no essays to grade this weekend. My soul is free for two days. I need to make something.

Gratitude List:
1. The birdlife here in the hollow. So sad to lose our Blue Heron friend, but this is part of the Cycle. Others will come in their time. Meanwhile, the small wingfolk are singing Spring.
2. Brunch at 301 Cafe! We haven’t done that yet, but it’s in the plan!
3. No big grading this weekend. I feel so light, I could float away.
4. Reassuring dreams
5. Meditating

May we walk in Beauty!

Persist

Posted on by Beth Weaver-Kreider in Gratitudes, Musings

Before I begin the rant, I want to make a point about Vice Presidents, in light of everything I am about to say. The choice of Stacey Abrams or Kamala Harris as a running mate would go a long way toward attracting my vote, if there’s any choice left in this debacle of a primary campaign by the time it reaches Pennsylvania. Elizabeth Warren, too, of course, but the loss of Warren in the race was only the most recent blow in a line of killing the vast diversity of the overwhelming field of candidates. (I’ve never been sure what to do with Gabbard, and I’m not sure she knows herself.) (Also, I know that Sanders, as a Jewish man, still brings a little diversity–it’s not simply two old white men remaining. Just two old men.) (Ugh. And now I sound really ageist. In this context, the default seems to always be old white men, so that’s part of the story.)

I wrote this rant in pieces yesterday between naps as I was resting to fend off the worst edges of a bad cold. That bit was successful, at least, and I am feeling much better today.

Today, I am an enraged middle school girl. I am a third grader stamping her foot at the unfairness. I am a high school girl rolling her eyes at the absolutely stupidity of it, a college girl sighing yet again in defeat. All of these girls in me had their absolutely valid reasons for rage, and I cannot see over my own middle-aged rage to deal with the echoing memories of theirs. Mine. Ours. The layers.

I just have to say it. This has been a triggering experience for me. I find myself flashing back to younger versions of myself, living this fifty-two-year-old experience along with my college self, my high school self, my middle school and elementary school selves. I don’t remember the first time I noticed that a girl could be smart and articulate and shiny and dynamic, but she couldn’t beat out a goofy boy with a sense of entitlement. For anything. She couldn’t be heard above the clamor of an angry boy, no matter how lucid and smart her own ideas.

This is how it’s been my whole life: A brilliant girl tries for something—some honor, some leadership role, some place—and a goofy boy with a sense of kingly entitlement begins to talk about the inevitability of his own winning, and suddenly she has completely disappeared. No matter that she has a plan for EVERYTHING. No matter that she can talk her way around that boy ten times before he has put together a coherent sentence. No matter that she was born for this. And so he wins.

And today the goofy boy and the angry boy win again, beating out the brilliant girl who has been invisibilized and now erased.

I’m just tired.

I can live forward through this. I can “get on board.” Goddess knows, I am experienced at that part of the story. Still, I just get tired of hearing people talk about the inevitability of her disappearance from the story. And when the goofball wins, he gets the brilliant girl to assist him. Or the angry boy gets the nice girl to help him. Because they need her in order to truly succeed. But then everyone says, “Look! She’s got something anyway, doesn’t she? She should be happy now. Satisfied now. Everybody wins.” And she ends up doing his work for him or putting out the fires he starts. And he gets the credit. And the next time a girl is running against a boy, everyone says, “Now don’t be too hasty. She really can’t compete. If we want to keep the bullies at bay, we need a good strong boy to take the reins.”

I will vote for whichever of these boys takes the nomination, but I will do it with the rage of a middle school girl who has repeatedly seen her brilliant girlfriends completely marginalized and ignored for goofy and angry boys who have controlled the process for her whole life. I will be happy if she gets to be a good strong vice or cabinet something. Absolutely. But I will know, with the heart of my 12-year-old self, that she was always the best choice: Elizabeth, Kamala, Amy.

Gratitude List:
1. Feeling better. That first nap–three hours of serious sleep–felt like the most rejuvenating part of the day. Even the tossy-turny nature of last night’s sleep hasn’t thrown me back to the exhausted state of earlier in the week, and I feel like I can fight off this cold.
2. Friday. End of the week. Faculty Hymn Sing before school (every Friday–how lucky am I?), the International Women’s Day chapel planned by students. It should be a pleasant day.
3. Daffodils
4. The crocus are blooming, too, and in some strange and wonderful places, way out of the beds. Crocus always remind me to let myself leak outside the boundaries.
5. Nimbleness. How my child just leapt onto the bench to straighten the curtains. I think that one of my physical goals for the next part of this year will be to develop greater nimbleness. I think I have become more sedentary rather than less, and it is affecting my nimbleness.

May we walk in Beauty!