Normally, you can’t get me to shut up when it comes to making a posting on here, but for the past few days, I’ve been in a slump. We’ve had dreadfully wonderful weather (we got more snow last night, yay!), but with so many things happening at home, I seem to be a miss to actually find something to talk about.Jocie took her first spill down the stairs the other night when it was just me and the kids at, so I’ve got nobody else to blame but my own incompetence. Joey was a witness to the accident and loudly announced the event while it was happening. Jessamyn was my “First Responder” and arrived at her patient’s side just moments after she fell and provided triage in the form of hugs. She, like most babies that are built like rubber and have plenty of extra cushioning, was just fine and only needed a little comforting before she was crawling away and onto the next thing that caught her eye.
Jessamyn will be taking her father to their first ‘Daddy and Daughter’ dance this coming Saturday for her school. She already has her dress picked out, and her mother was nice enough to purchase a matching tie for her “date.”…. (now I’ve just got to pick a restaurant to take her to for our “first date”).
Joey is plodding down his now consistent path of perpetual engineerdom as he creates new Lego manifestations on a nightly basis.
Jenny has been busy doing homework and getting ready for a presentation for her class that happened last night. She was nice enough to share some of its content with me when she brought home a video by ‘Jane Elliot.’ This amazing woman made national headlines by teaching her class of 3rd graders about racism in 1968 (she did this the day after Martin Luther King died) by creating a mock supremacy arbitrarily based on eye color within her classroom. The PBS video about how she did this was amazing to me as she transforms a group of best friends into racists in the matter of fifteen minutes. In addition to persuading youths, she also has a “workshop” version named “Blue Eyed” that is catered towards the adult with similar results.
Me? Well, I’m still the same. I can’t wait for summer so I can open the pool and enjoy my “back yard vacation.” Really, I’d just like Mother Nature to make up her mind and bring on spring or dump more snow and leave the temps below 30 so I can go skiing with my kids.
jp
3 comments:
Believe me Jay, every parent has a "tumble moment" that we are not proud of with our kids, and thank god all was well.
I still remember my Daddy-Daughter breakfast in nursery school with my Dad, and my first dance with him so take LOTS of pictures for us to see!
P.S.-- I have seen that Video that Jenny brought home regarding racism and it is powerful. 20/20 did a follow-up years later with the students who remembered the impact it made on them afterwards as kids. Incredible!
What a powerful video it was. Jenny had the followup video as well, which was amazing to see these grown adults and see how this excercise had impacted them through their lives.
Blue-Eyed is even more amazing in that it was set in the 1990's and some of the same issues hold true to this day. Even though the 1950's and 60's versions of racism are less common, other versions (socio-economic/class, job status, citizen status, etc) of heiarchial racism still exist in our society, and I found this video to be a great impact on my professional outlook in life as it is geared towards adults in the workplace.
jp
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