Category Archives: sociology

Hiding.

February 21, 2016arts education, classical music, human behavior, public education, relationships, social commentary, sociology, Uncategorizedillumination, light, public school music teachers, related arts teachers, retired teachers, self-actualizationruth ann scanzillo

You could say that I spent twenty five years hiding. In public education.

It’s possible.

You get a room. (Or, when times are tight, you don’t – in which case, you get a “cart”, and a 10×10 storage closet for the djembes and tubanos and Orff xylophones). You get a schedule. And, you get students. All the students. Every single student enrolled in the school. And, you get all five days of the week, just like everybody else with a full time job.

Beyond that, most everybody else gets from you a solid forty minutes of downtime every week. (Not all; some).The bosses like you best when they never have to remember that you are even in the building. Actually make your presence known, and you could already be in trouble.

Count on hearing about every other teacher’s birthday over the morning announcements. Expect that, when you reach your big 50th, there will be a faculty meeting scheduled keeping you on the premises for an extra forty minutes after the students leave, with nary a mention of your special day. And, of course, no announcement.

Put the entire enrollment on stage every winter and spring, in full concert mode. Get one chance to do all this in the evening, properly, but when the administrative staff is stuck running parking duty for five hundred parents, expect to be relegated thereafter to nine o’clock a.m. Greet the parents who show up in the morning because they don’t have day jobs. Recognize the docile humans, easily led to their folding chairs in the gym so that the auditorium can remain dark and the parking lot unattended, and thank them for coming.

Slip on a dusty stage floor during the musical (at 9 a.m.) lose your additional footing on a choral riser with an unstable frame, fly into the air and land in the pit in full view of an auditorium filled to capacity with K, 1 and 2, and know even before it happens that the principal isn’t even in the room to witness. Break your hip, your sacra, and a bone in your hand. Count on Workman’s Comp to provide your medical attention thereafter, preventing your ability to sue for damages.

Fall in love with thousands of children. Between the hours of 8 am and 2pm daily, help raise them. Be there as they grow into adolescence. Feel them turn. Face them, every day, the handful of sullen, dismissive ones who alpha their way into dominance over hundreds. Feel the ache in your chest. Experience the mild trauma of diminishing returns. Vow to walk away and disappear.

Finally, stop hiding. Step assuredly into your own light. Represent. Collect your thoughts and the sum of your experience. And, sign your name to your own life’s work.

littlebarefeetblog.com

“The Rifleman.”

February 20, 2016Christian fundamentalism, family history, gratitude, healing, love, nostalgia, relationships, sociology, tributes, Tv seriesChuck Connors, gratitude, Johnny Crawford, memories of dad, memories of family, metamessages, old Tv westerns, single dads, single fathers, The Billy Graham Crusade, The Riflemanruth ann scanzillo

[ *Warning: Ghost writers prohibited from this property.]

The Rifleman is playing re-runs on AMC.

As a young girl, I refused to miss a single episode of this black and white.

We had no television in our house, but my aunt Dora Mae had a small one that she’d acquired through a rental during the moon landing. Mum worked in the machine shop on Wednesdays, so I would milk-flavored tomato soup lunch over Art Fleming’s “Jeopardy” at my aunt’s linen-clothed diningroom table, right across from the silver tea set sitting on the server, the tv nesting in the corner by the window. After school, she’d let me return, to watch my Rifleman while she prepared supper.

The duality in my nature manifest early on. I loved Chuck Connors inner strength, steely jaw, and protective care over his adopted son, played by Johnny Crawford. Because, you see, I also adored that boy. Reaching puberty, did I not deface the corral style cedar fence of a nearby neighbor with indelible scratches: “[ my name ] + Johnny Crawford”. Were any such pre-teen to destroy my own property like this today, I’d have likely already taken an entire family to court.

Funny, how our perceptions change over time, informed by experience. The Rifleman, adopting this sweet little Mexican. Now, the metamessage suggests far more than just affection for a child. Perhaps this boy was the strapping rancher’s own, the mother no longer able or even alive to care for him?

What strikes me most is the suggestion of my own father’s stories of his childhood. Also a slight, wiry, brown skinned boy, he had neither father nor mother to speak of, being tossed from foster care to the Massachusetts orphan’s home. How he would have welcomed a single parent “Paw” like Chuck Connors, equally as proud and mutually respectful.

Johnny Crawford grew beyond the old western series, to star in an evangelical film sponsored by the Billy Graham Crusade. I was over the moon that my childhood crush had “found Christ”, and followed a path that would have forgiven me even the devotion of my neighborhood vandalism.

Am enjoying these memories, on a Saturday morning that promises an end to yet another heavy winter. They layer like pastry, one fine strata at a time, sending my thoughts across the vista of a past sown with the richest seeds of gratitude.

littlebarefeetblog.com

The United States of Haiti.

February 20, 2016civic commentary, commentary, Deep Questions, slum culture, social behavior, social commentary, sociologyBernie Sanders, Democratic socialists, Doctors Without Borders, Haiti, HIV/AIDS, Huffington Post, Humanitarians against disease, Jimmy Carter, Phil Donahue, political corruption, power elite, strength in numbers, the 1%, Zika virusruth ann scanzillo

How many of us are old enough to remember the first time anybody heard about the AIDS crisis?

It was Phil Donahue, hosting his pioneering talk show, who broke the story. I was waiting tables in the local Greek dinor, spelled with an “o”, and caught the episode hours before heading to work to serve the 3rd shift bar rush, already all too familiar with the population to whom this revelation would soon become paramount.

The year was, I think, 1981. My elder brother was assistant director at the local diagnostic laboratory. Though I urged him to take note of the Donahue show’s disclosure, he knew nothing, as yet – no official information had come through the “wire” – and, being a scientist, he wasn’t about to take seriously any press release that hadn’t been sanctioned by the hierarchy to which he was beholden.

However, eventually we all knew the truth. Behavior, in American society, would begin its slow, resistant slog through the paradigm shift which ensued. Condoms, so said my oldest male friend, felt like wet socks; this would take some time.

At first, the crisis seemed remote; we neither knew anybody, nor knew of anybody, stricken with AIDS. We wondered; we might have even suspected; but, none of us knew.

Gradually, the epidemic manifested. Sourcing its roots on another continent, we would soon realize that the infection was essentially world wide.

But, far less likely realized by the mainstream, one tiny country would be hardest hit: Haiti. And, what this illustrated would become far more revelatory in its implications than the disease itself.

Haiti was utterly infested with AIDS. And, the reasons were socio-economic; the island nation was a suppressed people, its vast majority of citizens living in abject poverty. And, the reason for this was, while simple, profound: the leadership of this country was among the most corrupt in the world.

Yes; during the 1980s, illiteracy in Haiti was a huge problem. French being the national language, the poor spoke Creole and efforts to coerce them away from their native dialect were allegedly unsuccessful. Communication, therefore, was impossible – but, so was advancement. Politically, this was enabling; pernicious corruption had led to a massive wealth monopoly amongst the power elite, from which nary a vapor would waft in the direction of the enormous, ignorant, remaining population.

Smell familiar?

There are those who call me prone to hyperbole. I’m guilty of seeing potential for the drastic in the most mundane. But, do we not see any writing on the wall?

The longer we allow the gulph to widen between the monopolizing 1% and the body of our own increasingly financially dependent population, the more infested we are likely to become – by despair, resentment, hostility. And, yes; even disease. Only, now, many of us wonder just which puppeteers have the latest virus in their bag of tricks.

The sheer square mileage of our purple mountains and fruited plains could be dwarfed, compressed in a small amount of time by an infectious agent – or, worse – some alleged antidote marketed as a preventive. There are far too many of us still willing to remain impressionable, malleable, and subject, forgetting that there is still strength in numbers. Come. Let us reason, t.o.g.e.t.h.e.r. Instead of rallying behind a single voice promising to protect us from threat, only to hedge its own invested bets, shouldn’t we rather band together as a unified flank, and protect ourselves?

littlebarefeetblog.com