Saturday Poetry: Across The Street the Unemployment Office is Closing

First she said:

We're short-staffed.

Business hours

are now from 8 to 3 p.m.

Come and get your money.  Then

it was:

This office will be closed.

At the Grand Central for the jobless

One tight-lipped unemployed smoker

joins the line.

How will Miss Unemployment Counselor explain?

What kind of job can there possibly be

for someone whose specialty

was scribbling denunciations on an NCR form

as the true believers, the sweet deceivers,

the hourly slaves and surplus MBA's

appeased her with assurances that they

had looked for work.

Will she, that scorn-filled bureaucrat,

take a number, after having arrived at 8?

Be made to watch the video, can she sit and wait

long enough to find out how to

phone in for the check, regular but small?

Will she curse, like the rest of us did

when it finally arrives:  Is that it?

Is this all?

This I Know About Getting Old

You gather around the radio on Saturday night to listen to "Prairie Home Companion".
And dress for it.

Everyone you meet you've met before.

The list of food and beverages you can ingest without doing serious harm to your body and mind is getting smaller and blander.

Never shocked, seldom surprised when you learn about the death of contemporaries.

 Almost every fantasy is nipped in the bud with the admonition, "That ship has sailed."

I've never been ashamed of my age.  Of course when I was a little girl I wanted to be a big girl; and when I was a teenager I wished I was old enough for some of the men who were buying me drinks, but ask me how old I am and I'll tell you the age I will be once I've reached my birthday milestone for that calendar year.

Except for now having sat in class for 2 semesters with 19, 20, 25 year olds.  Once again for the first time I'm in an environment where I'm simultaneously conspicuous and resoundingly invisible as an almost 60 year African-American woman taking a Calculus class.  I can see it from their POV:  She's almost dead; what's she doing here?  In some ways it's the Same 'Ol Same 'Ol -- girls good in math, African-Americans good in math, now it's competitive old hags doing math -- cognitive dissonance personified.

So, when one of my fellow students and I were chatting before class one day comparing notes about when either of us will be done I pulled my punches when I calculated out loud that I'd be about (cough) sixty-blah blah blah by the time I got my degree.  What a coward, I thought instantly.  All because I overheard a 19 year old ask a guy with a monk's tonsure how old he was and he said 36 and she gasped.  (You would have thought he farted in the elevator.)  I said to myself, they will not turn around and ask me.  They will not dare.  And they didn't.  Not to protect my sensibilities, mind you, but because even for the Facebook generation it would be TMI to know that that were taking a class with a 57 years old.  I mean that's like going bar hopping with your grandma.  Ewwwwwwwwwwww ...  One more class and I get to play with kids more my own age.  Or so I've been led to believe.

Happy Mother's Day: Femi Agana

To my friend and admiree, Femi Agana.  Mother of 3 wonderful children.  Artist.  New Year's Day swimmer.  Carpenter and shop steward.  Feminist.  Videographer.  Clothing designer.  Volunteer aid worker.  And godknows what else.  My hat's off to you!

Aah Hell, What's This?

I leave Dispatches for a month (more on that later) and once again they got to change up the look, and the how of navigating the site.  Can't You People leave things alone?  Have you never heard, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it?"  Haven't you got something else to do, and if not, d'ya mind working part-time and stop causing trouble for middle-aged control freaks?

My goodness it's been a hard couple of months, the great weather notwithstanding.  Calc I was bad enough; I held on by the hairs of my chinny-chin chin.  But, Calc II?  Almost from the beginning almost everything from Areas of Planar Regions to Dot Products and Cross Products has been like traveling in a foreign country without a phrase book.  The final was Thursday and the 8 days before that were All Calculus, All the Time (or as much time as I could sequester and/or steal) in order to swiftly access from memory much of what I learned since January.  Afterwards, on Thursday night I was giddy, and by Friday I was unbearably punny.  (It helps to have a 6 year old around who doesn't wince.  Much.)  Singing, dancing, acting like someone who had just had her sentence commuted.

I said to The Husband, "I'm free!!!  I'm free!"  He looked at me ruefully; he can barely tolerate the thought that I will be more cranky, more withdrawn, all the way through a master's.  (He's not down with me tying up my last days and time on dedicated study of anything but his wonderfulness.)

No matter.  It was great and now I have the summer to be.  Which includes tending to this blog and still trying to figure out how to allow comments.  (How much you wanna bet they didn't fix that?)  Gardening.  Exercising.  Playing, writing, arting.  I'll be back often.