We Gather Together

Well, we made it through the family Thanksgiving relatively unscathed.  A minor miracle, seeing as how the holiday fell so soon after the election.

You see, my sister and brother-in-law are Wingnuts.

That wasn't always the case.  They've always been Republican, but they used to be the thoughtful, intelligent sort, the ones formally referred to as Rockefeller Republicans, the liberal on social issues, fiscally conservative kind.  Somewhere during the Bush years, probably shortly after 9/11, they took a hard right turn into Crazytown.  That's when I remember the Glenn Beck stickers start showing up on their car.

My parents, by contrast, started out as good solid Midwestern Republicans but over time have shifted to being even more liberal than me and the boyfriend.  I think it was because of Nixon.  I remember a family trip back to the East Coast during the summer of 1973 where my mother insisted we stay at the Watergate hotel and tour all the highlights of the then ongoing Watergate investigation.  My folks even bought me a wanted poster featuring photos of all the Nixon staff.  Good times.  They've been solid Democrats ever since.

But back to Thanksgiving.  Family get-togethers had already grown tense, but the election of Obama sent my sister and brother-in-law clear 'round the bend.  Innocuous small talk would veer violently into talk of Death Panels and Re-education camps and secret U.N. agendas.  My brother-in-law would rail on and on about gun rights and grow enraged when I pointed out the fact he didn't actually own any, you know, guns.  An innocent comment about the weather would launch a full scale attack on "so-called" climate change.  Each holiday seemed to grow increasing worse and we finally reached our nadir a couple of years ago at an Easter Brunch with my sister chasing after me in the parking lot screaming "Socialist!  Socialist!  Socialist!"

So, we, banned any mention of politics from that point on.

The question remained whether the truce would hold, what with the re-election of the Kenyan Anti-colonialist Usurper.

And, for the most part, it did.

My sister briefly went off on an anti union tirade, but her heart didn't really seem to be in it and it fizzled pretty quickly.  I've never quite understood her beef with the unions, especially considering... she's in one.  And not just any union, mind you.  She's a member of the much hated Teacher's Union, scourge of Republicans everywhere.  Thanks to the union, she makes close to six figures and, with tenure, can never be fired.  Without it, she'd be lucky to be making $30K, if she hadn't already been downsized.  I guess cognitive dissonance is just one of those things you learn to live with on the Right.

She gained a little more traction with her main bugaboo.... the "War on Christmas".

As a music teacher, she's on the front lines of the heathen assault to strip the CHRIST out of CHRISTmas.

"They insist on calling it a 'Holiday Concert' or a 'Winter Concert', but I just throw it back in their faces.... it's a 'CHRISTMAS Concert'".

She says parents have complained.

"Mostly it's the Asian or Muslim ones."

Gee, couldn't see that coming.

She's most upset with the kids.

"None of them even know the words to most of the Christmas Carols."  

And really, why would they, being all Buddhist and Muslim and shit?

Evidently the whole thing recently lead to a confrontation with the principal.

"What is he going to do, fire me?  I have tenure."  She said, cluelessly.

At that point, I just walked away.  I find that works best.

Christmas is at their house this year.  Should prove to be a hoot.

Those Who Can't, Teach

Week two of school.

I think we can all agree week one was a disaster, so there's nowhere to go but up.

It wasn't just that it was my first time teaching the class and I was more than a little nervous.  Or that it turned out I wasn't nearly as prepared as I thought I was.  Or the computer and software glitches.  It was also that it was an incredibly hot and humid day and the air conditioning failed.  I was already sweating from the nerves and the lack of AC turned it into a major flop sweat, which may have gone unnoticed if I hadn't been wearing a black shirt.  I looked like a child molester.

The only saving grace was that my students are new.  It was only their second class of their first quarter so they really don't have anything to compare me to.  Yet.  Plus, they seemed a little overwhelmed by the start of school and the computers, so most of the fuck-ups appeared to go over their heads.  So, it will probably be a couple of weeks before they realize what a shitty teacher I am.

Time to up my game.

School Daze

Today is the first day of Summer School.  And I'm terrified.

I'm only teaching one class this summer, a course in computer illustration.  I've never taught it before, but since I consider computer illustration my forté, I was thrilled to be asked.

Specifically the class is an introductory course in the Adobe software "Illustrator" and since I've used this software every day for nearly 20 years, I assumed it would be a snap.  But about two weeks ago something dawned on me...  I've never had any formal training in using it, I'm completely self-taught.

See, here's the thing.  I graduated college before the Dawn of the Computer Age.  I always considered that a blessing since my school days were spent contemplating design theory and creativity and not glued to a monitor trying to learn every new flash-in-the-pan computer program.  It wasn't until the mid-90's that the ad and design industry switched to digital.  I walked into my office one Monday morning to discover my drafting table had been set horizontal and plopped in the center of it was a Mac.  I didn't even know how to turn it on.  Calling the IT department wasn't an option since there wasn't one.  In fact, the term "IT" was still a few years off in the future.

Luckily, all that early software was fairly rudimentary and after about a week of trial and error I finally figured it out well enough to get done what needed to be done.  Every year after came the release of the next, new version, each time with considerably more bells and whistles.  I mastered the functions I needed, but it's safe to say the program does  a hell of a lot more than I'm aware of.  The once elegantly simple interface now looks like the flight deck of a 747.  And I'm expected to teach it.

No problem, I thought, I'll just skim through the text book for the class.  And that's when I learned that this quarter is the first in which the school is being thrown into the deep end of... eLearning.

It sounds creepy and it is.  It's all... V  I  R  T  U  A  L.

There is no text book.

Instead there's a... portal.  An "ePortal".

It's a website where instead of text, there are "webinars".  Hours and hours (and hours) of webinars.  And for the past two weeks I've been slogging through all of them.  And after watching hours and hours (and hours) of instructional video, one thing has become abundantly clear...  I am eFucked.

Class starts at 4:00.  Can't wait.