red-winters

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Source: cipolatsa

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i don't know how to feel about the secularization of christmas. it's almost like there's two parallel holidays. the christmas I celebrate, and then the christmas that everyone else celebrates? i don't know. it's odd. it's almost like I'm running straight down the center of two different worlds. I am standing in two rivers, and they interweave, but sometimes there's a space in the middle.

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“Father and child adoring the Madonna and Child” by Charles Bosseron

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https://www.flickr.com/gp/164144231@N05/32sb3zFWL8

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Tumble certainly lives up to his name!

The boys are play wrestling a lot today, and Sundew is respecting any "mrah!" noises Tumbleweed makes when he gets too rough. Very proud.

I'm hoping to have Tumbleweed up here long enough today to get tired and sleep, to see how Sundew reacts to that.

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at a phase in my life where when i get the sense a book is trying to offer me Representation (TM) i hiss and scream and start kicking and ripping bricks out of the wall. this character's Coherent Identity And Articulation Of Their Issues had Better fit in with the rest of the worldbuilding (it won't)

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when i was a high school senior, there was a kid in my grade who wouldn't run the mile. everyone was required to run a timed mile to pass gym, and he wouldn't do it. the thing was, if he didn't pass gym, he wouldn't graduate. it was already spring.

it wasn't like he couldn't run a mile -- he was a football player, athletic. huge popular kid, boisterous, with a warm smile and a swarm of friends, who gave people nicknames. you know the kind of guy. for that matter, one could walk the mile if one wanted, you just had to do four laps at any pace. it didn't matter to him. he didn't say so, but it was a pride thing. it was demeaning. he was right, we all knew it and admired him for it, but like. he wasn't going to graduate over this.

this standoff went on for weeks. the principal was not going to allow it. this kid didn't come from a family where everybody graduated high school, and the principal wasn't going to let this kid be denied a diploma over something this stupid. but he was up against -- if i was informed correctly -- a state law. you had to run the mile to pass gym, and you had to pass gym to graduate.

the principal, who is a man i knew well, and still know, and admire, didn't make an exception for this kid. he also didn't force the kid or threaten him or even try to reason with him and wear him down. instead, he made the following deal.

"you and me," he said, "are going to run the mile together. we're gonna do it after school, so nobody is there but us, and your friends, if you want. and i will wear the stupidest, goofiest, ugliest tracksuit i can find, so nobody will be looking at you, they'll be looking at me. tell your friends to take pictures." and that is what they did. the track suit was cyan and magenta and yellow and purple and our principal looked like a goofy dumbass. the kid graduated a few months later.

i work with kids now and i think about this all the time, and why what the principal did worked. he could have cracked down. he could have said rules are rules. he could have said, ok that's your choice. he could have even had the idea, and dismissed it because of some notion about not undermining his own authority. but he didn't. he identified exactly what the actual problem was -- why won't this kid do this thing he clearly must do? because it hurts his pride. and instead of insisting, as so many adults do, that pride is a luxury that young people neither deserve nor can afford, he said ok. how can i fix that. and by making it seem, in a fun and harmless way, like the kid was humiliating him, he made the difference between the kid having a high school diploma and not. sometimes that's all it takes.

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started this painting of my baby Astrid today 💛

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Audrey Hepburn

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apron.bake

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“100% polyester” you are like a terrorist to me

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a dim and grim fantasy tavern but the drinks are very colourful and fruity with little umbrellas & curly straws

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Crater Lake, Oregon