I realized a couple of days ago that I’d passed the one-year mark of writing this newsletter. I love a good commemoration, so happy anniversary to me! I also love writing this thing, and the only time it doesn’t appear twice weekly is when I become too busy and my brain can’t add another item to the mess of items clunking around in there.
A year ago I made this funny list of things I might write about. I knew one would be education and Indigenous language work, and I knew another would relate to the joys and tribulations of living alone. I also thought I’d profile people, yet I only wrote two of those. I liked working on them but the pressure was more intense than I anticipated. I want this to be a delightful undertaking, so I set those other planned profiles aside for the time being. I also ended up writing about some unexpected topics like gardening, the HOA, and my emotions1. So for this newsletter I picked five of my favorites as links with a little annotation.
One time I had this student teacher who told me what happens at the end of the last Hunger Games book before I got there. You can imagine my reaction. And then he informed me that story spoilers don’t spoil at all; in fact, they enhance readers’ enjoyment of the story, because they add the layer of “how does this story arrive at that place?” I decided he was right. So for these teasers I’m giving you the linked title, followed by some other part of each newsletter, sometimes the last lines and sometimes not.
The White People Do Better Horse Race Your pony is in it!
It’s the truth. It’s not easy to alter our foundational way of being, or to stop wanting what we want. But for fucksake, White people, we have to try.
You know Rob. He’s the guy with all the stories.
There might be more to Rob if I can get him in some back-and-forth? I was borderline disappointed when he went back to his apartment without a hello. Next time though, I’ll try to listen to him if I have a minute, smile at him if it seems appropriate, show interest if there’s not a reason to run off. Because you know…Rob is right: people should do good things for their neighbors, and I could certainly be a better one.
The garden has turned to wildness and nobody cares at all
That high summer garden wouldn’t recognize this early fall place at all, where zucchini leaves sag blackened and soft and tomatoes rot on shaggy bushes. Cornstalks rustle in the cool breezes while their sunflower neighbors feed goldfinches by the dozen. Pumpkins shout from weedy plots like huge orange beacons. Summer’s tended berry patches lie in heaps like compost. Those now-faded signs tilt a little too far for jauntiness and seem to announce that nobody’s home. A sudden dust devil teases a few pieces of straw into a tiny tornado over someone’s sprawling kale plants. The whole place has gone back to wildness and nobody cares at all.
Romanian Dead Lifts and other impossible things
And then I am leaning into the car telling her how my physical therapist wants me to do Romanian dead lifts like every week and I cannot do them and I want to be good at everything I do and my daughter is like whoa Mom you were asleep until 20 seconds ago and what’s this therapy now? And I am now laughing because I’m confessing to her my worst fear: NOT BEING GOOD AT SOMETHING and I think about the tragic underwear drawer and the mess in my car and the fact that I have not shined my sink in literally days! And how ironic it is, that I desperately need order and yet I’m creating more chaos every second. Now she’s bent over the back seat silently laughing and I’m cry-laughing and suddenly I’m actually crying, on my knees on 4th street in front of Bridge Pizza leaning into her car sobbing about the fucking Romanian dead lifts that I cannot do.
Indigenous Education Theory for the non-Indian educator
So I wrote this paper last year for a great class I took with Dr. Jeff Sanders at MSU. I’m off-grid for the coming week and haven’t written anything for a while because I was teaching 3 online classes and … life … but felt like this might be a good time to share parts of the essay. It’s not the whole thing, K? Because nobody needs that much academic language. But I liked writing this paper and if you’re interested in Indigenous education and/or doing education stuff differently, you might find something useful in it.
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And we love reading it -Happy anniversary!