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Saturday, March 18, 2017

Processed Public School Children...

 Public School Children are mobbed and bullied.

Processed children...

"Food processing techniques include freezing, canning, baking, drying and pasteurizing."

"Child processing techniques (in Florida) include freezing, canning, baking, drying and pasteurizing."  

Processed children.  Processed public school children.  Processed K-12 darlings.  They're frozen to seats in front of computers.  Their creativity is dried--parched, withered, shriveled, wilted, and (love this one!) wizened--as they tap the buttons of  keyboards yet again for another FSA practice drill. Year after year. By God, another big day (well big two months) of testing is a-comin'! Dried children lack learning "adornment" (see Webster's definition of "dry") as mostly they've done nothing more in their classes but practice to take the FSA.

The state "freeze dries" our children.  That's more efficient.

We bake ("harden by heat") them too. And it doesn't get any hotter for our public school children and our public school teachers, administrators and counselors than the state's punitive consequences of inadequate FSA scores.  

Children are held back in third grade no matter what.  They are forced into intensive reading and math classes, thereby having no electives. Recess is considered too much time to lose to test prep, so there's not even a respite for our seven, eight, nine year old children.

Our high school children don't receive diplomas--after thirteen years of learning--even if they've met all graduation requirements but the test.

Teachers and counselors may lose their jobs.  Teachers because their children's scores don't demonstrate "adequate gains" and counselors...well, because they're paid and judged on their schools' reading scores.  Yepper.  That's right.  Counselors are NOT evaluated on their contribution to a positive school culture, nor on their counseling skills. Their salaries (oh dare I be sarcastic and write "big" salaries?!) are tied to school wide reading scores.  'Nough said.

Administrators won't lose their jobs no matter what because they're friends with district big whigs and mucky-mucks. That's a story for another day.  It's a big story.

All public school children in Florida are pasteurized--exposed to extreme heat (THE TESTING DAY!). Creativity must be destroyed...without appearing to be destroyed.  Children--freeze dried, baked children-- must still look like people.  Test "administrators" must still look like people too.  Neither, however, is allowed to DO ANYTHING but sit, stare and stand (in the case of the test administrator).

Once our pasteurized and processed children are baked, dried and frozen, we can them.  There's the "Going No Where" shelf where we put the "Certificate of Completion" canned children. There's the "Diploma" canned children shelf. Those canned kids passed the tests.

  There's no "Occupations" shelf because those canned children are sitting on the "Certificate of Completion" shelf and didn't get a diploma. 

__________________________________________________

From Webster's Dictionary:

Freeze:
  1. 1
    (of a liquid) be turned into ice or another solid as a result of extreme cold.

  2. 2
    store (something) at a very low temperature in order to preserve it.


    Dry:
    1. 1
      free from moisture or liquid; not wet or moist.
      synonyms:parcheddried, withered, shriveled, wilted, wizenedMore
    2. 2
      bare or lacking adornment.
      "the dry facts"

      Bake:

      to harden by heat:


      Canned:
        lacking originality or individuality as if mass-produced

      Pasteurize:  
      to expose (a food, as milk, cheese, yogurt, beer, or wine) to an elevated temperature for a period of time sufficient to destroy certain microorganisms, as those that can produce disease or cause spoilage or undesirable fermentation of food, without radically altering taste or quality.
 
10:07 am edt          Comments

Thursday, March 2, 2017

More PTSD Contemplations....

 
 
 Prozac and metoprolol infused, happy and relaxed me doesn't want to revisit (ever!) the "me" of eight months ago.  The "me" of FEAR!  Semi-sane me in horror watched "lost her sanity" me enter the same crazy, sleepless abyss of 32 years ago. It's like standing at the lip of my own personal--as my mother would say--hell hole.  I didn't want to enter in but I'd unwittingly gotten too close to my hell hole's edge.  I'd thought that freaking sleepless nutsy world was only an "international stewardess thang." As a flight attendant, I'd been to that awful place three times before.  Stood at that grotesque sharp edged chasm. Had determined I'd never enter again. I'd never get close again in spite of all the damn languages I spoke!  "I'll stick to my Caracas and Panama and Guatemala; El Salvador and domestic trips, thank you!  I'll fly me some turn arounds to San Juan.  I like those.  Having Monday through Friday off and working Saturdays and Sundays suits me just fine!  

Or maybe it's not a hell hole; maybe it's the "Sleepless-Inn."  Rap, rap, rap. "Let me in!  I want to suffer.  Isn't this the "You'll-never-sleep-again-without-a sleeping-pill-and-lots-of them" amenities filled hotel?"

 Doesn't my heart leap and pound in dread as I check in to whatever hotel in whatever international time zones away city? The wait in customs is long. The bus ride from the airport to the hotel is longer. My make up is grody. I've been awake for more than 24 hours now. I got those former eye liner wads of black goo caked in my eyes' corners--wouldn't it have been better to just start with no makeup?  Just a little cream? Oh no, you could not possibly show up for the flight briefing without "your make up" so just pick out the black eyeliner globs and shaddup about it already!

Your feet ache in your concourse heels--you've not yet fallen prey to the "old-lady-stewardess-flats-no-matter-what" syndrome. It's been a long night, Kim.  You ask yourself why the hell you took the Portuguese and French language qualifying tests.  You were HAPPY in Spanish speaking Caracas!  IT WAS THE SAME TIME ZONE! You danced a little salsa  and went to bed there.  What the hell are are doing back in Brazil?! Wathcha flyin' all night for?  Commuting to Atlanta!? Your friggin' ego gotcha, did it?  When you started flying in 1979, you hated being up all night.  You weren't made for that girl!  Oh, yes, you were made to "hablar, "parler" and "falar" but NOT ALL NIGHT TRAVERSING THREE TIME ZONES! 

You've got your hotel key in hand. It's been a long night of dinner and breakfast services.  Walk throughs with trays of water and juice.  Counting liquor and duty free money.  Preparing for customs.  Those early days of flying were the days of cigarettes--as in offering small packs to first class passengers and in selling them from the 747 economy galley. As in counting--and recounting--every cigarette for customs in London. As in counting again, as we'd all heard the stories of impounded planes in LHR. Flight attendants would block the passengers with the duty free carts and sell! Sell! Sell!  Scarves and watches; booze and cartons of cigarettes.  

What a weird world it is flying and serving all night to God only knows where.  Rio and London.  Paris.  Tokyo.  Ah!  Madrid!  I'd not yet discovered Ambien or Klonopin, and so I was at my circadian rhythm's mercy. And my circadian rhythm was having NONE of this "stay-up-all-night-nonense!"  "If you're not going to sleep when it's friggin' bedtime, then SCREW popping that pretty young head--eye globs be damned!-- on that pretty Prague pillow at 1000AM their time! Ain't happenin', girlfriend!

As a lead international flight attendant, I'd cross too many time zones.  Once in London, then, years later in Rio de Janeiro and finally in Zurich, I just could not sleep.  Baby, I suffered.  Crazy shit.  Night after night of no sleep. Watched my body jump as my blood coursed through it at a stallion's clip. All day long dreading that night.  


Have I clearly painted my abyss?  My darkness? Can you feel the dread? 

This memoir is me struggling--again--to climb out.

 
 
8:07 pm est          Comments


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