Race Relations,Works in Progress and Teachers with Guns

Once when I was newly assigned to a classroom. the students and I took some time to get to know one another.

There were three races of humans in the room, about equally divided. One student asked, "Is there any kind of people you don't get along with?"

I thought a moment, then said."Well, you know those purple people, the ones with the orange polka dots? I might have trouble with them."

He thought a moment and said, "There aren't any people like that."

We smiled at each other. Our comic timing was perfect.

Both my weird sense of humor and my conscience have recently been at work. If I ever do come upon purple people, with or without polka dots, I mean to make friends. So I've been working them into my creative endeavors.

Now, if you see any purple people here or in my etsy shop, you'll know why.

I really must tell you of my completely negative reaction to the school in Texas getting court approval for teachers to carry.

If I'd ever carried a gun to school, someone would have taken it away from me. Interpret that anyway you like.

I really think Americans must be allowed to arm themselves. It's in the Constitution for a good reason. I do understand the opposite opinion. In the space of two years I had two students who killed people in what were probably accidents. If the guns hadn't been there, it wouldn't have happened. I still think Americans must be allowed to have arms.

However, in a school!? I think, since it's publicized, it might just provoke the crazy into making an incident.

One supposes only the big teachers who know what they're doing would carry guns. I once taught with an ex-policemen who said, "This is the same job, only now I don't carry a gun." I would have trusted him with a gun in school, I think. He seemed sane.

But overall, I thinks it's a disaster waiting to happen.

I once taught with a guy who was absolutely sadistic. The State eventually banned him from coaching, but he was still scary in the classroom. Why was he still there? But he was. With a gun? Actually, he once said, either about me or a school administrator, when he was mad at both of us,"I'm going to kill that woman." And he wasn't even purple. For the record, he was the same race as I. I asked for reassignment to another school the next year. When I mentioned him to a coach at the new school, she said,"Oh, he's possessed!"

Surely such a person would not be allowed to carry a gun to school.

Surely.

Let us pray for one another, and work harder to keep guns out of schools.

Hmm I see just below here a reference to Phil. 4:6.

Works in Progress

Actually, I think the one on top is upside down.

I've done some more work on these, since the photographs.

I think you might be wondering, from my previous post on aceo's, how a blind man can help me do this. Well, here's the story. It got to be very late at night, when I was working on the top one, which may well be upside down. I had a fit of the I CAN'T DECIDES. So I would hand Mr. P a fist full of colored pencils and ask him to pick one. He would. Then I would decide where and how to use it. It's all been altered since then, but that's the story.

Art Cards, Editions, and Originals

Known as aceo's, they are 2 1/2 in. by 3 1/2 in., pretty cheap, and collectible.

Mr. P, blind as a bat, has been helping work on one. I tell you, I have been rummaging through the fabric stash, among other places, to find all the right colors. Somehow, aceo's seem more doable than larger works. The reality, of course, is that they can take as long, and certainly take as much planning and design as a larger work, I think.