Category Archives: Uncategorized

December 18, 2012

A Visit from St. Nicholas

By Joe

A Visit from St. Nicholas
Clement Clark Moore
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house  
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;  
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,  
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;  
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;  
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,  
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,  
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,  
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,  
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.  
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow  
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,  
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,  
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,  
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.  
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,  
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!  
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!  
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!  
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”  
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;  
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,  
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St. Nicholas too.  
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof  
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,  
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.  
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,  
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;  
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.  
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!  
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!  
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow  
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,  
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;  
He had a broad face and a little round belly,  
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.  
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;  
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,  
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;  
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,  
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,  
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;  
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,  
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle,  
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”
It’s a week early, but I have something else planned for next Tuesday’s poem; however, this poem will always bring back fond childhood memories and gets me in the mood for Christmas.

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December 17, 2012

Shirts and Skins by Jeffrey Luscombe

By Joe
Though I’ve had Jeffrey Luscombe’s debut novel, Shirts and Skins, for several months I have only recently had the time to finish reading it.  It seemed that each time I picked up the book something would cause me to have to put it down again, but recently with a six hour bus drive for a field trip and my recent cold which has kept me in the bed, I was finally able to finish it. And with all good reads, I wish I hadn’t, because I simply want more.

A remarkable debut novel from Jeffrey Luscombe, Shirts and Skins is a compelling series of linked stories of a young man’s coming-out, coming-of-age, and coming-to-terms with his family and fate.


Josh Moore lives with his family on the ‘wrong side’ of Hamilton, a gritty industrial city in southwestern Ontario. As a young boy, Josh plots an escape for a better life far from the steel mills that lined the bay. But fate has other plans and Josh discovers his adult life in Toronto is just as fraught with as many insecurities and missteps as his youth and he soon learns that no matter how far away he might run, he will never be able to leave his hometown behind.

Each time I picked up the book to read, I became engrossed in the life of the main protagonist Joshua Moore.  Each time Josh came close to finding his true self in this novel, my heart would break a little when when his true self found a new hiding place.

Some of us come to find our true selves quickly in life, while others of us take years struggling to find who we really are, if we ever do.  In the snippets of the seminal points in Josh’s life you will find yourself.  Did you make the same decisions as Josh or did you choose a different adventure?

Michael Rowe, author of Enter, Night and Other Men’s Sons wrote that “Shirts and Skins is a novel that will speak to anyone who has ever felt the inextricable bonds of the past, or felt the long shadow of family and home places as they strive towards the light of wholeness of identity and self-ownership. A first novel deeply felt and skillfully told, by a writer with insight, compassion, and talent to burn.”

Jeffrey Luscombe was born in Hamilton, Ontario Canada. He holds a BA and MA in English from the University of Toronto. He attended The Humber College School for Writers where he was mentored by writers Nino Ricci and Lauren B. Davis. He has had fiction published in Chelsea Station, Tupperware Sandpiper, Zeugma Literary Journal, and filling Station Magazine. In 2010 he was shortlisted for the Prism International Fiction Prize. He was a contributor to the anthology Truth or Dare (Slash Books Inc. 2011). He lives in Toronto with his husband Sean. Shirts and Skins is his first novel. 

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December 15, 2012

Moment of Zen: Bed Rest

By Joe
Though not 100 percent better, I think I have finally beaten the comings and goings of the fever.  I’m still terribly congested, but that too is getting better as I am not coughing nearly as much.  Hopefully, bed rest the rest of the weekend will get me better by Monday.

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December 14, 2012

Still Sick

By Joe

Common Cold
Ogden Nash
Go hang yourself, you old M.D.!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
I’m not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.
By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever’s hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!
Give ear, you scientific fossil!
Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;
The Cold of which researchers dream,
The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.
This honored system humbly holds
The Super-cold to end all colds;
The Cold Crusading for Democracy;
The Führer of the Streptococcracy.
Bacilli swarm within my portals
Such as were ne’er conceived by mortals,
But bred by scientists wise and hoary
In some Olympic laboratory;
Bacteria as large as mice,
With feet of fire and heads of ice
Who never interrupt for slumber
Their stamping elephantine rumba.
A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!
Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;
Don Juan was a budding gallant,
And Shakespeare’s plays show signs of talent;
The Arctic winter is fairly coolish,
And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.
Oh what a derision history holds
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!
Mr. Nash describes very well how I feel right now. This stanza is the best description:
By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever’s hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!
I’m staying at home today and in bed.  There was no way I could make it to,school today.  I knew that when I left early yesterday.  Though I have not had a flu shot, I do not believe this is the flu.

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December 13, 2012

Sick

By Joe
I feel like crap.  I have what seems to be a bad head cold, probably due to the drastic changes in temperature here the last few day. I have a low grade fever, which just makes me feel worse. Hopefully I will get better soon.

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December 12, 2012

LGBT Teens Struggle In Rural Areas

By Joe

There are certain times when people conduct research, and you just have to think: was this really necessary? didn’t we know this already? this is the case with a new report from GLSEN.  Apparently, they have found that LGBT students living in rural areas are considerably more likely to feel unsafe in their respective academic environments than their urban counterparts, according to this new report.

Produced by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), “Strengths and Silences: The Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Students in Rural and Small Town Schools” documents the experiences of more than 2,300 LGBT students attending schools in rural U.S. regions, using data collected from the 2011 National School Climate Survey.

The report states that only 13 percent of rural LGBT students reported that school personnel always intervened or most of the time when they heard anti-gay remarks. A mere 27 percent of students reported having access to a gay-straight alliance at school, compared to 53 percent of urban students. According to the report (as reported in the Huffington Post), “Perhaps not surprising but nonetheless troubling, rural LGBT students who experienced high levels of victimization were less likely to plan to attend college than those who who experienced less.”  I’m not so sure that I can agree with this last bit of data, at least not from my personal experience.  LGBT youth, whom I know, are more likely to attend college and be more successful than their heterosexual counterparts.  Most LGBT youth perceive it as their way out of the rural area where they grew up. I know I did, and so have a fair number of my students.  Some, like myself, end up back in a rural setting, but we do so for a variety of reasons, one of which is to make it better for LGBT youth of today.

Calling the study “the first in-depth look” at the challenges faced by LGBT teens in rural areas, GLSEN Executive Director Dr. Eliza Byard said in an email statement, “These students are frequently the most isolated — both physically and in terms of access to critical resources and support — and our findings require us to both honor their resilience and respond to their needs.” I don’t doubt that rural LGBT youths are more troubled, largely because of the Christian fundamentalist and conservative attitudes that are so pervasive in rural America.  However, I think it often is a catalyst for them to strive to do better things.  I hope that one day it will be easier for LGBT youths thought the world, but it will take time and some hard work to change attitudes.

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December 11, 2012

Karma

By Joe

Karma

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Christmas was in the air and all was well
With him, but for a few confusing flaws
In divers of God’s images. Because
A friend of his would neither buy nor sell,
Was he to answer for the axe that fell?
He pondered; and the reason for it was,
Partly, a slowly freezing Santa Claus
Upon the corner, with his beard and bell.

Acknowledging an improvident surprise,
He magnified a fancy that he wished
The friend whom he had wrecked were here again.
Not sure of that, he found a compromise;
And from the fulness of his heart he fished
A dime for Jesus who had died for men.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

On December 22, 1869, Edwin Arlington Robinson was born in Head Tide, Maine (the same year as W. B. Yeats). His family moved to Gardiner, Maine, in 1870, which renamed “Tilbury Town,” became the backdrop for many of Robinson’s poems. Robinson described his childhood as stark and unhappy; he once wrote in a letter to Amy Lowell that he remembered wondering why he had been born at the age of six. After high school, Robinson spent two years studying at Harvard University as a special student and his first poems were published in the Harvard Advocate.
Robinson privately printed and released his first volume of poetry, The Torrent and the Night Before, in 1896 at his own expense; this collection was extensively revised and published in 1897 as The Children of the Night. Unable to make a living by writing, he got a job as an inspector for the New York City subway system. In 1902 he published Captain Craig and Other Poems. This work received little attention until President Theodore Roosevelt wrote a magazine article praising it and Robinson. Roosevelt also offered Robinson a sinecure in a U.S. Customs House, a job he held from 1905 to 1910. Robinson dedicated his next work, The Town Down the River (1910), to Roosevelt.
Robinson’s first major success was The Man Against the Sky (1916). He also composed a trilogy based on Arthurian legends: Merlin (1917),Lancelot (1920), and Tristram (1927), which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1928. Robinson was also awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his Collected Poems (1921) in 1922 and The Man Who Died Twice (1924) in 1925. For the last twenty-five years of his life, Robinson spent his summers at the MacDowell Colony of artists and musicians in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Robinson never married and led a notoriously solitary lifestyle. He died in New York City on April 6, 1935.

Sent from my iPad

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December 10, 2012

So True…

By Joe

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December 8, 2012

Moment of Zen: Resting

By Joe

I apologize for not posting yesterday. I had to be at school at 5:30 am, to get kids on a bus by 6am for a field trip to Atlanta. Once we got back, we had dress rehearsal for the play that we are premiering tonight (and I am directing). So after leaving home yesterday at 4:45 am, I got back home after 9 pm and went to bed. I have had a whirlwind schedule all week. This morning, I am getting a little rest before our production tonight.

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December 6, 2012

Josh Pacheco

By Joe
Josh Pacheco was a junior at Linden High School in Fenton, Mich., where he loved theater, his Advanced Placement history class, and his friends and family, his mother Lynette Capehart told Michigan Live. But the “sensitive” teen was also the target of relentless antigay bullying, which his parents believe led the 17-year-old to commit suicide on November 27.

Pacheco came out as gay to his mother just two months before he died, Capehart told MLive. Capehart and her husband, Pacheco’s stepfather, didn’t know the extent to which their son was bullied, being shoved into lockers and harassed both in and outside of school. Their first indication was when Pacheco returned from a homecoming dance on October 6 in tears, but wouldn’t elaborate on why he was upset.

“He was having problems with bullying,” Capehart said. “He didn’t really want to tell us very much. It was very disheartening to me.”

MLive reports that Pacheco questioned his life and his future in conversations to his siblings, which prompted his mother to make him an appointment with a counselor. But Pacheco never made it to the counseling appointment, posting on Facebook near lunchtime on November 26, a quote from J.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins: “I regret to announce that this is the end. I’m going now, I bid you all a very fond farewell. Goodbye.”

When a neighbor checked in on Pacheco at his stepfather’s urging, the neighbor found the teenager unresponsive in his truck, which had been running inside a closed garage. Pacheco left a note in the truck which said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be strong enough.”

Capehart says that since her son’s death, students and teachers have approached her, telling her they knew that Pacheco was being bullied. She told MLive she was upset that school officials never notified the family about the problems. 

“We weren’t aware of any specifics,” Superintendent Ed Koledo toldMLive. “There’s been a lot of stories that have turned up over the weekend that we are looking into. We are trying to put new programs into place, so [students] feel more comfortable [talking to administrators.]”

In response to Pacheco’s death, school officials accelerated plans for an antibullying hotline called the Eagle Hotline.

These stories always make my heart hurt.  I wish that I could tell every young gay man and woman that it is okay.  Suicide is never the answer.  I have always had the firm belief that the bullies of this world will meet their punishment, if not on this life, then in the next.  Never, ever, give them the satisfaction. If you have a problem with bullying, TALK TO SOMEONE YOU TRUST!  There are teachers who will help, find that teacher, and a good teacher will fight for you like no one else has ever fought for you.  If you are a young LGBT person struggling with depression, isolation, or suicidal thoughts and feel that you can’t talk to a teacher, your parents, or someone in authority, then you can call the Trevor Lifeline and speak confidentially with a trained counselor 24 hours a day at 866-488-7386. Please just get help, your life is worth so much. You are the generation that will eventually see more equality for LGBT people than the world has ever known.  Just live to see it. PLEASE!!!

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