The Jaw

What had I just done?  It was as if I was awakening from a bad dream, but the bad dream was still there, looking at me in what seemed to be stunned silence.  I was still more stunned.

-I guess you really were mad.

As the look on his face began to change, the full implications of what I’d just done began to dawn on me.  My stomach churned with the knowledge that there would be hell to pay for that punch, even if he had been teaching me to throw them, just like that.  Telling me how soft I was, how I needed to learn to fight, not let the kids at school walk all over me.

He’d taught me to block, and to throw a punch, demanding that I learn to be harsh, not to care if I knocked someone down, not to care how that person might get hurt.

Then, after a phone call from a boy, he’d demanded to know who it was, what the boy had wanted.  When I told him that I’d had to push off the boy’s attempt to kiss me, he’d asked me something, moving closer.  My grandmother was out of the house, out shopping.  I felt that warning pain in my gut, and I had tried to move away.  This man, my step grandfather, was my guardian, but not my kin, not safe.  I wasn’t fast enough.

He put out a hand, then the other, pulled me toward him, pressing his lips against mine.  I had twisted and blocked, just like he’d taught me, then backed away, shaking in my disgust, and he had laughed, saying I couldn’t be angry.  Just like my mother had laughed, after she’d told me not to tell, so long ago.  Then, it came out of no where.

He had been teaching me, and taunting me.

-Hit harder, don’t be such a sissy.

Teaching me to throw a decent punch, then a block, and then another punch.  He’d taught me how to throw a good punch, for a girl.  A hard punch, alright.

But at his shoulder, not his jaw.

–

Action Items:  

1.) How can we protect kids from adults, especially those in their own families?

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  &  for heavens sake: please #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19 (or better yet, for good!)!:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via GoodReads.

Vote, Teach and Learn (PDF Lesson Plans offline)

and

my Babylon 5 review posts, if you like Science Fiction,

and

a proposed Vision on Wondering Wednesdays: for a kinder world…

   

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil

our year 2021 CE =  12021 HE

(Lesson plans:  Day 1 … Day 5)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free copies at: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please leave a review, if you can, on the GoodReads page.

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Dr. G. Round Robin: 5 Reasons Critical Media Literacy is Important in the 21st Century — Educating for Future Democracy Collaborative

Fourteen years ago, Kellner and Share (2007) offered this definition of critical media literacy (CML): Critical media literacy is an educational response that expands the notion of literacy to include different forms of mass communication, popular culture, and new technologies. It deepens the potential of literacy education to critically analyze relationships between media and audiences, […]

5 Reasons Critical Media Literacy is Important in the 21st Century — Educating for Future Democracy Collaborative

Punishment

    This short is based on a visual, sort of a daydream, that has been with me since I was about 12 years old:

–

      I caught up with him between the outer fence and the inner fence, just as he started to climb.  He turned on me, not a greasy black hair of his head out of place.  Mine was still a little slicked back, but I could feel that cow lick flopping around.  His smile told me he could see it, too, and was just about to make another smart ass joke.   That’s ok, I’ll have my knife in your gut before you open your mouth.  Let’s see what you have to say, then, sucker.    I flipped open my switch blade right while he was opening his, but I was faster.

I stuck him in the ribs just as he was starting his lunge.  He really must have thought he was going to feint and duck me.  Then his foot had slipped on a rock, and left him open.  That look of surprise on his face was priceless.

My own little bit of luck didn’t last too long, though.  I felt the bite of his blade stabbing up through the gap in my leather jacket, and I knew then that I had fucked up, too.  He’d caught me with his upper cut, just as he was starting to pass out.  The light was already going out of his eyes, but that wet warm feeling spreading faster than the pain in my chest told me that I’d not be too far behind him.  Usually they say that after a knife fight, one goes to the hospital and one goes to the morgue, but it looked like it would be both of us on the slab, this time.

I fell down right where he did, looking straight into his still open but lifeless eyes, and I knew then that I had just made the biggest mistake of my life.  A mistake I was bound to pay for, and pretty damned soon.

They  say that some people believe we come back in the next life as punishment for things we did back in this life.  I tried to pray for forgiveness, but my last thoughts were stuck on that next lifetime:

With my luck, I’ll probably be reborn as a girl.

Or even worse … a colored girl.

–

Action Items:  

1.) How have you imagined a past or future lifetime, if ever?

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  &  for heavens sake: please #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19 (or better yet, for good!)!:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via GoodReads.

Vote, Teach and Learn (PDF Lesson Plans offline)

and

my Babylon 5 review posts, if you like Science Fiction,

and

a proposed Vision on Wondering Wednesdays: for a kinder world…

   

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil

our year 2021 CE =  12021 HE

(Lesson plans:  Day 1 … Day 5)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free copies at: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please leave a review, if you can, on the GoodReads page.

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Feast of Benjamin Tucker Tanner (December 20) — SUNDRY THOUGHTS

(I’ll be mostly offline for about a week, or so, but I thank Neatnik for this key person from Washington, DC history. -Shira)

Above:  Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner Image in the Public Domain +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ BENJAMIN TUCKER TANNER (DECEMBER 25, 1835-JANUARY 14, 1923) African Methodist Episcopal Bishop and Renewer of Society Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner comes to this, A Great Cloud of Witnesses:  An Ecumenical Calendar of Saints’ Days and Holy Days, via G. Scott Cady and Christopher L. […]

Feast of Benjamin Tucker Tanner (December 20) — SUNDRY THOUGHTS

Bad Fairy, Good Fairy?

This is not working as I’d hoped, but does explain why we need more visions of a kinder world:

“

-May the pain you cause my fe rebound thrice or more unto thee, and may you understand why, just before you die.

A malicious laughter tinkled across the canyon, startling Ametis out of a focus that suddenly became embarrasing.  Wheeling around with a sharp curve of a wing, the source of the cackle now revealed itself.  Perhaps taking the form of a peregrine falcon, rather than a starling, would be a good idea right now?  A short pip called the other starlings into formation around Ametis, who was grateful that they had accepted the call of a non-physical.  Ametis, armed with support, heard the laughter became a cough.

-Ahem.  Calling down mortal curses now, are we, good little fairy?

-Protecting my human, you stain on our kind.  And do not refer to me with that term, or I may have to forget myself.

A swirl of dust on the canyon floor began to kick up, just at the source of the sound below.  The air was a better place to call upon Fate, but it was not as safe as being grounded.

-I am no stain, you hypocrite.  I merely encourage the expression of their instincts.

-Encourage the inflicting of pain, you mean.

-That is merely a side effect, and even a beneficial one, over time.  Where would these humans be, without their motivation?

-Not killing each other, for starters, perhaps?  Besides, you have no interest in their well-being, only in watching them suffer.

-Suffer, not suffer, there is no difference.  They will all suffer at some time, and they will all die, having suffered, in any case.  Nothing changes them.

The dust devil on the canyon below became a sand storm, but then an image arose, painted in the ether around Ametis.  Her fe was moving into this plane, again.  The human paid by her fe’s cord-carrier had again put the fe into that place where she was afraid.  If Ametis had had a physical body, that human would have paid dearly, but as it was, all Ametis could do was feel her fe’s fear, pain, and shame.  Feel what her fe was feeling, and promise that this other human, older, stronger, and less fragile, but still mortal, would one day pay for what he was doing to her fe, a mere child of 6.

The sand storm in the canyon below closed in on a small cave.

On that day, the pain will be one, and its name will be one.  And none shall mourn them.  This human, and those who encouraged his evil acts, will understand, and they will regret.

The sand storm finally engulfed the cave, sweeping away all within it.

-Ok, I apologize!  You are…

All of them will regret.  Starting with this one.       “

 

Action Items:  

1.) Search for two different sources to learn about your local foster system’s funding,

2.) Please tell us where your information comes from, and how you know that the sources you found are reliable,

3.) Write a book, story, blog post or tweet that uses your findings, and then, please tell us about it! If you write a book, once it is published please consider donating a copy to your local public library.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  &  for heavens sake: please #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19 (or even for good!)!:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:  ,

Vote, Teach and Learn (PDF Lesson Plans Offline)

and

my Babylon 5 review posts, if you like Science Fiction,

and

a proposed Vision on Wondering Wednesdays: for a kinder world…

   

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil

our year 2021 CE =  12021 HE

(Day 1 … Day 5)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free copies at: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please leave a review, if you can, on the GoodReads page.

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Any Landing You Can Walk Away From…

Ok, P. this one’s for you (I hope it’s ok…), and T., too:

“

            “Do you want to fly today, or not?”

Since he was putting it that way, what could I say?  He did know this plane better than I did, having flown it twice a day all week, and yes, he was the one with over 1000 hours of flight time.  So, who was I to quote a memorized rule book at him, a decorated combat pilot deigning to teach a snot-nosed teenager how to fly?  And for free, no less.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Then let’s go.”

I throttled up, taking over officially as Pilot In Command with the ritual nod to my instructor, and announcing my take off to the open air field, even though no one else was in the pattern.  My fellow students were standing back by the open office door, already pointing and starting to make their critiques, no doubt waiting for my first landing of our touch and go sequence to laugh, as usual.  For the only girl in the advanced group, having passed my FAA written didn’t mean I was lucky to get to fly the 172, and didn’t mean they respected my ability to memorize the manuals, or to tutor ground school.  It meant that the guys in the 150s and the 152 got to ask why I could be so smart, and not land the damned plane after 9 hours of flight time.  So, here we went, again.

“Turning downwind, I have my intended point of touchdown.”

A taciturn nod of the head in that hot and noisy cabin was more than enough to see that the confidence in my landing ability was no better up here than it was down there.  Skidding my turn, yet again, into final approach, I hoped I was judging the distance right.  Flaring at 5 feet was no easy feat when the altimeter is useless from the time you think you’re about to land on the roof of the hangar.  Memorizing two landings manuals and endless discussions of what the sight picture should look like by that point had not helped much, either.  This time I just crabbed into the wind and hoped that the guy standing on the taxiway was close enough to be a good guideline.  Better to flare a bit too close, as long as I got to full stall, than risk bouncing, again.  I’d learned that my own eyes were simply not trustworthy, and so I had to rely on that famous photographic memory from the last time I got yelled at for flaring too high.  Since it always looked like we were about to dig a big hole in the ground, I figured someone would yell at me if I waited too long.

“Take off again.”

Calling in our 4th touch and go, I hoped no one else was waiting for lunch while I logged an extra few minutes of flying time.  The embarrassment of me not soloing would be too much to bear for those who’d put me in this advanced group, so I sent a prayer that my next landing would be a perfect one.  As I rotated and looked ahead toward our emergency landing point, I noticed that things were finally nice and peaceful.  We were only about 300 feet off of the ground, and it was nice and quiet.  Then it hit me.

It was quiet because the engine had died.

I looked down and decided that we couldn’t possibly land, with the little bit of runway remaining below us, but we didn’t have enough altitude to clear those trees, let alone make it to our emergency landing spot.  Just as I was deciding that it was time to call in a Mayday and say my last prayers, the normally slow moving man to my right shot a glance to either side, then shoved the yoke as far forward as it would go.  While my stomach protested as our seat belts held our heads on, I added my weight to his, pushing our 172 back down to the runway, and wondering just how many inches we would have, if we could flare in time.  He waited longer than I’d imagined possible, and then yanked the yoke back all the way to our seats.  Surprised to see our 172 actually responding to controls, I was shocked when we slammed into the ground, and merely rolled as if landing hot.  Evidently, our Cessna did not understand that we were not meant to be back on the runway yet, and obligingly landed just where it was told.  But it did not stop when we told it to.  Two sets of feet pressing desperately against separate brake pedals did nothing to slow our approach toward the large brier patch off the end of the runway.  We kept pressing, slowing down, and then as if tired of all the exertion, the brakes simply gave out.  As we rolled freely forward, feeling the front gear banging into every bush and stump, I called in a “Pan” to the office, letting everyone know that we’d made it to the ground safely, and expected to be able to walk away from this landing, even if our only 172 might need a tow.

“What happened?  Didn’t you do a run-up?”

“I did, but he said to fly anyway.”

“What?”

“I got a 200 rpm drop on the left magneto, and a 300 rpm drop on the right, but with both mags it ran fine, and he said that it was just like that, and told me to take off!”

“You idiot, girl, you know you should have walked away!”

“But he was yelling at me!”

“Yeah, well how’s that crash landing working out for you?”

This flight scholarship might just not be worth all that, after all, huh?”

 

Action Items:  

1.) Search for two different sources to learn about your state public health care system’s funding,

2.) Please tell us where your information comes from, and how you know that the sources you found are reliable,

3.) Write a book, story, blog post or tweet that uses your findings, and then, please tell us about it! If you write a book, once it is published please consider donating a copy to your local public library.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  &  for heavens sake: please #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19 (or even for good!)!:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:  ,

Vote, Teach and Learn (PDF Lesson Plans Offline)

and

my Babylon 5 review posts, if you like Science Fiction,

and

a proposed Vision on Wondering Wednesdays: for a kinder world…

   

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil

our year 2021 CE =  12021 HE

(Day 1 … Day 5)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free copies at: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please leave a review, if you can, on the GoodReads page.

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Floating

This is what happens when I allow myself to take a break from the work of writing lesson plans, episode reviews, and chapters of a vision of a kinder world:

“

         I was floating on the ceiling, again.  I didn’t know how, but I felt sure that this was not the first time I’d been up, above, before.  In the quiet, in the calm.  The racket of shouting was gone, and so was the smell of anger, and fear.

Back up against the corner of that doorway, I’d seen the hand that reached down for me, the one that had hauled me up the last two steps as I had wearily climbed the stair case, wondering what I had done, or more likely, my step-sib had done, to provoke this latest round of rage.  I had realized that somehow, in some unthinking way, my question had managed to escape my guard, sliding through my teeth like the rattling of the wind in the windows, like the rattling of my jaw now, as it took yet another blow.  That weariness merely grew heavier.  Finally, I thought, finally, maybe I will be able to rest.  If Dad takes me to the hospital, like he said he would if this happened, if I was in a bloody mess, maybe I could just stay there, and rest.

Then, I saw the railing.  I noticed it because I knew that I had never seen it from quite that angle before.  We were studying angles in geometry, and I’d started to enjoy it, when I could get into the library, alone, unbothered by anyone else.  The pictures stuck with me, those beautiful lines, joined together, at different angles.  Not like this one, where the wood had long since lost its polish, and it wasn’t even quite joined at the right angle to fit the walk around the hallway.  But it was quiet, up here.  No yelling, no feeling every slap to my face, the hard wood of the door jamb pressing into my back.  No smell of hatred in front of me, and smoke from the other room.  It was peaceful, up here.  Nothing to feel, nothing to see, but the back of a head, and my head, moving back and forth in that odd way, giving with each slap of that large hand, while the other held my body up against the doorway.  None of that seemed real, below, as I floated up above it all.

“…pitch you down the stairs.”

Pitch?  What does that mean?  Throw, right?  Down the stairs.  Wait, what stairs?  I looked, really looked, as if opening my eyes for the first time in weeks, and then I got it.

The vice grip that was holding me up by the back of my neck, even though I was down on my knees, or was it one knee, I couldn’t tell, from the pressure on my back, pushed my head down.  In sudden and live color, there was the carpet, of the landing below.  Not the hall, not the railing, a floor, way below.  The landing of the stairs, with every single step between me and that landing below.  And the pressure of that huge heavy hand, pushing me toward it, into the void.  But just then, the void seemed to beckon.

“If I go, I’m going to take you with me.”

Would I ever dare to say that out loud?  Maybe it would be the last thing I’d ever say, if I said it out loud.

“

 

Action Items:  

1.) Search for two different sources to learn about your local library system’s funding,

2.) Please tell us where your information comes from, and how you know that the sources you found are reliable,

3.) Write a book, story, blog post or tweet that uses your findings, and then, please tell us about it! If you write a book, once it is published please consider donating a copy to your local public library.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  &  for heavens sake: please #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19 (or even for good!)!:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:  ,

Vote, Teach and Learn (PDF Lesson Plans Offline)

and

my Babylon 5 review posts, if you like Science Fiction,

and

a proposed Vision on Wondering Wednesdays: for a kinder world…

   

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil

our year 2021 CE =  12021 HE

(Day 1 … Day 5)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free copies at: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please leave a review, if you can, on the GoodReads page.

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Thanks Ned & Round Robin: Human Tissue Preserved Since World War I Yields New Clues About 1918 Pandemic – Slashdot — Educating for Future Democracy Collaborative

Source: Human Tissue Preserved Since World War I Yields New Clues About 1918 Pandemic – Slashdot Human Tissue Preserved Since World War I Yields New Clues About 1918 Pandemic – Slashdot

Human Tissue Preserved Since World War I Yields New Clues About 1918 Pandemic – Slashdot — Educating for Future Democracy Collaborative

Freedom from Torture and Degrading Treatment — Educating for Future Democracy Collaborative

This year (2021), I am going through all the 30 basic rights and add my personal view. I would like to encourage you to look up our Human Rights, not to take these for granted or to misuse, but as a reminder we are all Human beings, Beautiful Souls and therefore we all matter… [READ MORE] Freedom […]

Freedom from Torture and Degrading Treatment — Educating for Future Democracy Collaborative

Educational blog round robin — Educating for Future Democracy Collaborative

This blog is meant to be a collaboration among any and all blogs of educational purpose. Please share a post from this blog, and we’ll share a post from your blog. “And so on, and so on, and so on.”

Educational blog round robin — Educating for Future Democracy Collaborative