Second Chance?!?

Step right up! Get your second chance!
Second chances here today,
Another might not come your way,
No way to tell, no way to say,
Some never get a single one,
Count your old self lucky son!
The universe just gave you two,
Hope that you know what to do,
Do whatever it demands,
Grab that chance with both your hands,
Hug it hard, don’t let it go,
It’ll not come by again you know,
Use your hands, your head, your heart,
Give all you’ve got right from the start,
Then if all goes well, these words you heed,
A second chance will be all you need!

Not to belabor the point but…

I wrote this as a response all the unenlightened comments on this photograph posted on the Occupy New Brunswick page on Facebook.

I’m sure he saved as much as he could (as he mentioned) but, being a teacher making crap wages, it wasn’t nearly enough. Don’t worry, though. Teachers are used to taking abuse from everyone. We’re used to being held accountable for bad grades and never thanked or appreciated for good ones. We’re used to hearing about how our jobs are “easy” and how overpaid we are because we get summer and Christmas vacations off. We’re used to being hated by students, criticized by their parents and undervalued by everyone.

We’re used to it but we do our jobs anyway.

We stand up in front of a room full of distracted kids and somehow manage to engage their increasingly elusive interest for a few minutes. We ignore the eye rolling and the clock watching and get on with our jobs.

I work as a high school English teacher in Sweden. Maybe conditions are different here but I normally start work before eight in the morning and finish after five. Working ten or twelve hour days is a frequent occurance. A minor percentage of our working day is spent actually teaching. The rest of the time we spend in meetings, marking essays and making lesson plans. The students get week-long breaks in fall, winter and spring, but I (and the rest of my colleagues) work during all of those. I get a few days off around Christmas, and I get the standard amount of time off during the summer to which all Swedish workers are entitled by the government.

Yeah, I’m stressed out and tired. I’m exhaused. But I cannot let my students down. They are the reasons I get up in the morning and go to work everyday. I do my job for them.

I’m a teacher. That’s what I do and I’ve never wanted to do anything else.

What is your dream?

Let us say that money is no consideration and that you had an unlimited amount of it:  What would you do, where would you live?

Hemingway's desk in Key West by squirrelist

I would move to Key West, Florida and live like Ernest Hemingway — drinking and writing, writing and drinking.  My wife and I are in love with Key West, in fact that is where we renewed our vows.  There’s something magical about that place, as though the heat and humidity, the people and scenery prompts your inner muse.

So, what is your dream?

 

Traditional book burning and eBooks

photo by April Sikorski via WikiCommons

To a totalitarian censor there is nothing more satisfying than a good, old-fashioned book burning.  Putting a match to paper and starting a literary funeral pyre with the acrid smoke billowing towards the heavens is a true delight to the bibliophobe.  But how the times have changed with the advent of the electronic reading age.  Kindles, Nooks and iPads have made life miserable for the traditional book burner.  The fact is that hitting a delete button is not very satisfying.  Deleting hundreds and thousands of words in a second is fleeting enjoyment, nowhere near as fulfilling as watching piles of books slowly ash away.  I truly feel for the poor bibliophobe and totalitarian censor.  One can only hope that they can find a more productive outlet for their mania.

A bibliophile’s dream house!

If I ever become a millionaire I want to build and live in a house like this! The Kazuya Morita Architecture Studio’s shelf-pod concept is brilliant, and I can only imagine that Miss Kitten’s cats would enjoy such an abode as well.  For more images check out the original post.

My Autodidactic Bibliophile Hat

I like Cafepress because they will print you anything you want and the turn-around time is very fast.  Their prices could be a bit cheaper, but considering that most brick-and-mortar screen-printing places have additional set-up fees — with Cafepress they are included — they are still very reasonably priced.

Like Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs I’m a big fan of baseball caps.  Not only are they practical, providing shade for your eyes; but you don’t ever have to worry about how your hair looks.  Until you take off your cap of course hahaha!

Anyhow, I decided to custom-order a bibliophile cap from Cafepress and this is what I came up with!

Bibliomania: In Pursuit of the Book

I’ve always been a bibliophile.  I love reading.  I love walking into libraries and book shops, browsing endless rows of books, stacked from the bottom of the floor to the top of the ceiling.  I fear that one day I will be killed by a bookshelf falling on me, but what a death that would be!  Alas, they will say, “he loved books and they killed him.”  I can think of no better epitaph than that.

Recently, I’ve taken up the obsession of book collecting, a noble pursuit, and one that is filled with many mysteries.  Few creatures are as misunderstood as the book collector, and especially the ones of the antiquarian kind.  They have their own language, and not many understand their bibliomania.  Most are not in it for the money, but for the passion, for the pursuit of that elusive book that haunts them late at night.  Is it a first edition they seek?  Is it a signed copy?  Is it just the name of the author that drives them to despair?  They must possess this treasure at seemingly any cost or detriment to their mental sanity; like a CERN scientist chasing neutrinos with chalked hands and a collider.

No doubt you are thinking, “well what book do you seek, good Sir?”  I shall tell you, it is a signed first edition of Damn Rare: The Memoirs of an African-American Bibliophile by Charles L. Blockson.  The irony is not lost on me that I’m searching for a rare book written by a rare bibliophile with “rare” in the title.

 Damn Rare: The Memoirs of an African-American Bibliophile

 

 

In my first attempt to locate this book and read it, I scoured my public library, but to no avail.  Not even through an inter-library loan could a copy be found.  The nearest library that actually has a copy is in Champaign-Urbana, a good 45 minutes drive away, and this being an academic library I can not check it out without being a student or faculty of the university − for shame!  Searches on AbeBooks and Amazon give me prices ranging from $30 to $130 dollars should I wish to purchase a copy.  This cements my theory that  the book is a rarity indeed, for why else would it be so expensive?  I must now commit my time and energy to tracking down a copy of this book and I will keep you posted on my progress.

One Evil Tortilla Chip: a dental adventure

(Warning: this may gross out some of you)

The Most Evil Chips Ever

It all started on Monday when I was eating these new Santa Maria “American Barbecue” tortilla strips. Unlike the traditional triangle-shaped variety, these are shaped like long rectangles with surprisingly sharp edges. One of them became lodged quite painfully into the lower right corner of my jaw. I tried to maneuver it out with my tongue, but it was really stuck in there and seemed be digging deeper into my cheek. After a few seconds I managed to remove it but the area felt weird, almost like I could still feel the offending object there. Oh well, I thought, mouth injuries usually heal pretty quickly. It should be okay in day or two.

However, in a day or two I had developed a rather painful hard lump on my lower right jaw, which kept increasing in painfulness and size and I was starting to resemble a large chipmunk storing up food for the winter. There was definitely some kind of infection in there or something that wasn’t going to heal on its own, so I left work early and went to my local medical center. Because the injury had nothing to do with my teeth, I thought they might be able to help me. Instead, they told me I needed to see a dentist and sent me on my way without looking at it. As it happens I have a dentist appointment next week for a checkup, but this needed immediate attention. I went home and called the emergency dentist, kicking myself (at least metaphorically) for getting myself into this situation. Unlike regular health care, dental care in Sweden is not covered under the national health plan, and this had the potential to cost me a fortune. I was told that I could come in that evening but that appointments after normal working hours cost twice as much. Since I wasn’t in excrutiating pain I decided I could wait and got an appointment first thing in the morning.

By morning the lump had doubled in size. When I got to the dentist’s office, I filled in the requisite health declaration form and was taken in within minutes. So far so good. The hygienist looked at the affected area and tapped my teeth firmly with a dental instrument just to make sure there was nothing wrong with them, and indeed, there was not. She then took an x-ray just to be sure. Then the dentist came in and my condition presented him with a bit of a challenge. I told him that this had never happened to me before and he told me that he had never seen this before in a patient. He even brought in a colleague to take a look. They both kept remarking at how nice my teeth looked and I said that yes, I have very good teeth and hardly ever need to see a dentist.

What neither of them had ever seen before was this, a gingival abscess, an infected area in the gums which apparently can be caused by aggressive tooth brushing, toothpicks, or in my case, food that is forced into the gumline. I am very lucky in that the infection never got into my teeth since that’s a much more complex problem to fix. He lanced and drained the infection, which involved a lot of squeezing of the very sore infected area. (I think that many dentists are secret sadists.) However, it needed to be done. He then prescribed me some penicillin and an anti-inflammatory painkiller.

Then came the most painful part of all (or so I thought): the bill. I was fully expecting it to cost a fortune but, surprisingly, the entire visit and treatment came to only 475 Swedish kronor (about $70 US). The antibiotics and pain medicine came to a further 175 (about $25). For someone used to the exorbitant costs of American health care, just under one hundred dollars for an emergency visit to the dentist including the medications is really not that bad at all.

Still, it’s lot to have to pay because of one evil tortilla chip. I’ll certainly be avoiding those in the future, and I recommend that everyone else do the same.

Six Years So Far in Sweden

Six years so far in Sweden,
For the most part have been good.
I’ve tried hard to be lagom and,
Do what a good Swede would.
I learned the Swedish language
And I did the best I could.
But I still don’t hurdy gurdy,
As well as I think I should.

Six years so far in Sweden,
Have not been all that bad.
And yet there are still certain things,
That make me kind of sad.
I feel out of place on holidays,
And I miss my mom and dad.
Though my Swedish family loves me,
And to see them makes me glad.

Six years so far in Sweden,
All the laughter and the tears.
Six years of glorious vinglögg,
And watery Swedish beers.
Six years of not quite fitting in,
Of culture shock and fears.
Six years so far in Sweden,
Have been strange and wonderful years.