a b c d...

In the past week, I've somehow ended up with a part-time job that starts on Monday. For three nights a week, I'll be tutoring some of my Saturday kids in reading and math. I've talked in the past about how I feel overwhelmed by the need to do more and this just happened to work out so that I can do something more intensive and one-on-one. Some of the kids are ahead of others, but all of them are still behind.

Last night, I worked with one of my kids who's throwing gang signs in every photo I have of him. He doesn't want to be there at all, but as we were going through the alphabet and reading through a first reader book, he got really into it because he could see how everything worked together for the first time.

I can't imagine getting through life without being able to read and can't remember a time in life when I wasn't able to. I hope that the things that opened up my world will open up theirs as well.

i hate you chris cornell.

I used to think the Rolling Stones and Johnny Rotten were the primo example of embarrassment in the music world, but I think Chris Cornell has them beat at this point.

Being a grunge kid in high school a few years after the whole thing had died, working back from the horrendous radio rock that permeated growing up in Parma and driving around with your friends to "X-treme" radio, I found my sound in my dad's record collection and the four big Seattle bands (Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Pearl Jam). My dad and I used to listen to Soundgarden together and this was one of our favorite songs.



From there, I started listening to massive amounts of college radio and became a huge fan of the more obscure Northwest acts. I was totally that kid who wore chucks and thermals and flannel and did artwork to the sounds of the Screaming Trees and tried to learn all of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs on the vintage electric guitar I bought because it looked like Kurt Cobain's Jag.

When I think of my senior prom, I don't think about the bad top 40 they played there, I remember driving there listening to Mudhoney, debating the merits of Joy Division, and shouting out requests for Slayer and Rush from our chairs even though all the music had been pre-picked by the powers that be. When I think of my high school prom, I think of "Touch Me I'm Sick" rather than something more romantic and sappy.

My tastes have diversified since I was 18, thanks to friends and roommates who turned me on to world music, good hip-hop and soul, but when any overplayed 90's classic comes on the radio, I always end up rocking out.

I picked up some cassettes when I was in Columbus, namely Living Colour's first album, U2's Achtung Baby, and Soundgarden's 'Superunknown' which have been getting loads of rotation in the Sexy Saturn when it's not 'The Low End Theory'), but this newest shenanigan by Chris Cornell almost makes me want to forget he was part of that band. Good grief.

EDIT: So Youtube is getting rid of any uploads of this song and that's probably a good thing for the sake of humanity.
Dude, you used to be in a band that was actually pretty awesome. Now you're that creepy old guy in the club. You could have aged gracefully like Greg Dulli or Mark Lanegan, or heck, even Robert Plant, but nooooo... you thought working with Timbaland was a great idea. Seriously, the wrath of the nonexistent metal gods needs to smite you right now.

grrr... snow

It wasn't getting out of work yesterday that was bad, it was trying to get there this morning. When I came home, the streets weren't plowed, so I eased myself into a space in front of my double and figured I was all good. It wasn't until this morning when I went to scrape off my car that I realized there was about four inches of tightly packed snow underneath which made moving my car pretty much impossible. So I'm digging it out with an ice scraper as all these trucks and SUV's are driving by and getting frustrated for what I feel is no good reason.

Thankfully, my wonderful roommate gave me a ride to work. I wasn't even super late, and I'll figure out the whole getting home part later.

a kitten named drama

I was driving home from work yesterday when I saw a car had crashed into the fence at the bottom of the hill on west 65th. There were three girls standing outside the wreck, none of whom looked old enough to drive, and one explained that their crackhead neighbor up the street got high and rear-ended them and driven off and they definitely did not want to call the police.

The one girl's mom shows up and they start cussing each other out. The mom threatens to beat her down but the girl says she'd better not because there's other people here, gesturing to me and the young mom with two kids in the car who stopped to be sure everything was okay. Her mom takes the keys and says she'll claim that she was the one who was driving and I go my separate way, realizing that my life is really not all that messed up.

Dropped off some food for the family of one of my kids last night. Met her dad and her older cousin Jamal who introduced us to his pet kitten named Drama because he says that he always has a little drama around him all the time.

reflexes

I stopped by the library to pick up some stuff I ordered the other night. I'm waiting in line and these three middle school kids are freaking out because some other kid threatened to jump one of them for his mp3 player. The security guy there tells them to shut up but the guy next to me in line gives them some good advice and such.

I get my newest batch of music and I'm walking to the car when this scuzzy guy comes up behind me and starts asking me to help him. It's not like I have never been asked for money or whatever, but this just set off every red flag imaginable and I ran for my car (thankful for the door opener on my key ring), locked it, and pulled out as fast as I could. Once I turned and ran, he took off too.

As I was driving away, I felt a twinge of unnecessary guilt but that was quickly replaced with anger at being marked as an easy target or someone easy to intimidate. If you really needed help, there were all sorts of people in there and the last person you would need to ask would be a young solitary female walking to her car in a dark parking lot. And I resent that I am ultimately so vulnerable and that I always have to watch my back.

playlist 1/27/09

marvin gaye - t plays it cool
cut chemist - the garden
madlib (yesterday's new quintet) - street talkin'
digable planets - blowin' down
cibelle - deixa
emmanuel jal - elengwen
common - 6th sense
mexican institute of sound - drume negrita
otto - bob (brazil classics, v.7)
dragons of zynth - anna mae
twilight singers -i'm ready
viva voce - let's bend light
team sleep - ever (foreign flag)
boubacar traore - diarabi
erykah badu - in love w/ you
aterciopelados - pendulo
les nubians - voyager
the force 7 - asiko mi ni
juca chaves - take me back to piani
curtis mayfield - ain't no love lost
momojo - cabidela
john coltrane - a love supreme, pt 1: acknowledgement

presence

Didn't end up going to Detroit, ended up staying here and catching up with people that I haven't hung out with in too long.

Did stop home to see my family and help out with some wedding planning for my sister before heading down to hang out with the kids, who I haven't seen in a couple weeks now. It was a good thing I stayed in Cleveland this weekend, because we were shorter on volunteers than usual and one of the kids just took off and ran away. He came back, thankfully, but not before I'm running down to Lorain Avenue hoping that he hasn't gotten too far.

I know that what we're doing is really good and important but I feel like I really don't know what I'm doing. The language barrier is huge and I don't know what life is like the other six days of the week when I don't see the kids. They're dealing with a lot more than I could ever imagine, and I guess I wish I knew that it was doing some good helping these kids get some footing instead of it just being something that I feel good about doing.

I don't feel like I have the resources I need, we don't have the extra people to help that we need. A lot of the kids need some one-on-one work and when you've got two or three volunteers for 25 kids, it's just not possible to even try and do that. I don't know how to communicate because of the language barrier, but I'm ordering a State Department course in Kirundi through the library so hopefully that will help out some.

A friend of mine that used to teach is hooking me up with some of her old school supplies, but we need people who will show up to use them.