What is it with spring
and wasps? More than daffodils’ thrusting yellow buds or the French’s mustard-colored crocuses they are the ones who know when Spring arrives. Take this one.
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There is no shortage of sayings out there to remind the masses of the unimportance of money. "Money can't buy happiness," they tell us, or "the best things in life are free." Well, I was raised with the opposite mindset. My parents, born and raised in abject, rural, Latin American poverty, reminded me that the best things in life are actually running water and electricity, and no, those are not free. Everything was tied to money - wasted food was measured in how much it cost, education was a means to a high-paying job, calculators followed us down the aisles of the grocery store.
Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Sing a song. Repeat. Does this sound familiar to you? Maybe it reminds you of a concert or a Chloe Ting booty workout. Well, it's neither. What I'm describing to you is a Catholic mass in the eyes of a non-Catholic. I recently spoke with a woman who had lots of curious ideas about what it meant to be Catholic.
When I was in elementary school, red ribbons would dot the campus fence like brilliant little butterflies fluttering their wings in the wind for one week a year. They were inescapable - we ran past them while playing basketball on the blacktop; we gazed at them longingly from inside the classroom window when we couldn't be bothered with long division. Every year, our school held a Red Ribbon Week to stress the importance of living drug-free. Think of it as a contemporary parallel to D.A.R.E. And all my life, I've understood what the school was trying to do. They just wanted to protect us from the horrors of addiction. Alcoholism abundant in our elders, vaping ever-present in locker rooms, pills, and powders, and whatever other substances plaguing our cities. Addiction is scary, especially when you have seen it up-close.
I am a fool. I say this not about my intellectual wealth (or lack thereof) because I consider myself to be pretty smart. I say this because I am yet another foolish teenager, and I severely lack the wisdom that separates the Fool from the Wise Woman. I think there's a phrase out there that goes something like, "intelligence knows that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom knows not to put it in a fruit salad." Well, I like tomatoes a lot, and for that, I guess I'm a fool.
Dear Alex,
How are you in Chicago? In the news today I only see New York, New York, and New York, where exhausted nurses and exhausted doctors and failing systems can’t cope with much more as everyone catches the coronavirus and I can’t imagine Chicago is that far behind because it’s also a big city, the Big Apple of the Midwest so maybe it’s more like the Big Corn or something or maybe I’ll just go with Carl Sandburg and the Hog Butcher for the World but I digress. To my red blood cells,
Does it pleasure you? What perverted joy do you derive from my pain? What ecstasy do you scrape off my suffering? a pyroclastic flow of screams
audible but just barely, clouds high enough to singe the ceiling fill the living room, escape my mother's lips like dragon's breath flow out from her to greet every corner, to soak every cloth an aching and charred and angry fog machine Once a futuristic possibility but now a lived reality, online learning has revolutionized (for better or for worse) education at all levels. While it could, in theory, increase accessibility to physically-distant students and enable disabled or chronically ill students to participate more fully in school, many students have, since its implementation, lamented the loss of the traditional school experience. No starting riots at lunchtime, no passing notes in class, and, worst of all, no excuse for skipping school.
It's easy to panic when someone asks you what you like to do for fun. In a split second, you rack through all with which you pass your free time (Netflix, eating snacks, napping), and decide that none of these pastimes actually interesting enough to qualify as hobbies. Then you start wondering what your real hobbies are. You think, ok, maybe I can tell people I'm into photography, but you're not actually into photography, you just have an Instagram account. It's tough!
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About MeHi! I'm Andrea. I really like words. Categories
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