Tras haber creado mi anterior blog cecilmundo varias personas, muchos de ellos mis alumnos, me sugirieron que creara una secciòn dentro de cecilmundo para publicar mis obras de docencia de idiomas. Dado que la cantidad de documentos de explicaciones, ejercicios y exàmenes de inglès son muy numerosos porque tengo màs de 30 años del ejercicio de la docencia, preferì estrenar blog con mis alumnos a como ellos realmente merecen. En este blog planetcecil no solo iràn mis documentos didàcticos de inglès, sino tambièn la producciòn literaria de varios alumnos que se destacan en las letras. Tambièn darè oportunidad a aquellos que tienen excelentes obras pero que no han logrado publicarlas ya que en mi paìs Nicaragua todo se mueve por la marrana polìtica, y si una no pertenece a determinado partido no verà jamàs publicado su opus. Tambièn tenemos la desgracia de contar con seudoeditores quienes al no conocer verdaderamente de literatura se convierten en mercenarios de la imprenta solo para llenarse ellos mismo de dinero y fama a costillas de los escritores. Todos aquellos que deseen participar en este blog, denlo de antemano por suyo. Aunque lleve mi nombre en un arranque de egolatrìa, yo soy sencillamente vuestra servidora.Cecilia

Las alas de la educación

Las alas de la educación
La educación es un viaje sin final.

La lección de física

La lección de física
Casi aprendida

sábado, 13 de septiembre de 2008

When it rains on your parades



48th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
Birthdates which occurred on September 13:
1739 Grigory Potemkin army officer, statesman, Catherine II's lover, a real bantam
1819 Clara Schumann (n‚e Wieck) Leipzig, Germany, pianist/composer, unfaithful wife of composer Robert Schumann.When he lost his marbles,she took up with his protégée,Johannes Brahms1851 Walter Reed US Army Surgeon, proved mosquitoes transmit yellow fever…it was about time 1857 Milton S Hershey , chocolate manufacturer/philanthropist ,thank you for all the delicious moments1860 Gen John J (Blackjack) Pershing US commander in WW I,wonderful military,the `Pershing missiles were named after him
1874 Arnold Schonberg Vienna Austria, composer (Second Quartet),poor Bellow, spent his whole life fighting

Deaths which occurred on September 13:
1321 Dante Alighieri author of the Divine Comedy, dies,without ever having a chance to bed his Beatrice 1598 Philip II King of Spain (1556-98), dies at 71,the best things that ever happened to him.He should have been stillborn
1977 Leopold Stokowski symphonic conductor, dies in England, at 95,he was a champion for plagiarizing and for wooing rich girls

ONE OF THOSE DAYS

Today has been one of those days when you believe you should have never gotten up from your warm, strange-smelling and comfy bed. We have all had these kind of days when you know that if you boil water, it will taste smoked or it will fall all over you while still hot. Everything started by the fact that I got up late. Simply did not have the stamina necessary to cleanly get up chirpy and full of beans…sure signal that age is biting at your heels even though you photograph much younger simply because your bones were adequately placed on your face by a clever mom. Getting up late is a cardinal sin in my house, because husband and daughter just follow the pattern set by me. Shooing a family to get up, bathe, breakfast and get ready for work or study is something you shouldn`t wish for anyone to do, and that includes your worst foes. Nobody deserves the irritation, annoyance and impatience a human or animal can derive from having your relatives play havoc with your time. Finally, when we had already gotten ready, I whisked my daughter out of the house and took her with me on the taxi that would drive her to the French learning center where she goes each Saturday and then to the English language center where I work on Saturdays from 7:30 am to almost 6 p.m.
The taxi driver chose his slowest wheels to get me to the center,and when I arrived there, the front gate was closed because a water tube had broken at the entrance,water was rushing out and it was impossible to get in there without swimming. So on through the back door we were sent, and as usual,I arrived late. I had missed the early morning teacher`s meeting.
I punched my card in red, I was 11 minutes late. Somehow,dearest of all readers, those minutes you punch in red are more costly than those when you do your job.A huge bleeding chunk off your salary gets bitten off, and I haven`t been able to figure out how they make the calculations so that the minutes you missed weigh much more. Once in the classroom, when I asked for the homework one of the younger student unabashedly said he had too many social duties to bother with something as base,dumb and boring as homework.
The best part came during the 15 minute break we have at 10 a.m.I went to get a snack with one of my former students,who was wearing a lovely white dress. WE got our snacks and drinks and were walking to my classroom so we could sit down and eat when a little 7 year old thin girl got out of a broom closet(she should have never been there,where was her teacher?)and ran into us,spilling our drinks and foods all over our dresses.Luckily I was wearing a flowered dress in dark hues,so cleaning up was easier for me than for my friend.
That is why I seldom wear white clothes,because something is always bound to happen to me(soup spilled, dog barfs on me, cats piss and mistake me for a toilet, my period comes while I am sitting down, or my marker breaks and the ink goes all over my garments). The shit hit the fan when the supervisor heard that an incident had happened,and the begligent teacher was called to order.
Going out to lunch at the neighboring cafeteria was another headache. I ate only noodles with cheese but was charged as if I had eaten the whole lobster supply to New York`s Delmonico. Feeling fat, full, flatulent ,ripped off and sleepy, I waded out of the cafeteria only to get splashed by a station wagon that ran too fast over a puddle. Another bath! But I barely had time to clean up.I had a class at 1:15 and after fighting with the internet and the yahoo messenger because I wanted to establish contact with you, I gave up and went into my classroom with the same sheepish expression on my face that cows wear when they go into the slaughterhouse line.
Feeling thirsty during the first break,which is at 3 pm, I went to the center`s bar and got sold a soda that was hot,while I observed the people who drank coffee complained it was cold. This was the first day for the bar owner and he was already driving his customers away. A cloud of flies gathered over the counter,guaranteeing a surefire diarrhea for the consumers, not to mention a fat probability of cholera.
How far can you go into a day in which everything seems to be against you? How bad can things get? But not even the worst day is completely without light or flowers along the way home. I managed to get in contact with you, my so important you, despite anything that could have happened to me, or being chased by an angry dog when finally dragging my feet to walk home. No quarrel, no delay, no hassle can take away from me the fact that I could finally get my message across, sending it navigating on a moon bug and making way among roses and their thorns, electric eels of lightning in an angry sky, and so many miles
that somehow have not succeeded in interfering with joy. Bad days will always come, most beloved of readers, to remind us of the good ones yet to come. We use them as thermometers to gauge the right temperature of our felicity, they are litmus tests of the acid and alkaline balance that must be between weeping with joy and laughing in anger. Not all the grains of sand going in an hourglass clock are the same, but all together make time…was it the great Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz who said that ? No wonder he won a Nobel Prize. Sweat runs down my back while this most hectic and conflictive day among days reaches its end. Even my fan has been taken away “for my own good” in order to force me to go to bed early,but I don`t need to lie prone to dream. So many people say they want what is best for you and then proceed to commit the worst cruelties against you, like whn you want you animal not to suffer so you take him for a quickie sleeping injection over at the vet`s, telling yourself you have no more money to keep him with you and it is for his benefit. For his eternal well-being, we hear people say. No wonder emperor Tito of Rome sometimes would snarl out loud,”Family sucks!” Bitter reality? Yes but those to whom you can`t relate are often those that you are related to by blood or affinity(which has a way of wearing off frightfully over the years, familiarity does breed contempt in some cases,sorry)Sometimes they are the ones who served your bad day on a silver platter, perhaps because they know best where to hit so it counts.
I am at the end of what was a very ugly day. Internet cuts, the embryo of a quarrel that didn`t become full fledged combat simply because the two fighters were so down in the dumps that neither had the energy to slash at each other`s throats. Bad days are necessary when we need to remind ourselves to cherish the precious moments we have of glee,mirth and tenderness. No champagne in my fridge to toast the bad day I have,so ginger ale will do. I raise the goblet of my life, full of ale,to toast the fact that if I have a bad day is because if I would be dead, I wouldn`t have either good or bad days,or anything.

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