I had been lost somewhere in the fog of my mind when the periphery of reality tugged my eyes to the source of a noise that didn’t belong in a testing environment. She should have been finishing the math section of the PSAT, yet her pencil was flat on the desk in front of her,…
Category: Crafted Thought
#selfie
As I transition the layout of my website over the next few weeks, old pages resurface and I’ve elected to give some of them homage with a renewed posting. The following is one such, posted a few years ago, in honour of Women’s History Month and, of course, myself. All my life, I’ve been taunted…
To the Lyft Driver that Fucked Up
Maybe it started as an accident when you decided to tell two teachers that “those kids can’t learn, and they’re all from southeast. I hate to say it, but they just can’t learn.” Maybe what you meant was that the way the system is set up, institutional we make it harder for them to learn, we have created…
The unmarked boxes in my closet
I had a legal marriage once. He was noble, sweet, compassionate, and fiercely intelligent. He loved me and I loved him. It was as simple as that (as he often said). When people asked me why I was marrying him (we were both very young, and I was somewhat of a burning car while he…
There is no love like you dream [a postulation]
The following are fallacies: that there exists a love willing to give as selflessly in return as your heart can give; that love trumps all; that love is real when it doesn’t hurt. Love, as we feel it, is only real when it hurts because you find you can give so much of yourself, perhaps…
Offer your smile only genuinely [a brief, crafted thought]
It is both possible and necessary to be successful and happy without wishing harm upon our adversaries, for this is an invitation to evil thought. Evil should never be allowed to feel so welcome in the house of our minds: this perpetuates and excuses evil unconsciously when it is later greeted. After all, our adversaries…
“Would you die for my son?” [a Crafted Thought/Social Commentary]
“Ally” I’ll start in admitting that I kind of hate this word, this need to label and be labeled. The concept is wonderful, yes, and it probably is nice for people not directly in a cause to feel unified by some idea, but I think it is unnecessary and distracting. Too many people spend more…
The Power of Image [a musing]
Thin, fit, thick, short, muscular, bony, dark, light-skinned, big-eyed, nappy-headed, curly… It is amazing the power body image has over so much, over our own holistic self-images, over others, affecting ideas of worth and ability and potential. We fantasize about the perfect body, obsess over it, and go to great lengths destroying or altering the…
Why doesn’t the media love black people that survive? [a brief commentary]
Yesterday, the NAACP had a building bombed in Colorado. More headlines in America connected “terrorism” to the shooting in France, while the bombing on our home soil was referred to as an “incident” (noting, of course, there were not as many headlines in America about the NAACP terrorism as there were to the tragedy in…
I never grade in red [a Crafted Thought]
I regret that being able to simplify algebraic expressions fluently does not save my students from being shot. My hands are covered in green ink, I have four different types of assignments spread across my bed and half-sheets of notes and things that worked and things that didn’t when trying to explain developing equations from…
my year inadequately summed [a personal note]
This, this is just for me, for my collection, but I share it because maybe you’ll find something that clarifies some aspect of something you’ve read or feel inspired by something you see. 2014 has been a most incredible year, on so many levels. When I consider the impact it has had on me already…
Home Alone (or, How a Soloist Celebrates the Holidays)
I hung two stockings, one for a cat I’ll probably never see again and another for my baby (also a cat) visiting his grandparents in Texas. I wrapped gifts for Angel Tree children (all purchased from either small or black-owned businesses to support the #NotOneDime initiative while brightening some kids’ holidays) and a few more…
Sharkey Speaks 