October 20, 2003 - 9:22 p.m.

What A Nag!

Mostly I love my job, but the mornings really suck! Especially Monday mornings after a busy weekend for both me and the kids and one in which they got to bed way too late last night. It's hard to want to get out of bed and be excited about your job when you spend the first hour and a half of nearly every work day constantly nagging. The girls are not morning people, and my first task of the day is waking them. H, in particular, is often cranky and utterly irrational during this process.

Once they are all awake, the rest of the morning is spent in an attempt to keep the kids on task. "B put the toy down and go eat your breakfast... No, you cannot have candy for breakfast... We'll worry about a treat after lunch after lunch..." "Less talking more eating, guys." "M, what do you want for breakfast? It's time to stop thinking about it and decide or you won't have time to eat!" "Please brush your teeth... No you aren't, you're staring at yourself in the mirror, so please put the toothbrush in your mouth and start brushing!" Is it any wonder I sometimes feel like going back to bed once the kids are finally all on their way to school? I really dislike being a nag, and have to say that is probably the worst part of my job.

On a more positive note, I just got back from a great lecture sponsored by the Boston area alumni group from my college. The talk was on Islam and was fascinating. I feel that I have a much better grasp of the fundamentals of Islam as a religion, apart from the cultural and extremist factors. From what I learned tonight, it seems that a lot of what Americans think they know about Islam stems from groups (like Al Quaeda) that are actually not representative of the values of the religion. Islam is about peace and devoting yourself to God. It has nothing to do with eliminating non-Muslims or committing acts of violence. The speaker made a great analogy comparing the Koran, and Islam as a religion, to a tool. If a person takes a chainsaw and uses it on a person, can you blame that on the chainsaw? In the same way, just because extremists may use Islam or parts of the Koran to justify their acts of tyranny and terrorism does not mean that Islam embraces or encourages violence or injustice.

After the lecture I also had an interesting conversation with an alum from the class of '51 who, like me, was an English major. We talked about how the department had changed in the almost half a decade between our graduations and also about how lucky we were to have gone to a school where learning was a collaborative process between students and professors rather than something that was supposed to be gifted from the all-knowing professor to the ever grateful student.

today's project: making pumpkins from little paper bags stuffed with newspaper that we then painted.

musing about: ignorance and intolerance

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