Beauty

Sometimes you read things that just...are beautiful. School has been strange lately. It's been a mixture of joy and anger. It's ridiculous how much I enjoy teaching CompGov...obsessive you might say. Because of my obsession, I have been immersing myself in my curriculum. However, I'll have you know that balance has finally come to my life. Well, more than usual, at least. When I immerse myself in work, I love it. So I get a lot done. I am mostly caught up with grading (and have been for a while now). I have begun habitually taking up space at a coffee place in Renton, which I love for many many reasons. The result is I have free time and have to dispose of it somehow. If I don't, then I work more. For instance, last Friday I had an awful, awful day. I was very angry. I don't think I've been that filled with anger before and there really wasn't a good reason for it. But, I could feel it, I was so angry. I was supposed to have gotten a lot done but didn't. Finals. Ech...I don't want to go into it. BUT ANYWAY, I headed to my coffee shop because I just wanted to get out. And then I thought, I should go to a movie. I need to learn to do things on my own, especially since Friday traffic would keep most of my friends from joining me. I ended up spending about 3 1/2 hours sitting in my coffee shop, at my table, with my curriculum materials spread all over my table, planning and reading and watching videos about Russia. Yes, I was planning on a Friday night and I was soooooo happy! But it made me feel sooooo much better! It was relaxing to me! I love learning about Russia and here I was, doing just that, no pressure. Plus, it put me in such a good mood and traffic was gone by then, that I called Margie and we went to the movie too!

But anyway...I do have more balance. Last week I went to dinner and the ballet with girlfriends. Margie joined me in Bellevue to go to my salon. The week before I went to a Superbowl party, had dinner and a movie with the girls, watched a friend test for his green belt, and then tonight...since I had worked so hard in the last few days that I didn't have that much to do, I came home and read a book.

That's why I'm writing. Because after finishing that book and sobbing for the many things I got out of it, my mind was rushed with all these thoughts. It was like they were all scrambling over each other to rush out first. And I thought of how much I've been enjoying life lately. And I thought about how beautiful some people are. I thought how much I wish I had read that book with a book club. I thought about how wonderful it was that I had time to read that book tonight and that it's still not so late that I can't get my work done that I put off. I thought of the ballet and beauty. It reminded me of class. The last two days I have been a passionate teacher. I lost my voice today. I was teaching the kids about Marxism, and how Leninism and Stalinism depart from Marxism and...well, you don't need to know what. But even though it was straight lecture, the kids were so immersed. They questioned and then argued and then questioned more and I explained and teased and read to them from Marx. And they were intrigued and I was on fire, energized by their engagement in the lesson. And when I was finished reading my book I also thought of something else from today.

I thought of how bitter my voice got and soft...when I spoke of Stalin, when I confessed to the kids that I have a very heavy bias against Stalin. And I was quiet as I explained to them the theoretical difference between Marxist-Leninism and how Stalin shifts the interpretation to fit his own totalitarian goals and I got choked up in class...lol, in class!...as I mumbled to the kids that when I said that Stalin was paranoid and would brook no challenge to his authority, that I meant by the end of Stalin's rule 5/9 of the Politburo, 1,108 of 1,966 delegates to the party congress and 1/2 of the army corp were dead, as well as 20-60 million of his own people. It made me emotional, thinking of the evil that came from that one man...The kids said, 6 million in the holocaust...yes 6 million. That's awful. 20 million is awful too...

And that's why I thought of that anger I felt today, how I felt sick to my stomach thinking about that kind of evil. Stalin. Hitler. Countless souls were gathered up during the years of their terror. And yet, as is so beautifully shown through my book, some souls are just beautiful. Some things just sparkle. Some memories deserve to be recorded.

You should read, "The Book Thief."

It's beautiful.

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