How does a mediocre high school principal demonstrate what’s wrong with America? Why is “The Queen’s Gambit” a delightful yet thoughtful exploration of what is needed to truly MAGA? Read to find out

 

The way our leaders in the USA, Texas and local communities, et al have responded to the 2020 Covid pandemic reminds me why we (my Rice University friends and others from high end quality schools) are in fact different, and yes special. Not the faux “everyone is special” bs. Not like Lake Wobegone where every child is above average. We do live in a bubble and the diff is: We were not only intelligent- there were lots of smart lazy kids at my hs who wanted to get in to RU yet didn’t - we did the work. The grind. And the work ethic set us apart. 

When I was teaching I always said : Give me a hard working student over a “smart” one, bc the hard working one will achieve things. The “smart” ones are generally entitled assholes and so are their parents. (“Billy needs to get an A so he can go to Harvard,” they’d tell me at Open House. And I’d think, “Then Billy needs to learn that you don’t get into any college with that attitude.”) 

It’s not glamorous.... Day in day out the hard work - studying, reading, going the extra mile. Self discipline. Building up skills in the process. Asking Q, finding solutions. Willing to risk and to fail.

As a teen, I gave up Thanksgiving ski trips w my fam, starting in 8th grade, to write research papers (always due right before xmas). Off they’d go, parents plus sis left town for Colo, leaving me alone in the house with food money. Age 14, 15 w no adult around to nag me, I’d get up early and catch the bus out front to SMU library, do research all day long, come home in the evening, work more. (My dad was in law school at SMU at the time, so he showed me how to navigate there and back, and how to collect info, org research materials.) Written, 100% my own work: 8th grade paper age 14 “French Utopian Colonies in Texas”. 9th grade paper age 15 “IQ and Cruelty: Analysis of Nuremberg War Crime Trials”. Who tf as a young teenager does that? (It’s a habit I continued throughout college - a sustained week of work on one single project, at Thanksgiving. Got into a groove.) Helicopter parents micromanaging their kids every second, take note. You cannot do it for them. 

Wanna know why/ how I got into Rice? Bc of all the other smart kids out there, a dime a dozen, each with Top Ten GPAs and 1300+ SATs, I won second place IN THE NATION in a Nat’l Latin Club academic competition . (Who won first place? Ronald J. Mann. Look him up. All my life that guy was in my way.) But I didn’t win bc I’m a genius, bc I’m not..... I won bc I read a book. One book. I did the work. 

On a 3 day long bus ride to the nat’l Latin Club competition in Fla, I asked one of the older kids in the group what materials to study for the exam. (We were signed up for the same one.) The girl hands me a reference book and says, this. So while all the other kids on the bus spent those 3 driving days playing cards or making out, she and I moved to a back corner of the bus and alternately read sections of the book to each other, (only had the one copy), and grilled each other on the info. Didn’t even have stuff to make flashcards. Just organized outlines of material, wrote lists, made mnemonics up, memorized shit. You know, stuff you learned how to do in school but most people ignored. Passed the time on the long boring bus ride. We were like that girl in “The Queen’s Gambit”, learning, practicing chess. The “smart boys” ignored or laughed at us. Until they didn’t......

I came in 2nd, my friend came in 3rd. In the nation. 

But this isnt a rant about my awesomeness, bc I’m not. Not even in the same league as other folk I know (and I dated that same Ronald J. Mann my soph yr at RU - he taught me how to study. Really study. And that if you get organized early on, and keep it up, it’s actually less time and effort, than not. And that practicing is part of studying.) .....

......it’s about how most people on this planet are too fucking lazy to just do the fucking work. Any work. Not even hard work. Just do their f-ing jobs. WTF do these people do all day to pass the time? Gov Abbott, tRUMP, the chancellor at our local uni, other leaders. Just a LITTLE bit of organization, analysis, and effort at key points in this whole past year could have saved 100s of thousands of lives. 

You know how my friend, a local middle school principal, spends her days? She walks the halls: greets kids as they come off the bus. Chats w teachers in the halls in-between class periods (where most of the real work of the school gets done - short convos during passing time) . Pops in unannounced on all classes and teachers. Personally mentors new ones screwing up and on probation. Knows the face and circumstances of every single (out of 1000) students in her school. Knows the face and circumstances of every single (out of 200) teachers in her school. Knows who is sick, hungry, is going through a divorce, needs help, car just broke down, or someone to pick up their sick child, or who just did something awesome. Who wants to earn a promotion and works w them on how to use the talent he/she has, so everyone’s happy. Knows where all the campus fuse boxes are, which goes to what, and how to fix them when they blow. Not afraid to crawl into the attic or basement and get dirty to fix it. A hands on approach. (PS She is my hero. See? It’s not all negative about education on this blog.) 

You know how the principal at the hs where I worked spent his days? Hiding in a fucking closet. No lie. An actual, literal real closet. Along w his 2 bff coach buddies.,... once, I had to chase him down for a signature for something. His school secretary said, look here, look there. As I went here and there, others along the way said look over there. I went to his office, the field house, teacher lounge, golfcart shed - all over that huge fucking campus. These people were lying. They knew where he was. It was a wild goose chase to make me go away (I got my 10,000 steps that day.) Finally someone said, if you can find coach “X”, he’ll be with him. 

So I go to coach “X”’s classroom (he didn’t actually teach a class, just ran the school store from there that sold junk food to teenagers), which was dark and empty, and in the back wall, hidden behind pallets of candy chips and soda, there’s a locked door that clearly has a light on inside, which is seeping out from around the edges. I can hear male laughter. I knock on the door several times, say “I’m not going away” and eventually it opens. A thick hazy fart cloud rolls out..... it stung my eyes, was as dense as cigarette smoke- and there in that closet (yes the irony) is my principal, Coach “X”,  and another coach, lolling about on beanbag chairs, eating beef jerky, laughing, farting, having a good ‘ole time. In the middle of a school day morning.

Guess which school has stronger academic results? Lower teacher turnover, higher moral? 

It’s the same with running a country or trying to resolve a pandemic crisis. People just need to do their fucking jobs. Why not pass the time that way, instead of goofing around, hiding from responsibilities? If your job requires you to know about something, you better research it. If your job requires you to be good at something, then practice. Do the work. 

Recent work

 

Top right and bottom left are oil on canvas; the others are pastel on board. You can see more of my art on my Facebook page, Karen Strecker Galleries.

Are you a bitchy mother-in-law?

Do you worry if you might be a bitchy mother-in-law? Fear not, heres a checklist : 

1) Do you have a key to your adult children’s home? Do you invite yourself over several times a week, just pop in, no announcement - especially when they are likely to be fornicating? When your kids have changed the locks, do you go to the neighbors with a sob story about how you were supposed to water their plants, con the kay outta them, and not only allow yourself egress? Have you done this more than once? 

2) Did you hijack your son’s wedding, make impossible demands on every one (re venue, meal, date and time, pre and post wedding activities), start fights, force the bride to cancel her bridesmaids’ hen party, try to make the bride look Vietnamese, personally make her 1 hour late for her own wedding? 

3) Did you call your daughter in law every single morning after the birth of your first grandchild, read her the weather report, then tell her how to dress the baby, and what she should do with it that day? When she was 35 years old and on her second child?

4) Did you con your new daughter in law into, without her knowing what was going on, forging a painting that you were supposed to have turned over to your ex 10 years ago (but have been fighting over, ever since) ? Did you rope her into triangulation over your divorce settlement from a decade ago? 

5) Did you, upon being told not to, sneak around the corner to force feed your grandchild a flan that the dog had peed on? 

6) Did you unload useless household crap on the happy couple (when you yourself lived in a 4000 sq ft , 3 story suburban home while they lived in an 800 sq ft townhouse w 2 kids, 2 dogs ) and then pitch a fit when you invited yourself over, used your key to let yourself in, and the crap you just off-loaded wasn’t there? Did you give them a huge Mary Poppins style pram, when they lived on the second floor with no elevator? 

7) Did you offer to throw them a party - then built a new addition to your house, a whole new wing - then complain you had no $$$ for food, and force a struggling young couple to pay for this party (that they didn’t want in the first place) so you could show off your grandchild to your own friends? Bc you didn’t invite any of theirs?

8) Did you force everyone to eat a roast that you made, after you made a toast and broke a wine glass, which shattered into the cooked meat? 

9) Did you offer to pay your young adult son + his wife $200 to paint the 4th story dormer on your beach house (they were so poor they agreed to do it) and then when they were done, refuse to pay them?

10) Have you ever eaten all of the special ice cream your d-i-l hid, in the back of the freezer, so she could have just one thing for herself - then eaten it again, when your son replaced it? 

Bonus) Do you buy xmas abd bday gifts for your s or d in law? In the 26 years we’ve been married - Hubs’ dad always gave me a gift card to some store I liked. A mensch. My m-i-l, if she gave me anything at all, gave me a “gift w purchase” that she got for buying makeup.

The good news is : I have vowed not to do any of these things to my own children's partners

The Soul of the Garden

Only a year ago, I started building my backyard garden. Prior to my recent efforts, this had been hell’s half acre, a wasteland of dead stick trees and dead grass. Giant muddy areas churned up by dogs. I began last summer by planting three areas of native plants, attractive to pollinators. Butterflies, bees, and dragonflies soon followed. Drawing insects by providing a food source then attracted birds of all kinds : hummingbirds, cardinals, jays, Carolina chickadees, Robins, doves, mockingbirds, kites, owls, hawks, and more. Raccoons, possums, skunks, armadillos and bunnies also stop by. It’s a little wild, but that’s by design.

Tree of 1000 chimes - all my wind-chimes go onto this one tree. As the breeze moves around, the tree sings. I can tell by which chime rings the way the wind is blowing.

Above: This is where I have coffee and read the paper every morning. Below: I owned a motley collection of Salterini mid century modern iron patio furniture, acquired from years of yard and estate sales, which I recently had refinished.        

                                                                Now it all matches!

Above: Trees and sky..... the view from my pool as I float around, listening to the birds chirp, or music playing from the stereo speakers piped outside. I am so fortunate to dwell in this peaceful, beautiful bubble.

   There is still plenty of grass for dogs to play frisbee. Fruit trees and vegetables are mixed in with my other plants.

A neighbor gave me all sorts of pots and garden art doo-dads.....now all I have to do is fill them. 

Ollie the Owl 

                     Close-up of a bee on an echinacea, or Mexican coneflower.

My greatest joy is flowers, and I’m still working towards a goal of year-round blooms from different species. Here is a sampling of what bloomed for me in Year One :

The garden is a welcoming refuge for all : Above, Neighbors over for social distancing Happy Hours

Brewing beer

Making pizza 

Quiet time

Sunday brunch 

       My beautiful friend Adrienne at a garden party we threw pre Covid19

                                       
Hubs enjoys his Father’s Day gift, above

                                                           
                                                            ......and the pool, above

                                                                    Cocktail hour

Credit goes to my hubs, who supplied all the labor for this project. If you want to see all this loveliness live, come visit some time. February has quince and some early bulbs blooming. March for the daffodils and iris. May and June are the best for roses. July for coneflowers, day lillies, and daisies.