Ordinary People

This post serves as a note to myself...for the future...that I want to write about the film Ordinary People. It's such a rich film. I mean, admittedly, I'm pretty much a baby and it is very easy for most directors to get me blubbering, but the kind of hyper intense emotional reaction I have to this film seems important. Also, the abusive, controlling and emotionally distant parent is the mother, which seems pretty good for 1980. This film is as strikingly evocative for me as reading Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina was; both dare to take on horribly complicated situations and human relationships, and both are able to maintain the humanity of all of the characters...illuminating imperfection, and really getting their hands around the truly complex and dynamic experiences of people. These people do not fuck around.

Also, on the agenda: poem tracing family history through gender and class oppression; alcoholism of the men, ferocity of the women; perhaps beginning with the line "my father's best paying job was cleaning out chemical transport trucks"

I cannot do either of these things right now because I must wake up at 6:30am to take STANDARDIZED TESTS that will allow me to be admitted to the School of Education, pending how will I score on them...

Dear Wisconsin, ALL DECENT EDUCATION POLICY RESEARCH IN EXISTENCE HAS ONLY ILLUMINATED THE FACT THAT STANDARDIZED TESTS ARE RUBBISH. SO, YOU WOULD REQUIRE ME TO TAKE ONE TO BECOME A TEACHER. WAIT, WHAT?! While we're talking, could the taxpayers have back the public money that you gave people in vouchers to pay for private schools? Love, Erin