I have long subscribed to the theory that there are good and bad sides of my personality and that they constitute, at times, separate people. There is Good Dana, who does most of the teaching and writing and bill paying and grocery shopping and there is bad dana. bad dana wants nothing more than to drink budweiser in a can and play Grand Theft Auto late at night when she should be sleeping for class. bad dana orders pizza for dinner when she was supposed to cook. bad dana blows off deadlines and sometimes goes driving as far as she can in one direction, just to see what’s out there. Sometimes she teaches class and that’s when things get interesting, ’cause she tells it like it is. bad dana doesn’t want to have kids anytime soon and she thinks it’s funny when the dog figures out how to turn on the cold water tap and floods the bathroom. bad dana loves action movies and the simpsons and cold beer on a hot day. She’d much rather play in the wading pool with willa dog than grade dozens of papers. She can cook anything, but she makes a hellacious mess doing it and then she doesn’t want to clean up. She leaves the clean laundry in the bin rather than hanging it up — bad dana hates hanging up clothes, dusting, and washing toilets and showers. bad dana reads when she is supposed to be working, and watches every episode of Law and Order like three times, and goes to the bookstore when she is supposed to go to the dr for her allergy shot (bad dana hates shots and needles). bad dana loves bars and hates malls. bad dana is a helluva lot of fun, but a bad houseguest after a while when you need to go back to your regular life and get things done.

Sometimes in the summer, I spend all of my time battling bad dana — otherwise, I think I would get nothing done. At all. Really.

I finally  got a Playstation 2 of my very own. I have SO MUCH work and GTA and Katamari Damacy have been calling to me…. I heart video games. I remember spending summers conquering the first Zelda and (eek, this really tells you how old I am) the very first Super Mario Bros on what was the new Nintendo Game system. My parents stupidly hooked it up to the tv in their room and would have to chase us out so they could go to bed at night, my brother and I were so addicted. It’s the challenge of it, I swear, and the payoff over time as you conquer pieces of the puzzle. Clay also had this cool vampire game called Castlevania or something that I really liked and would yell obscenities at when I got stuck on a particular level. We were mad gamers, for the time (no Game Boy yet and no cheat books) and would spend every minute my parents would allow playing. Then came games on the PC (which was a 486, remember that????) — Tetris and, on a later computer, the first iterations of Sim City. I spent an entire finals week in college procrastinating on all my papers because I was on a roll on Sim City. Fueled by coffee, cigarettes, and Diet Coke, I built cities only to destroy them through natural disasters and biowarfare. Those were the days.

Crap. I was supposed to write about either HIV/AIDS or North vs South Korea — those were my students’ presentations today and they all did an excellent job. This group continues to amaze me — with their focus, intelligence, drive and overall their honesty and interest. I am sure all will go far and I am so excited to see what their college years hold for them. I should throw a party for them after the first couple weeks of class….

I was in so many meetings today and have read so many student papers that, while I am supposed to be blogging about either capital punishment, interracial adoption or gay marriage, right now I am running short on firing brain cells. Here’s what I have to offer right now:

1. Lindsay Lohan  needs to go to jail. This whole DUI thing is serious and should be treated that way
2. Never ever teach two classes at the same time in the summer or you are spread too thin and can’t give your students the attention they deserve
3. Sometimes you need to stand up for what is right, but also for being treated as you deserve. Being a bright, outgoing, professional woman with a lot of expertise is nothing to apologize for and yet I know many women who spend a lot of time saying “I’m sorry” just for being who they are

It blows me away that more people don’t worry about global warming, each and every day. I mean seriously. Maybe it’s from growing up in the West and watching the landscape literally change before my very eyes, but I have known seemingly as long as I’ve been around that we are changing the world we live in and not for the better. Each severe storm, each cataclysmic summer temperature or winter cold spell makes me worry even more. I’ve worried about the environment far longer than I ever worried about nuclear war or drugs or the end of the world (as in the End Times). There isn’t enough habitat left for the many species that predate us, the glaciers are shrinking, my beloved mountains are changing shape and texture. This was never our playground but our shelter — our alpha and omega, this beautiful planet. We need to treat it with the respect it deserves while it isn’t too late.

Change your lightbulbs. Carpool and have only one car per household. Get a hybrid. Use and re-use cloth and plastic bags and never take a bag when you don’t absolutely need it. Recycle in the best of ways — used book stores, hospital thrift shops, garage sales and Craig’s List. Only have lights on if you’re in the room and you need them to see. Unplug phone chargers and appliances when not in use — and unplug tvs and computers when out of town (better for your electronics, anyhow). Use the library and netflix instead of purchasing new movies. Re-use water bottles and get a hard plastic nalgene, and use plastic cups instead of styrofoam (damn you, Dunkin Donuts, btw). Use recycled office supplies — paper (included printer paper), notebooks, pencils. Buy organic when you can, especially dairy and fruits. Remember that each of the things we do, we do not just for ourselves but for the world around us.

I don’t do all of these things, all of the time. I try. You can too. Start today.

I just finished reading the last of the Harry Potter books. No, don’t worry — I won’t give away anything here. But as I spent today reading, I realized that it is has been nearly ten years since I read the first one aloud to my seventh graders. I was a newly married, fresh-out-of-school language arts teacher and over the summer I had discovered the book everyone was talking about and I wanted to share it with my kids, these 13-year-olds who soon became the center of my world.

There was no Columbine then, or 9/11. I really thought that most evil was the book sort, and that I would be able to fix any problems they had. I thought I would always be married and had no inkling that I would move cross-country not once but twice in becoming Dr. Anybody. I still drove my first car, then, a hot-red Honda Civic I loved dearly and nicknamed Mama Day. Hell, I was only a couple of years out of undergrad, and no long past the legal drinking age.

And now? Ten years later, on the day I finished the last page of the last book?

I became that doctor. I have a job I love. I’m not Mrs Anyone anymore, I’m me. These past ten years, although hard as hell at times, have been kinder to me than I deserved probably. And I still get lost in a good book, shutting the world out until I know what has happened to the characters I’ve come to love. Thank you, Ms. Rowling, for Harry and Hermione, Ron and Ginny and Fred and George and all the countless hours I’ve lost in the world you created. I won’t say goodbye because I know I can go back there any time I wish — and relive all that magic. My matched set of books, all hardcover, waits for the next person to discover them as I did.

Thank you.

In the PFSP class, we have been reading about a lot of things associated with the war and other issues (kind of took off in that direction from having read Kite Runner) and one of the things we read and talked about yesterday had to do with the idea of basic human rights and if they should extend to prisoners. We watched a Frontline special after reading about the Geneva Convention as well as information about the idea of “enemy combatants”. Much of this isn’t new to anyone, but the question comes as to the degree to which prisoners can and should be deprived of their rights.

This is the first time I have thought this deeply about this issue, to be honest. I saw all the coverage of Abu Ghraib when it happened and I have followed the news about prisoners at Gitmo, but I had never read parts of the Geneva Convention before, or understood our process of declaring some people to be enemy combatants. And here’s what I think: Do I think some people deserve to be tortured? Like Osama bin Laden? Sure — there are those who deserve all sorts of evil things done to them for the evil they themselves perpetrated, but then it becomes a slippery slope. Once we open the door to torture, then anyone can be declared an enemy combatant — and not just by us. Our soldiers and citizens could be tortured by others too and when I come right down to it, the Geneva Conventions were drafted for a reason. Perhaps the ability to rise above the level of torture and base animal behavior is what marks us as different — or it could.

I would like to think that the United States can still fight terror without making prisoners disappear or violating their basic human rights. We need to raise the bar, and fight back in thoughtful, effective ways — rather than relying on the idea that the enemy is bad and anything we do is justified. When we do that, what makes us different?

Was reading something somewhere (Huffington Post maybe? I forget) that was talking about all the anti-American sentiment throughout the U.S. and in the world right now. Other countries hate us, the President’s approval rating is in the toilet, and we’re the easy butt of jokes right now. Right? But here’s the thing — I have never hated America or being an American, although I have hated many of the things my country has done both here and overseas, particularly in the name of patriotism (and not just the Iraq War. What about the Japanese internment camps, for example?)

You see, when I think of what an American, a true American, is to me, I never think of George Bush (either one). In fact, I pretty much don’t think of a President, although I think we have had some excellent leaders. Here are, to me, the real Americans, who epitomize what it means to be free: free thinking, free to speak, engaged and interested in the world around them.

• Henry David Thoreau
• Malcolm X
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Eleanor Roosevelt
• Martin Luther King
• Cesar Chavez
• Mark Twain
• John Muir
• W.E.B. duBois
• Willa Cather
• Harper Lee
• Harriet Tubman
• Margaret Cho
• Thomas Jefferson
• Benjamin Franklin
• Dorothy Day
• Thomas Merton
• Rachel Carson

I know I am forgetting so many people — I’m curious, though. Who would you add?

Am watching Last King of Scotland while getting ready for class tomorrow and this week. One of the great things about laptops and wireless technology is that I can multitask and keep up with my movies. It may sound weird, but in this day and age I am so used to doing more than one thing at a time that just watching a movie or a television program is hard for me. On the other hand, I wonder too how much I get out of what I am seeing when I am trying to do more than one thing at a time. Can we ever really do more than one thing at a time, anyway? I mean, don’t we have to change from one thing to another, focus now on writing this post and then next on watching the movie? Is it possible for me to write or read, and listen to something else and actually do both? Hmmm.

This will be a better week, I hope. I have a new laptop and I don’t think I lost too much. Hopefully the headaches will be better. Every day is a new day.

that my inside thermometer, in the apt, registers 86. Supposedly the heat index hit 101 yesterday. Screw this. I’m moving to Montana. Or Maine. Or Venus — or whatever the planet is that is covered in ice. Jupiter? Hell if I know.

We’ve closed off the kitchen and other rooms we don’t use so the a/c will work more efficiently and not add any more to the obvious global warming population but as a result, the dog and two cats have drawn bizarre Maginot lines all over the place and skirmishes erupt daily. We’re all cranky. Then….. get this….. are you ready?

MY LAPTOP CRASHED. And I’m the kind of person who can write a book and teach two classes without a computer, right? A portable computer, in particular. Chris resuscitated it long enough to start the backup process and I am at my wits’ end, but too hot to know what to do next. All the stuff I need is on there — like student papers I need to respond to — but triage has taken over and Chris (wisely) will not let me touch it before all backups are complete, because God only knows what I could do it. And I had a migraine and missed part one of Bronx is Burning. Dammit.

Life is tough here in the Garden State.

The class I am teaching everyday right now is the pre-freshman summer workshop, which is designed to help prepare them for the reading and thinking load in their college classes. The main book we use, along with a reading and study strategy guide, is Kite Runner. I’ve taught KR with the basic skills reading class for the last six semesters, and it’s a book that students find compelling and important. This time, though, as we focus on reading across the fictional world of the novel and the real, non-fictional political landscape of Afghanistan, we all have a lot of questions. America didn’t just become involved in the lives and politics of Afghanis after 9/11. We funded the mujahideen and then the Taliban against the Soviets in the decades leading up to 9/11.

Which leads us to Fahrenheit 9/11, a problematic film but one that raises important questions for all of us to think about. We live in a world today where countries from opposite sides of the globe live very intertwined lives, and nowhere is this more the case than the Middle East through to Afghanistan. Iraq. Israel. So many other, smaller places. And now Iran. The idea here is to see the film, read pros and cons about it, and take that back to the story of Kite Runner, which is very much the story of a world we, in modern society, created.

At least that’s the plan.