The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 582
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
BACKGROUND 256: JLHS Part Two 29
Sun., Oct. 14, 2007, 6:24 a.m.
… So there’s yesterday and this morning. I didn’t quite finish typing up last Friday up there. I could just say that the five of us went out for a few beers and that could be the end of it. The five of us was Ben, Ron, Kate, Keely and me. Lisa declined. Or I could go into more detail. We all five of us hopped into Ben’s car and headed into Washington Hts., which is Kate Lupson’s neighborhood. She took us initially to a place across from the Autobahn Ballroom, which, of course, is no longer the ballroom. This was an Irish restaurant and relatively upscale but I can’t think of the name - fairly common Irish name. But they didn’t want us sitting around drinking beer without eating and the guy was very rude to Kate so we left and found ourselves a few blocks away in a Dominican bar. This place was empty and therefore better. The Irish place was filling up fast but that was no reason for the guy to treat us that way. Kate said she’d never been spoken to like that before there. She and Keely had ended up there the week before after we’d all parted from the bar up by Ron’s.
I was happier in a quieter, less crowded spot and this place was empty when we walked in and offering two dollar beers. That sounded good to all of us - none of is is looking to spend money. It reminded me of a long ago evening that must have taken place during that mysterious 1988-90 period when we were moving to Ohio and back and didn’t really live anywhere. We spent that winter of 1987-88 after the fire with Luz’s mother but Martha and Marie and kids were all there at the same time. Then we packed up the Honda with what was left after the fire and went to Ohio but we were back in New York a lot that year. The summer of 1989 we must have been here apartment hunting more than we were in Ohio.
But Luz had this Venezuelan friend named Luis who was a singer and even had a single record of his own that I had at one time but probably is no longer around here. He was a handyman and very good looking and married to someone not as good looking and, of course, he was in love with Luz. But he was a good singer and there was a night in there somewhere when we went to a place right in this area to see him perform. That was exciting for us and for me. I’ve always loved live music and this was pretty good as I recall. There might have been someone else on the bill who was actually the main attraction - a woman, maybe but it’s very vague in my memory. What I remember is that it was right there behind the Autobahn Ballroom and that is about where this place was. I don’t recall street names up there but it’s about a block east of Broadway.
So we went in there and both ate and drank. Mostly it was listening to Kate. She had started in the car on the subject of “professional development” and how useless it is. She said she had sent me a long e-mail to my DOE address talking about how bad it is and making suggestions of things that would be more helpful. I think that Clarke gives them even sillier stuff than we’ve been getting. I have not had strong objections to what we’ve done. I don’t think it has been particularly helpful but I’ve learned to ignore all that sort of stuff. We’d be better of using the time for planning and grading but they have some obligation to give us this sort of stuff. We’re obligated to 80 minutes a month of this stuff but we traded our “professional period”, which is supposed to be devoted to some responsibility that we agree to called “Circular Six”, for this “P.D.” It’s a good trade if they try to check up on the “Circular Six;” it’s a bad deal if they don’t and they never did at TRHS so we had that period free. None of the teachers seem to know anything about “Circular Six” and so don’t know what it is they could be getting themselves into if we didn’t spend that period doing their “P.D.” and so Vieira (like Flynn) has only been requiring three days a week, giving us the other two more or less free. But then it’s hard to know what you’re missing. I mean, both Guzman and Cervantes complained to me about having to move their time cards in the morning. This takes about 15 seconds but they both said that that is an inconvenience. I reminded them that we didn’t have to punch in but they were still grumpy about this and I saw Guzman one day last week giving the new payroll secretary who is assisting Norma this year a hard time about that.
When I saw that, I sat down next to this new woman - Mattie Gomez-Jenkins and she is the one that I saw last month out at the union office on Halsey. I had given her a flier about a workshop for new secretaries and she went to it. She is UFT. But when I sat down, she assumed that I was going to say something in defense of Guzman but I said just the opposite because I remember what it was like at TRHS and how it is supposed to be. I think it is for our own good that we move those cards. That way no one can say we weren’t there when we were. The problem is that this is the first year that they’ve bothered to enforce this rule and Mattie said that it was coming from Rosa. No doubt it came from higher up than that because they should have been doing this all along but in a small school it’s easy to know who is where at just about all times. So add to that the fact that it is this new, unknown person who is suddenly enforcing a rule that no one had to follow before and you get grumbling - even over something so petty as 15 seconds of your time in the morning. But then Johanna Marte, the union rep at Dream Yard upstairs, came down yesterday to warn me that she is being hassled by her guidance counselor about having to park in the back lot instead of the front. This person didn’t have any parking spot at all before this year but the back isn’t good enough. Johanna seemed to think that this person might approach the rest of us with her complaint. I’ve got about six people back there and have not had a single complaint.
So I told Kate that I’d check that e-mail and have a meeting and take an anonymous vote to find out if we agree that the “p.d.” is mostly a waste of time. I’m sure most think that it is, whether or not they would vote that way. But the suggestions for alternatives were good ones: teaching special ed. kids; teaching ESL kids; team teaching, etc. Kate said that she had a lot of ideas about how the time could be better spent and I don’t doubt that for a moment. This was still going on in the Dominican place but by then the conversation was diverging in various other directions, many of them involving school, of course. It is good to get out with teachers and talk about what’s going on. Kate outtalked all of the rest of us by a large margin. She didn’t drink a lot but she drank a couple of vodkas of one sort or another and this only made her more animated. She told us that she had been hyperactive in school but that had been clear for a long time.
Andy had called a couple of times but I didn’t pick up. He might have been getting a poker game together but I’d rather be hanging out like this with these people. That’s two weeks in a row with the same little group - three if you count the previous weekend with a larger contingent. I don’t know how long this will go on but it’s good for now. Keely is really nice and Kate is sweet. Keely mentioned that she had invited her husband but he was doing something in Brooklyn. She said he had gotten a job as a blogger, which is a job that I didn’t know existed, and had been doing some other work after being unemployed for some time. She had literally no money and finally started talking about how much it cost to buy a single cigarette so I gave her money for a pack of cigarettes. I don’t want to encourage it but she looks sexy when she smokes. She said she only smokes one day a week but I have some doubt about that. Maybe it seems like that to her.
I probably drank about six Presidentes but ate some chicharron de pollo and french fries so I was in good shape by eight or nine or so when we started to wind down. I talked to Ron for half an hour as we were all leaning toward the door. He’d been sitting on the other side of Kate and so I had not had a chance to talk much to him. He told me about how precarious the situation in the basement is. That is primarily because Dawn Johannes is a major “dissembling bitch.” I’ve got to look that word up but I got the gist. He says that she’s got Cerrone tied around her little finger but is using him strictly for her own advancement. I don’t know exactly what advancement means in a place like that but mostly it has to do with staying on top of others so that they don’t get on top of you. There is a lot of that sort of petty, jealous, spiteful sometimes politicking going on and she is at the center of a lot of it, having Cerrone in the spot that he’s in and being well connected to David and Clarke, two of the four principal players in the place. I haven’t had anything to do with her fortunately during the past two years - very little since she hung me out to dry in that 10th grade class that first semester. I despised her then and made her part of the 3-headed monster and it’s no surprise that those three heads are three of the few still standing in that place. I’d have to say that it has been some sort of accomplishment for me to still be standing at that place, especially given the start that I had there, but I don’t think of this as anything at all. It’s not like I’ve made any sort of scheme to stay in that place or even move up. I’d get out of there now if I could and I never had any plan to get into the union or otherwise advance in anyway. I was hoping to just be teacher and nothing more until I could get out but, like I said last week, it seems the more I think of getting out, the deeper in I sink. I guess if I ever really decided to be a teacher and to pursue a career, I’d be run out fast. There are not too many left from that first year there outside of the main players, two of whom are just putting in time for retirement (David, Terry) - maybe Hoxha, too. Clarke lucked into a situation where for some reason she isn’t run out for incompetence, malfeasance, sadism, stupidity, inability to deal with people or anything else and so she isn’t about to leave that. Johannes is a master manipulator and Ron is scared to death of her and of being caught between her and her ambitions but whatever they are, I don’t know. Mykal said that she was just waiting to be called to do some sort of missionary type work - yes, she’s a “christian.” Maybe that’s true or maybe Mykal was wrong about that. Other than this bunch, most are gone. I guess Hoxha’s secretary is still there but then according to Keely, she saw Vieira coming out of Hoxha’s office with her blouse on backwards from how it had been when she went in. This wouldn’t surprise me and I mentioned the fact that Hoxha had known her and that I didn’t think she compared to the other guy who interviewed for the job ….