Wednesday, June 28

Someone told me it's all happening at the zoo.

I do beleive it! I do beleive it's true! MMMmmmmm mmm Wo wo whoa, whoa who whooaahhh! Mmmmm Oh it's a light and tumble journey, from the East side to the park but blah blah blah blah.

I get out of the subway today, and see a crowd of people on the sidewalk watching a stopped car in the middle of the street. It was a black Mercedes, and there were two men being arrested by undercover cops. One of the cops was emptying a snub-nosed pistol of its bullets onto the street, and both the men were cursing. So I kept walking home, and immediately on the corner about 8 cop cars suddenly filled themselves with officers and squealed off south down Nostrand, the long avenue next to my street. I walked down the block to my house, and there were cop cars everywhere--cops walking around staring at the roofs of buildings, walking into basement doors. Seems like there was a bust of some kind. I don't know. I asked a cop what was going on, and he told me they were chasing somebody. I'm sure I'll hear more about that in the news. Made me think about what kind of neighborhoods these really are, because so far I’ve kind of had an idealistic view (Idealism? Me? Who would have thunk it?). Even right now there's the sound of a helicopter circling very closely, and a megaphone with a woman's voice on it saying something. My landlady told me they’re chasing a man with a gun through people’s backyards…but that's not a bad thing, its just Brooklyn! Right? Oh, how sweet it is!

UPDATE: My landlady came in just now, said they had closed off the block recently looking for a man with a gun running through people's back yards. I don't know why. Maybe he stole pizza, maybe he was selling crack, maybe he caught all 151 pokemon.

Other than that, long day. Classes today, got a special presentation on Special Ed students and why inclusion classes (where they are attending normal classes with aides or not) are important--we saw a report by 1970s Geraldo Rivera on tape. It was about the Willowbrook school, which used to be on Staten Island. Over 5,000 retarded men, women and children stayed there just sitting around, because there was an absurdly small number of aides to take care of them. The problem was not only that they were sitting around but being treated like animals--they were fed for three minutes each meal, allowed to run around unsupervised and create an unsanitary situation for themselves, smearing feces on everything. I think they said that about 1 in 4 people there contracted Hepititus within six months of arriving at the institution. So. I'm okay with Special Ed kids.

After classes I went to the city-wide job fair, which was a bust. There weren't many schools there and there were long lines to interview, which was the only thing that people were doing. I waited on the wrong line for a while, then went and interviewed at a middle school. The woman said she thought I was a strong candidate but that they had probably already found who they were looking for. Not a terrible peice of news, I'd say, but I still need to keep looking! I'll call more people tomorrow. I did find out that Region 6 has also been opened up to fellows like me due to a lack of Region 5 jobs, however. Which is fabulous news, because that's where I LIVE. Yay!

Tomorrow I'm doing my in-class poetry demo lesson for Professor Shweky, the man who leads my School and the Community class, which is really the only class I take right now (although it's 7.5 hours of it per day). I'm going to be presenting a poem by James Stephens which I rather like. I think the lesson I'll be doing will be about how Stephenson characterizes Tom and God in the poem by using syntax and different grammarial styles. But more on that tomorrow!

My second cat, the last one one I grew up with, has a tumor in his stomach. My parents are going to put him to sleep. His name is Moses Braunstein, and he is a very excellent (and Jewish) cat. I am going to miss the way he mumbles his meows with his mouth closed when you say his name, and how he pulls himself across the carpet by his front claws while laying down. I think I'm going to try and get home this weekend to say goodbye to him, feed him some cheese. He'd do it for me, I think. I love you, Mo-mo.

Pictures: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4
The words are from a Simon and Garfunkel song.

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