I had actually been planning on doing a lot of work on the story, especially over Christmas.  I figured I needed to sit down with someone at a local Starbucks and do some interviewing.  It seemed integral to the story since it takes place at a Starbucks.  I wanted to sound authentic.  But that interview never happened.  I went in to talk to someone one day, but the place was busy and she never got around to me.  So I bolted, figuring I would try again later.  I thought I would do it during our recent work stoppage at school, but that didnt’ work out, either.  Then I figured I’d wait around until I found time.

Then…bam!

I read this totally awesome dystopian war story in The New Yorker two weeks ago, “A Brief Encounter With the Enemy.”  I was stunned at how great it was.  In fact, I found it so totally awesome that I read it twice and had a lengthy discussion about it with a colleague.  Then I read an interview with the author, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh.  He talked about the boredom behind being totally faithful to current events, and how too many recognizable facts and details can interfere with storytelling.  He mentioned that it is evocation that excites him more, and how artists can often get at something deeper if they approach their subjects obliquely.  The lightbulb in my head clicked on.  I realized that my story doesn’t have to be set exactly in a Starbucks, and that I had spent far too much time being fixated on that and worrying about how I would fit authentic Starbucks details into my story.

I sat down for several hours last weekend and wrote a second draft that generalized the cafe experience.  And while I was feeling editorial, I took the story out of Chicago entirely, settling instead on a general urban setting.  The more I worked at it, the better I started to feel about where the story was going.  I worked more on the story Sunday morning, mostly beefing up an anorexic scene that screamed “lazy writing!” when I read over it.  Now I’m considering two more tweaks before I send it to some friends.  I’m eager to hear what they think.

Finally, I have realized I was committing a Writer’s Sin.  I was moping around and waiting for something to happen with my story rather than asserting myself and looking for solutions.  I wasn’t even experimenting with solutions.  It’s the same thing I would henpeck my students for doing.  So why do I let myself get away with it?  Thankfully, not all my common sense as a writer was lost.  I was still reading and thinking about other work by established writers, and that ended up making a big difference in what I’m doing with “Anthropology.”

That’s my long-time friend and co-worker Colleen Valentine sitting next to me.  The photographer had just gotten out of her car and was kneeling in the parking lot across the street when she snapped this.  She talked to us about the strike for quite a while as she took pictures.

This isn’t to say that things didn’t feel different, it’s just to say that I didn’t feel like I own the building.  But I do feel like I’ve weathered the most turbulent storm of my teaching career, one capable of wanton destruction, the wake of which I would be caught in for many years, and I know full well that I couldn’t have made it without my union brothers and sisters.  There is a tremendous sense of security in that feeling, so more than anything else, I feel secure.

I should also mention that I feel well-fed–even over-fed.  There was food all over the place on the picket line, and so much “welcome back” food in offices today that it might as well have been the day we go on Christmas vacation.  So I guess it’s back to the regular workout routine for me.

My desk, just as I left it--deliberately arranged so in the event of a scab assuming my position.

One of the first pieces I ever wrote on The Seeker was this one about a school board in Texas that approved teachers to carry weapons as a means of school security:  You and Your Local School Board.  I cautioned at the end that school boards need to be monitored closely.  Last winter, I wrote Watch Your Borders.  It was about area Tea Party school board members in a neighboring district who were trying to put the screws to teachers sympathetic to the Wisconsin protestors opposing the over-the-top legislation proposed by Scott Walker that eventually eliminated collective bargaining rights for public employees.  Violating the constitutional rights of those teachers, and incurring untold costs in possible lawsuits, meant nothing to the people leading the charge.  I never imagined while writing those pieces that they would essentially be a mash-up of what has happened in my district over the last year and a half.

Some of the tactics used against us were shrewd, methodical, and plotted far ahead of time so as to cause maximum devastation. Something as profound as cancelling the health insurance of an entire collective bargaining unit isn’t a step you take without knowing far ahead of time exactly how to do it legally. Other tactics were used for pure intimidation. If nothing else, some people have shown that not only are they bullies, but they are the worst kind: They connived far ahead of time exactly how to plunge their knives as deep into our backs as they could. How can those people ever be trusted again?

I can’t help but feel that if more people were watching the school board instead of letting them run rampant, so much of this could have been avoided.  Had more stakeholders checked in with contract negotiations and took the board to task for refusing to talk to the union and walking away from negotiations, this could have been resolved earlier and perhaps without a strike.  If there is one thing we know from history, it is that when good people fail to act, bad things can happen.  I am convinced that Tea Party politics played a huge part in what happened.  I think certain people were looking for a way to break the union’s back and to have their names at the top of the list of the gallant patriots who seized control of public education in Lake County.  Once we gave in, the template would have been established and other districts would have followed it to the letter to break union solidarity.  Thankfully, we held the line.  Our unity helped win us a fair contract.  How we did it can now be the template for other unions that find themselves in similar situations.

I woke up at 4:30 this morning to work out and get a head start on picketing.  Before I went anywhere, though, I checked online and saw that the BOE and Union had reached a tentative agreement.  Picketing was called off for the day, though union members were supposed to meet at the union hall early this afternoon to go over the particulars of the contract and vote to ratify.  There would be a checkpoint, too, where we would have to prove identification.  I went back to bed and slept extra long, which helped ease a lot of my stress, and did my normal workout once I woke up.  Shortly after, I headed to the meeting.

You could feel the collective hopefulness once you entered the union hall.  It cushioned my steps and raised my chin.  Looking around, it appeared that I wasn’t the only one who benefitted greatly from extra sleep.  There were far fewer bags under eyes than I had seen for three days on the picket line, and nobody was burdened by the weight of sweatshirts, hats, gloves, and thick winter coats.  Faces looked healthy and vibrant, whereas just yesterday they were pale and wind-beaten.  We all looked younger, in a way we all seem to when we return from summer vacation.  Surprisingly, the negotiations team looked somewhat rested.  There was no media allowed in the room, but there were photographers circulating.

Two announcements were made right away:  We would stay as long as we needed to take care of business, and the tentative agreement is not a panacea.  We then got right down to the nitty gritty of the new deal.  In short time, I understood how my pay was going to be impacted for at least the next three years (and likely far beyond that since I’m near the top of the pay scale), plus how my insurance coverage was going to change.  I had suspicions about the insurance coverage since that was a major sticking point, but it worked out well enough for me that I have no complaints.

I cast my vote at 3:23pm, knowing full well that it was a pivotal decision that will impact the rest of my life, and one I hope to not have to make again in three more years.

An hour later, the word was out:  The union ratified the agreement.

The Zion Paddy Wagon acts as a powerful symbol: It tells passersby that the cops are ready, warns strikers to be mindful of their conduct, and also implies that there has been trouble.

We have a four-year old technology school in my district, and because of the nature of how it was staffed, the teachers there are young and with little experience.  Of the thirty of so teachers, only one is tenured.  I was thinking about how critical the tech school staff is to our cause, and figured that I would spend most of today with them in the hopes that having some more experienced bodies in their mix would bolster their enthusiasm and bouy the feeling of comradery, similar to what I experienced when I walked station to station Friday.  I showed up at 7:15; it was 30° and windy.  The sun hadn’t yet made it up.  There were 25 of us huddled together.

It wasn’t long before I learned that the only thing more difficult that standing on a picket line in freezing temperatures is sitting on a picket line in freezing temperatures.  I brought some chairs, and eventually sat in one for a while and chatted with a long-time coworker, but couldn’t take it anymore once my legs froze.  I got on my feet and walked laps around the school until 11am, and then headed for some lunch.  After lunch, the sun had broke free from the morning cloud cover and was fully ablaze in the sky.  It made a huge difference, though the wind was still substantial.

The lot of us continue to be amazed at how great the weather has been, despite the coldness early on today.  But I think this morning was a shot across the bow.  Mother Nature is warning us to get these issues wrapped up.  If we think this morning was cold and uncomfortable, it’s nothing compared to the punishing frigidity she routinely dishes out at this time of year.  According to the forecast, we have two more days before the high temperatures will be lower than the lowest temps we’ve experienced thus far.

Not that it matters to me.  Sure I’d love it to be warmer and more comfortable, but I’ll be damned if the temperatures and conditions keep me away from my due diligence on the line.

We had a strong showing by both retirees and students.  There were no less than two dozen students out with us most of the day, and most of them were fresh faces that weren’t around yesterday.  The retired football coach was out today, too.  He provides a substantial physical presence, and is also a member of the community and staunch supporter of our cause.  I couldn’t help but feel some sense of reassurance when he told us he had called board members and even tried to enter the school to talk with people.

I’ve been awed by the support we’ve received all around.  What’s more, I can’t complain about how we’ve been treated–I never expected to be so well-fed! Not only did we have a decent supply of food from within our ranks, but outside food came in a steady flow throughout the day. Somebody from Rhode Island called in a massive pizza delivery for us by way of a pizza place in a neighboring suburb. Students prepared sweets and brought them to us. Water continues to be delivered, along with coffee and donuts. If I’m not careful, I’ll end up gaining weight.

Support from a parent.

Today I learned that it’s hard as hell to stand for long periods of time.  Two hours in this morning, and my lower back was tired.  It usually manifests itself that way through numbness and a bit of achy crampiness.  What worries me most is that I’m at a peak level of fitness in my life, and I’m feeling the physical effects early on in the strike.  I don’t know how others are handling it.  If it’s any comfort, it will be different if we’re still on strike come Monday.  We won’t be spending the entire day, but are expected to work at least a two-hour shift.

Walking eases the crampiness and restores the feeling in my back.  That’s the primary benefit–the secondary is that I can walk station-to-station and see what’s up elsewhere along the picket.  I’ve spent quality time talking with colleagues who I never see and would otherwise never have time to say anything to, much other than “Hello” or “Good morning.”  That’s an odd circumstance with teaching:  We can be quite tribal, but not necessarily by choice.  Each subject area has its own mindset.  Science and math can be very analytical, even black and white in terms of how they see things.  Social studies can be political.  English, of course, is very literary and intellectual.  Those cognitive bonds keeps us together and enrich us, no different than a group of friends who loves NASCAR or Dungeons and Dragons.  Furthermore, each department has its own office, and our classrooms are clustered together.  Hence, we see the most of others in our department, and tribalism results.  Given this, if the Board of Education wants to fracture our unity, keeping us on the picket line is having the opposite effect.  When I see a math teacher and a shop teacher who are as angry as my department members and me, and who are willing to grit their teeth over a numb, crampy back and endure the elements, that strengthens my resolve.

The strike protesters were out again today, too, for about half an hour.  They seem to be led by the township supervisor, who yesterday could be found crying on the Chicago area news about the dire financial circumstances in Zion and how the union is asking for too much–the taxpayers can’t afford this, dontchaknow?  As township supervisor, she makes $85K a year, plus benefits (and that includes $5K a year to put towards her own education).  Around Illinois, the average salary for her position is about $30K.  The taxpayers are forking out for her, and she makes more than most of the teachers and all of the support staff in the district.  So tell me:  Who can’t afford whom?  The school has provided phenomenal support to her and her causes for many years, but it looks now like there might be a significant change in that.  That’s one of the tragedies of a strike, though:  Bridges get burned, and they sometimes never get rebuilt.  You go in knowing that, but you also go in knowing who is on your side.

Elsewhere, the tit-for-tat is in full swing.  The Board of Education cancelled health insurance for the entire bargaining unit this morning (even those who are not with us), but now they have to deal with garbage build-up since the local sanitation workers have refused to pick up the district’s garbage.  They won’t cross the picket line.  Symbolically, that feels just about perfect.

Finally, someone drove by about 2PM this afternoon and yelled out, “I hope you get everything you deserve!”  Most of us waved or pumped a fist in the air, taking it as a nice show of support.  But it’s also a masterful example of double-entendre.

Zion-Benton district teachers on strike

My feet were on the ground at 7:10am, which is about 20 minutes earlier that I usually show up for work.  I was anticipating warmer weather throughout the day, so had dressed a little lighter than I wish I had.  Still, a t-shirt, flannel shirt, squall jacket, stocking cap, and a double-layer of thin gloves was enough to hold off the 24-degree chill.

I stationed myself at the main entrance to the school, along with about 15 other teachers.  We deliberately paced back and forth, having been informed that we shouldn’t be standing but rather walking, and that if we were walking everything was okay.  There just wasn’t any hurry to get anywhere.  Also, since we were technically crossing the street, we had to touch the curb on both sides.

A cop rolled down the driveway at 7:30 and demanded that we stay off the sidewalks and crosswalks.  Instead we were supposed to stand behind barriers about 40 feet up on the front lawn of the school.  She also told us to stop blocking cars from entering or leaving.  This was the first major tension of the day:  The sidewalks and crosswalks are public and we have every right to walk on them for as long as we wish.  Several of us shouted such to her, and informed her that nobody had been blocked entering or leaving–the driver she had seen leaving just one minute previous stopped voluntarily, rolled down her window, and was asking us questions.  We didn’t mention that she sounded very supportive.  None of us moved.  I kept pacing, thinking to myself that even if nobody else keeps crossing and recrossing, that I was going to.  I started to wonder what cold metal was going to feel like around my wrists, and was ready for it.

Two more cops showed up to form a constabulatory huddle and discuss who knows what.  We kept moving.  Nothing else was said.

The sun broke out in the open by 7:40, and things began to warm up.  By the end of the day, it was 45 degrees, bright and sunny.  Despite that, my nose was red and drippy throughout.

We received an incredible amount of support from the community today.  There were at least a dozen students picketing with us, plus numerous other local union representatives stopped by to walk with us, chat for a few minutes, and let us know they were behind us all the way.  People showed up unexpectedly with cases of water, boxes of coffee, donuts, candy, and words of encouragement.

I wish I could say that everybody we saw today was hospitable and encouraging.  We had several flare-ups of jackass behavior from angry residents.  One woman sped past the school, hung her head out the window, and screamed that we were crazy and that we needed to get back to work.  An old man slowed his truck at the west entrance to the school at 2pm and screamed, “Get back in there and get to work!”  I don’t think he took out repeated responses of “Thank you!  Have a nice day!” as sincere.  There was a group of six community members across the street from us early this morning, protesting the strike.  They lasted about a half hour.

We were mooned by somebody around noon.  I wasn’t sure if it was a show of support or dissention.

I got home at 3:45.  My legs were cramped; dead.  I slept for almost three hours on the futon.

The auto-dialer called at 7:30 this evening.  We’re back on the picket line tomorrow.

Rachael Stark and I became fast friends in the fiction workshop at The Skids last summer; in fact, she was the one who got me started on referring to Skidmore College as The Skids.  Anyhow…  she lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two daughters, and some dogs.  In addition to being a yoga master, she’s also a professor of English, Literature, and Creative Whining (as she says) at NYU.  She’s also been working on a crime / suspense thriller that she is currently shopping around to various publishers.  She told me last summer that she was heading to India this winter, and I encouraged her to start a blog about her experiences.  She finally listened.  You can chronicle her experiences here:  The Neurotic Traveler:  A crazed New Yorker shares her travel woes.  If you hurry, you can pick up right as she arrives in India–which is right about now!

Elsewhere, my former Northwestern classmate Connie Vaughn has started up a blog about running (and life).  Connie was an original subscriber to The Seeker back in the day, so it’s an honor to give her a plug here.  She unexpectedly found herself back in her childhood home a few years back, and has weathered the boomeranging like a champ.  I’ve checked out Decade:  What are you running towards? on several occassions and am always reminded of how much I enjoy her insights about running and life, and how much I enjoy her writing.  You can catch her here (Decade:  What are you running towards? ), but you better move fast–she sure is!

Have a safe and happy new year.

~ Jeff

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,400 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 40 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

None of this is to say that I’m poor.  I’m not.  I have very little debt. In fact, besides the condo, the only thing I owe money on is the laptop I’m using right now. I haven’t missed any bill payments since I don’t know when. I’m not struggling to make ends meet. I’m not hungry. My pantry is stocked for nuclear winter. My school district is preparing to strike, and I’m set-up well enough to navigate those rough waters for as long as I think they will last. I can live a comfortable, somewhat modest life on my salary and savings.  I’m not going to be changing jobs or forced to relocate, so I can in all likelihood ride this out over the next several years with minimal consequence to my normal life.  But I’m still facing the cold reality right now that I won’t soon have any significant release of financial pressure.  By my estimation, I have roughly the same chances of getting a refinance that I do of winning the lottery.

So to spite Fate, I’ve decided to play the lottery.

What do I have to lose, besides the $10 I allow myself per week?  I barely feel the pinch of $10 throughout the course of a normal week anyhow, and $10 isn’t that much to play the sucker on Wednesday and Saturday nights.  Besides, if I follow the right superstitions, won’t that increase my chances of winning?  Let’s hope so.  I realized three weeks into this ill-advised diversion that I had already established a set of routines:  I play Powerball only, I buy five double-play tickets per week at the gas station down the street from my condo early in the week (preferably on Sundays), I get quick-pick numbers only, I stick the tickets to the refridgerator for Wednesday’s drawing and then move them to my desk for Saturday’s drawing, I roll over winnings of $10 or less into the next week’s drawings, and I check the winning numbers on my home computer only.

I can’t think of another area of my life that has become characterized by such structure so quickly, except maybe running 5Ks.  But that’s more about preparation to succeed, not the blind hope of winning big.  My own strange wealth-motivated behaviors aren’t the only ones I’ve noticed in the past few months, either.  I have taken considerable note of what happens when lottery jackpots soar so high that the mere contemplation of the sum is enough to induce vertigo. There was such a jackpot a few weeks ago when Powerball was jacked up to $245 million.  I no sooner said “Lottery pool” in the office than seven people jumped in–3 of whom said they’d never so much as bought a lottery ticket before. The possibility of sudden filthy wealth had us all seeing stars. Several pool jumpers commented optimistically to me, “What the hell?” Given our current labor situation, there were other sentiments expressed, too.  Most of them involved a specific set of instructions about where certain persons can deposit the contract we’ve been offered should we hit the one shot in 195,249,054. Not that it mattered: We bought forty tickets, and none of them scored more than two of the numbers. Maybe next time.

None of these contemplations is meant to gloss over the fact that the lottery is a total sucker’s bet, and the people least financially able to play it are the one who are routinely the biggest suckers.  Never having been a lottery player, I didn’t realize how many lottery games there are, and there are more than enough to feed a serious addiction.  If you consider drawings alone, you can be in as many as forty drawings per week in Illinois.  If you prefer scratch-offs, I counted 48 different ones on the Illinois Lottery website–some that go for $20 and $30 a pop.  Both the drawings and the scratch-offs are glitzy enough to milk the indiscriminate consumer who thinks it’s his turn to beat the odds.  I know first-hand, too, the fool’s paradise the lottery can create in a player’s head.  It’s nice to sometimes daydream about being financially independent for the rest of your life or to envision driving a Lamborghini down Lake Shore Drive to hop on your boat for a cruise on Lake Michigan, but it’s far more important to accept and live within your own reality, and to make steady, if small, steps towards improving it.  I caught myself daydreaming all too much the first few weeks when I started playing, until the reality of the odds finally sunk in.  It took completely crapping out on Powerball and MegaMillions two weeks in a row to see the truth, and that didn’t happen until several weeks into the experience because the first week I won back almost all my money, and the second week I won half of it back.  What kind of fool dreams big after breaking even on a $10 bet?  I’ll give you a hint:  he’s 6′, 195 lbs, and writes a blog.

The idea of sudden filthy wealth from the $245 million jackpot a few weeks back got me to thinking about how I’d spend the money.  Most likely, I would put my teaching career on the back burner for a little while and become a newly-minted Doctor of Creative Writing in about three years.  Most programs can be negotiated in two years, but I’m certain I would lose considerable study time due to the phenomenally long vacations I would take to relieve all the stress from studying.  Heck, I’d probably do the same with a jackpot a mere fraction of the $245 million up for grabs.  Until all that comes to pass, though, I’ll live my normal life in middle-class reality.  I’m pretty happy with it, especially when I can flick Fate in the nose twice a week.