that was it. they canceled my interview, no interview, job filled.  but another one came online this evening split between two schools,one of which is where i did one of my summer art camps.  so maybe i can get a leg up there (although it is the other school of the pair that has the listing.)  but we shall see.

meanwhile i finished sub training today and then had an asthma attack and didn’t go to my rec job.  so that was my chance to see how the 12 workday hour thing would go, but it didn’t and i lost 50 bucks, to boot. sigh.  i wanted, partly, to be sure i was well enough for tomorrow morning’s now-canceled interview.  so i don’t have to be at the studio until 10 tomorrow and then have a three-day weekend.  and it isn’t looking like i’ll be subbing on tuesday, either, what with the intervening holiday, but i’ll use that day to go give out cards at the other elementary schools in the area.  as long as the subbing starts getting SOME sort of regularity in a little while? please?

you can’t tell anything from the instructional vacancy website, i’ve decided.  those seven (7) jobs have cut down to four, three have gone away, INCLUDING the two that called me, one of which i have yet to interview for.  does that mean what? that the interview is just for the numbers?  that there is no reason for the timing of the appearances and non-appearances of the job postings? what? i was supposed to interveiew for one of them this afternoon, but the interview was moved to friday morning. now i don’t know if it’s even necessary, but i’m not gonna worry about it, truly.  i will drive down there at 7:30 friday morning, before i go to the studio.  and then i will just continue on with the substituting.

today was the shadwoing day, during which i sat in a class of 12 1st graders (it’s august, they’ve been in first grade for three weeks and they’re absolutely adorable angels.)  life is good!  i read with some of them, mostly i just watched.  this school is about four blocks from my house and some say they need subs often.  so we shall see, it would be great if i could actually stay in the neighborhood.  i loved it!  there were only 12 because almost half of them weren’t there, probably because of the ernesto confusion, which never materialized at all.

when i came home i was able to find my transcripts, which i hope to be able to fax to them from the training center tomorrow so i can get the correct pay rate, which i discovered this morning has been raised to $9.21 per hour.  this is good too, feels much better than just-under-$9.  i’ve half a mind to concentrate on the subbing for awhile, since i can live on it (along with the rec) if i can get it steady, which everybody says i can.  if i don’t get work for tuesday, i will go around to the local schools and introduce myself.  but i sure hope i’m working somewhere on tuesday!

via kimberly

meanwhile, this came in as SPAM this morning. make sure you click on those links, especially the video; they, at least, are real.  perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate the category “SPAM.”

                  01:00 AM CDT
              TUESDAY, AUGUST 28 (sic), 2006

      FRAUDSTERS DUPE NAGIN, BLANCO, EXECUTIVES, CNN;
  GROSSLY MISREPRESENT HUD, DoE, WAL-MART, EXXON POSITIONS;
            SPAWN FALSE HOPES AMONG BLACKS

  Article: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/28/hud.hoax/
  False announcement in full: http://www.hano.us/falsehopes.html
  Video of false announcement: http://www.hano.us/hudsmall.mpg

An irresponsible, unemployed, middle-class huckster posed as an
assistant to HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson and insinuated himself
into a Gulf Coast Reconstruction Conference yesterday.

Speaking alongside New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor
Kathleen Blanco, the poorly-coiffed scofflaw announced that HUD was
reopening all public housing in New Orleans to former residents.

“It is terribly sad that someone would perpetrate such a cruel hoax
and play on the fears and anxieties of families who are desperate to
return to their homes,” said HUD spokesperson Donna White.
( http://www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr06-neworleansph.cfm)

“We are destroying those homes for good reason,” White continued. “It
is terribly sad that some people can’t understand that. That lack of
understanding speaks for the low level of government education in
this country.”

HUD would like to make the following points perfectly clear once and
for all:

* HUD will NOT refrain from demolishing 5000 units of undamaged
public housing simply because they are undamaged.

* HUD will NOT let people come home simply because they want to, are
part of the city, and constitute a much-needed workforce.

* HUD is NOT encouraging Wal-Mart to withdraw from low-income
neighborhoods in order to “stanch” the flow of money out of these
neighborhoods, nor does it prefer “local” businesses.

* There is NO partnership between HUD, health departments and the CDC
to provide adequate health care to low-income residents.

* A national tax base for public schools is NOT on the horizon of HUD
or the Department of Education. U.S. public schools will continue to
be funded from local taxes, which will continue to mean commensurate
and proportionate levels of funding for schools in rich and poor
neighborhoods. HUD does NOT believe equality of opportunity must
begin in grade one, but believes it is a far more flexible concept.

* Also, Exxon has asked HUD to make clear that it will NOT pay $8.6
billion from its $35 billion in profits this year to close down the
Mississippi River Gulf Outlet and otherwise repair the damage caused
by the oil industry to the natural protections surrounding New
Orleans.

These are all lies, monstrously cruel, generative of oceans of false
hopes and sadness.

The cruelty of fostering false hopes among a population long
victimized by U.S. government policies is unfathomable. Virginia L.,
a would-be resident of the St. Bernard housing project, expressed her
disappointment succinctly. “George W. Bush lives in public housing,”
she said. “Why don’t they evict him?”

A contractor was equally critical. “I’m not angry at them for pulling
this joke, I’m angry that it’s not for real.” (See video.)

May God afflict the perpetrators of this cruel hoax with all the
varieties of damage they so amply deserve.

Media Contacts:

Donna M. White
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
451 7th Street S.W., Washington, DC 20410
202-708-0980

Rene Oswin
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
451 7th Street S.W., Washington, DC 20410
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

                  # 30 #

“The vacancies listed are frozen at this time. Hiring of all teachers is temporarily suspended. The school district is in the process of adjusting teacher units to serve any shift in the student population. However, the district continues to welcome teacher applications. Normal hiring practices are expected to resume during the week of September 4th.”

WTF? I’m getting calls for interviews anyway?

this is no way to survive, you will NOT survive like this, e, you have to CALM DOWN!

1.  i went out to get milk and pick up a pizza, i haven’t eatern all day.  this is not the night, after years, to hie over to the grocery and buy the real food that d. has instructed me on.  not tonight.  just calm down.

2. i responded to the second principa,l who wants me to interview when i’m scheduled to be at substitute training, that i’m scheduled to be at substitute traning and could i do a late afternoon instead and i’ll call her before i go tomorrow morning (schools open at 7:30) to see what can be done.  i need to remember that, if this is the job i’m to get, it’s the job i’m to get and as long as i do everything i can, that’s the way it will be. just calm down.

3. i called d. back and left a message, so perhaps she’ll be able to call me back this evening some time.

4.  i put the laundry in the machine.  that’s doing something.

5.  no caffeine and no wine.  i don’t realy drink, but something tells me in this state i don’t want to risk even a glass of wine, i need to be calm, not nuts.  not that one glass of wine would make me nuts, i don’t mean, but i’m already nuts.  milk.  milk with my pizza.  mmmm.

6.  i shall leave a message for ot that i might have to cancel my appointment tomorrow evening, depending on what happens with this inverview schedule, that way he’ll be forewarned.  there, did that. now, calm down!

7.  meanwhile, half an hour later, the phone rang and it was j., just great, on this most insane night of many.  sigh.  hadn’t talked to her in months and months.  so i did, and what a mess i am.  oh hell, i don’t care.

i’ve had it with the pizza, perhaps some more milk and a little blog reading.  the laundry must be ready for the drier by now. and just calm DOWN.

but at present it looks like ernesto will just skirt us over here on the western edge of the swamp as he sighs up the central/eastern portion of the state mid-week as a low-level ‘cane, which will keep him even further away from nola, of course, although it is still too early, too early really to tell.

that wikipedia has filled out a great deal in the contemporary artist area, other people besides me are adding things now and the links i put in my earlier posts are now all plumped out with articles of their own, some of them. that said, i noticed that the list of performance artists had no article, even though there was a link, for Rachel Rosenthal.  so i spent some time hooking up her bio from her company and the archives of american art oral history interview. it’s right there, but nobody seems to have looked it up. these things need to be done, just a little completion, or it will all slip away.  who would have thought that nobody would have linked up Rachel Rosenthal, of all people.  who would have thought that it would be me who started the ball rolling two years ago, and that jack is now on the list of performance artists for some young women who are starting a performance art blog, clearly unaware of what performance art really was, but trying.  and so there’s jack, and he wouldn’t be there had i not put in that link two years ago to something that didn’t yet exist.  and now it does.  don’t let it all slip away.

spent most of the day talking to d today (is why i thought of jack, mostly) so i didn’t get anything done that i had planned but instead enjoyed it much more.  funny how being on the phone from late morning to mid-afternoon can take the stuffing out of a sunday, no?  studio tomorrow, but not until 10, and then i’m home at 6.

response from a benevolent principal who not only reads her email, but reads it on the weekend!  she says that the position will go into the pool and if she survives the “county pool” she will call me after labor day weekend.  i don’t know what this means, if there is a pool i have made it into or if i’m in a pool of those who haven’t made some first cut, of if there is more than one pool and the “county” one is something she is concerned about surviving, but at least i know that i am somewhere and that i won’t hear anything about where that is, or was, until after labor day.  if then.  but this is infinitely helpful and i thanked her for it truly.

so i’m wondering if this week is not some sort of insiders’ pool again (the whole thing sounds like an insiders’ pool) like it was in July?  sounds like it might be.  they don’t tell you that.  they don’t tell you anything, so it was very kind of this principal to send what she did.  and on a sunday, too.  but if the position, or all seven (7) positions are going into a pool, that sounds like it really isn’t an opening after all even though they’re posted on the webpage.  or not yet?  if this week is some inside pool and if they have 7 people already in the system who want these posted jobs, then there will be nothing for me.  if they have six, then maybe…

seven (7) resumes via email and again by fax form the knit shop.  (before i had the nerve to ask if perhaps i could rent their fax machine instead of subventing kinkos at the rate of a buck a page, every application was costing me $7 plus tax.  she didn’t want any money, said i could just use it and so today alone that’s saved me 50 bucks.)  a very odd reaction this time: i didn’t want to.  i did it, of course, but i really wanted to procrastinate and not get it done, i can’t say why.  i’ve been having something of a freakout for the last couple of days now, something having to do with looking at the bank balance in preparation for paying the morgtgage payments at the end of this next week, which looking scares me into immobility.  it’s not been good, the freak out.  i have been slowing down to a bare minimum of motion. luckily, a friend called and asked me if i was going to the shop today, or i might have allowed myself to put that off, too, but i didn’t.  all the resumes sent off.  even put away the clean laundry i’ve been sleeping under for the past two weeks, and emptied the dishwasher.  sub training set to begin tuesday.  a full day’s work at the studio on monday to make up for the unpaid training days i have to take off next week.  ernesto churning out there in the south.  aniversarial unhingement, i suppose.

there are seven (7) new art listings on the school district website, and the hiring is still frozen for another week.  i will be readying resumes to send to each of them over the weekend.  please, if you have ever prayed before in your life, pray now.  i am good.  i can teach.  i have two mortgages, seven credit cards, a student loan and only four grand to my name.