Official Blog of Donald Gallinger, author of Master Planets from Kunati Books

I'm Losing Face, Baby!

Donald Gallinger, author The Master Planets — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 16:48:30 +0000

Strange, how local customs begin to get under your skin. Yesterday, our landlord, Mr. Gu—a very nice, courteous, honest man—brought in his cousin to help reinstall our DSL connection, which has been working marginally of late. After making the necessary adjustments, Mr. Gu motioned with his hand for me to sit down and try the computer. "Mr. Don," he said, "You try now?"

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WATCHING PEOPLE'S FACES…

Donald Gallinger, author The Master Planets — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:44:46 +0000

[JOURNAL ENTRY, OCTOBER 2004:]

There are about a billion and a half Chinese, and they all seem to ride the subway at the same time that I do. Still, it's interesting to watch people. In China, as elsewhere, girls who really like a guy always look at him in the same way. And when they don't really care about a guy, they will look at him in a different way, but all with the same expression. Also, Chinese girls appear to show their outrage over men...

Me Talk So Foot

Donald Gallinger, author The Master Planets — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:09:36 +0000

Our Chinese neighbor (English name "Cecelia") has been teaching my wife and me some Mandarin words. You cannot imagine the strange ways that you have to curl your tongue in your mouth and against your teeth to approximate the correct sounds. Also, the sounds often come from lower in the larynx. Some of the sounds are a weird blend of consonants, vowels, and little expulsions of breath. It's taken me about two months just to learn the correct pronunciation of "goodbye." But I'll say this about the Chinese: They're a hell of a lot more patient with us learning their language than we often are with them trying to learn ours.

My wife and I had dinner with a business contact of hers, a guy named Gene Zou and his fiancee, Maggie. As we walked down the sidewalk to the restaurant...

Handling the First Bleep of the Day

Donald Gallinger, author The Master Planets — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 19:48:35 +0000

(Interior: 7:30 a.m. Beginning of school day: Hallways crowded with young, eager faces. As the camera zooms in slowly, we hear individual voices....

Enter AMBER. She is about fourteen. In one hand she holds a Yoo Hoo; in the other a Ho Ho. Ipod plugs are in both ears. She waves to a friend, then screams a deafening "Hey, Tiffany!" as she begins a fast shuffle down the hallway. Her Yoo Hoo slops onto the floor as she runs.)

AMBER: Did you see that f****g bitch Autumn? She's f****g my boyfriend and it's really starting to p*** me off!

TIFFANY: (Also about fourteen. She is wearing a tee-shirt that reads "I Did the Sheriff, but I Did Not Do the Deputy.") I would punch that b***h in the face. She's gotta know that you will f**k her up if she won't stop playin' chicken head with Chuckie.

INTERCOM: (A muffled, adult voice) It is now time for homeroom. Please get to your homeroom...

(There is brief disturbance in the milling crowds, as if an errant fly or mosquito has broken a collective mood. It quickly passes. No one makes a move to leave the hallway.)

INTERCOM: Please get to homeroom. If you are not in homeroom when the bell rings, you will be assigned...

AMBER: (Responding to the intercom voice) Suck my c**k.

TIFFANY: (In militant agreement) Yeah, suck it....

Boomer Childhood

Donald Gallinger, author The Master Planets — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:31:38 +0000

Did we have more fun than today's kids? Or do we just remember having more fun?

A few days ago I was talking to my "big" sister (she's in her late fifties; that's big enough, isn't it?) and we were remembering our favorite childhood experiences. We both agreed that playing whiffleball in our backyard was an all time favorite. Home plate was someone's tee shirt and first base was the clothesline....

Memoirs of China: Watching People's Faces

Donald Gallinger, author The Master Planets — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:03:24 +0000

[JOURNAL ENTRY, OCTOBER 2004:]

There are about a billion and a half Chinese, and they all seem to ride the subway at the same time I do. Still, it's interesting to watch people. For example: In China, as elsewhere, girls who really like a guy always look at him in the same way. And when they don't really care about a guy, they will look at him in a different way, but all with the same expression. Also, Chinese girls appear to show their outrage over men in the same manner as women in other countries express their outrage over men. You can always tell when a girl is talking about some guy who has really pissed her off....

Your Mystery Twin

Donald Gallinger, author The Master Planets — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 17:20:38 +0000

One day I received a phone call, and this guy from my past told me he was in town on vacation with his family. I was delighted to hear from him. I hadn't seen him in twenty-five years. We had been childhood friends back in Connecticut, and then, while we were in college, we had a falling out, mostly because we were changing as we became adults.

We arranged to meet at a local pub.

After the first glad greetings and handshakes, we began to reminisce and to fill in our personal histories from the last time we saw each other. At one point, my old friend expressed some degree of surprise when I told him that I was gainfully employed as a teacher and had earned a doctorate degree in my subject area.

When I asked him why he was surprised, he appeared embarrassed, hesitant....

Ugly, Dirty Crap

Donald Gallinger, author The Master Planets — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:05:38 +0000

Life may be beautiful, but school is a good place to start learning about ugly and dirty.

You begin the socialization process at around age six by being pushed together with twenty or thirty other kids, many of them with colds and coughs. Kids aren't particularly decorous about their illnesses. Step into any primary school, and you're bound to hear the sound of some kid snuffling back so hard on his snot that it sounds like a vacuum cleaner with convulsions.

Then there's the kid who cuts farts on the school bus-with fifty other kids trapped around him. The smell never varies...

Dallas Public Schools: New Leaders in Entertainment

Donald Gallinger, author The Master Planets — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:56:49 +0000

Recently, the Dallas Public School system implemented a new grading policy intended to ensure "fair and credible evaluation of learning—from grade to grade and school to school." Here are the key points in this plan:

Homework grades should be given only when the grades will "raise a student's average, not lower it."
Teachers must accept overdue assignments, and their principal will decide whether students are to be penalized for missing deadlines.
Students who flunk tests can retake the exam and keep the higher grade.
Teachers cannot give a zero on an assignment unless they call parents and make "efforts to assist students in completing the work."

I don't teach in Dallas, but I am a public high school teacher of nearly twenty-five years, and I can tell you that similar policies are creeping into school systems across the country. Soon, I believe, these blueprints for teaching students to ignore—or even celebrate—mediocrity and failure will become commonplace practices in our nation's public schools.

For the politically naïve (and yes, the shaping of school policy is ultimately political), here is why every student must be forced to "succeed" on paper:

It's because public schools can't tell the truth. And the truth is that as a society, we are becoming incapable of raising children to be responsible adults....

Will Heaven Be Like This?

Donald Gallinger, author The Master Planets — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:11:51 +0000

Today I thought about the rhubarb patch that my mother kept in our backyard. Whenever I think of that patch, I see myself as a six or seven year old, playing underneath an apple tree, and behind me the big stone wall that traversed the entire south end of our property. There was a field behind the stone wall, and a horse that grazed there. Sometimes, the horse would come up to the stone wall, his head peering over, and my sister and I would give him a lump of sugar or an apple. I remember the feel of his wet lips, the slobbery gulp as he lapped the food from our hands....