dream from a short afternoon nap
January 27, 2012
In my dream I was a blond boy! I was with my mother and she wasn’t paying much attention to me. She was busy with her work as the president of the WQBR, which I assumed was a radio station. I followed her one night when she was going to work. She ended up at a mall and went up a few escalators to an incongruously placed bar. I wasn’t worried that she would be mad at me for following her because I knew she couldn’t see me.
There were four men – dressed in butch Americana costumes – hanging around there. One of them went in the back room and the other three broke out into song. Although they replaced the explicit lyrics with words that were familiar to me (like “Gen Ed,” and “credit”), it was clear that the songs they were singing had homoerotic undertones. Things were going great until one of them shouted “Look! It’s gone!” He was pointing to a space on the wall where a large poster was clearly missing. My mother was missing too.
I stumbled out of the mall and onto the side of the dark highway; I suppose I had walked on my way there, too. I caught up with my mother and walked behind her. I couldn’t tell if she had the poster. Was this how she did business? Before long we saw a swarm of headlights in the distance. A fleet of white, sleek police scooters raced up to us in formation like this:
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They loaded her on the back of a scooter and started driving off in the direction they came. I shouted “Hey can I get a ride?” But to no avail. I noticed a man with shoulder-length hair and a green canvas jacket following behind the scooter my mother was on.
I walked up the next off-ramp, crossed to the west side of the highway, and found myself in the commercial area of a vibrant, ethnic village. Then the man with the green jacket started to shoot wildly. Oh right, this must be my father! People ran up the street (above and parallel to the highway) and some were falling. Many, including myself, ducked under and between rows of parked cars. It was quiet for a few moments before a large explosion rocked the ground. Apparently he brought grenades to blow up the cars and the people taking shelter under them. One grenade, two grenades, three grenades: my grenade. Ouch my back is burning!
I thought I was done for but then I knew that I was not. I peeked out the front of my hiding place, which faced the highway. On the ramp below I could see the shooter in a green BMW doing donuts on it. A sweet rescue worker in an old-fashioned nurse’s uniform bent down and spotted me under the car. “Another one down in the oil here.” she said. With some effort, I put my arms out in front of me and she pulled me out. “This one’s not hurt too bad!”
Karen Schweitzer is a freelance writer and author. She has written eight non-fiction books to-date: three books on dog care for Eldorado Ink’s Our Best Friends series, four books for Mason Crest’s Modern Role Models series, and one Gallup Resource book. Karen is currently working on a young adult fantasy novel, the first in a series of six books.
In addition to writing books, Karen has also served as the About.com Guide to Business School for the last five years. About.com, part of The New York Times Company, is one of the top ten content producers on the web. Karen also works as the head writer/editor for Remilon, a media and publishing company. Remilon’s sites include Education-Portal.com.
Karen assists a number of other clients with article writing, editing, proofreading, content promotion, marketing materials, and other projects. In her spare time, she guest posts regularly on education blogs like So You Want To Teach, Mission to Learn, Dynamite Lesson Plan, and I Want To Teach Forever.
(via cocainepsychosis)
I combined every song from every one of Kate Bush’s full-length studio albums into one mp3.
(via loverofbeauty)
Networking Strategies
But make no mistake, networking takes “being gutsy,” said panelist Susanne Goldstein, M.P.A. ’04, a businesswoman and author of “Carry a Paintbrush: How to Be the Artistic Director of Your Own Career.” Goldstein regaled the audience with stories of how her persistence and personality opened doors. She spoke of her “five from five” tactic of contacting five people and asking for five minutes of their time, during which she asked questions about them. “It was never about me,” she said.
Directly engaging the audience, she declared that those in the “sky seats” in the back got an “automatic F” because the point of networking is to get close and personal. With good humor, she gently chastised students who “came to a network event and did not bring a resume.” She practiced what she preached by handing out her business card at every opportunity.
(Source: news.harvard.edu)
