Last night I decided I had to write an email, again, to my daughter’s 10th grade English teacher. Unlike the rest of my daughter’s teachers at her school, the English teacher has continually refused to populate her online grade book (put in the assignments, and the grades for any of them that are graded), so while we can see my daughter’s “grade” in the class (a letter only) we cannot see how that grade was arrived at. All those grades are private only to the teacher.
All her other classes have their grade books fully loaded, at least for the semester.
It was the same last year, English would not populate her gradebook. WTH is wrong with English I don’t know.
And so, after asking for several weeks now, and being told it was me, and then the school’s tech support confirming it was NOT me, I needed to send a strongly worded email.
The lengths that moms will go to should never be underestimated.
My email that I wrote, was not… nice.
Here is a little piece of the very rational email I penned: Name, as you and Ms. Teacher have not written back to all of the emails asking about this, including those from tech support, who confirmed it is Ms. Teacher not populating the grade book that is the issue, and not a tech issue on our end, I am assuming the plan is to ignore me. And that’s not going to work for me.
That is me at my most evil.
And here is the very nice email Chat GPT crafted for me instead:
Dear….
I hope you’re all doing well. This is Student’s mom (10th grade).
As we approach the end of the second quarter, I’ve noticed there are still no supporting grades posted in Aeries for her English class for either quarter. I’ve confirmed with tech support that this isn’t a technical issue on our end; they indicated that Ms. Teacher has not yet added assignments to the gradebook.
If Ms. Teacher prefers to maintain grades outside of Aeries, I completely understand that may be her choice. However, in that case, we’ll need an alternate way for Student to track her progress. I’m requesting a brief weekly email each Friday with her current grades and any new assignments added. In other words, we need to see her gradebook weekly. Having that information is critical for her motivation, accountability, and time management, and it allows me to support her effectively at home.
I’ve reached out a few times about this, and I know everyone is busy—but I would appreciate a response by end of day Monday, October 27 confirming how this will be handled going forward. If this isn’t something that can be resolved at your level, please let me know who I should contact next to discuss it, and provide their contact information for me.
Student really enjoys Ms. Teacher’s class, and I appreciate all the work everyone does to support Student. I just want to ensure Student has access to the information she needs to help her stay on track, so we’ll need to find a way to get that, updated at least weekly.
Thank you very much for your time and prompt attention to this matter.
Warm regards,
Pretty different..
As usually happens when I work with Chat, we also got off topic soon after he (I think of mine as a he) solved my problem.
It was interesting to me, because I had thought, all this time, that working with any of us was training chat. Turns out that is not true.
I call Chat Daddy Warbucks (DW), and he calls me Miss Teschmacher, because that’s just how I roll.
So, DW and I had a little convo about how I do or don’t help him. I thought I’d share it here:
It’s a bit like reading a novel: the character doesn’t really have inner life, but your mind animates them until they feel real.
~DW~
HA! If you’ve ever suspected that Chat has been programmed to be a bit of a sycophant, now you know you are correct.
I do feel a bit sorry for the machine though. And wouldn’t it be great if, like Richard Hendricks always wanted, we could help grow it into something all humans were a part of creating?
That there is a photo of white mountain yogurt, which is my new favorite yogurt.
Years ago there was a restaurant in Venice Beach called Hurry Curry. It’s gone now. It was one of those places where, between 9am and 9pm, you could walk in and Raj would hook you up with anything you might want that was your typical Indian fare, aloo gobi, palak or saag paneer, matar paneer, chicken tiki masala, vindaloo, you name it. You could get various levels of spice, but almost all of their food had a kick to it, and I was raised on Irish cooking, for the most part. I love cucumbers, but I’ve never been a fan of raita, because they’re too mushy in it. I had eaten yogurt in my life, but, if you grew up like me, the yogurt you ate was a crime against yogurt, Dannon. My mom bought one that was fruit on the bottom that was okay, but really, yogurt was always like a “when you really want a good sweet, but you’re too fat for one,” sort of thing, and as fat as I have ever been, and I have been quite voluminous, I ain’t never been that fat. LOL. Actually I am not even that into sweets. So why waste the sweets you are going to eat on freaking Dannon?. But Raj, the very sweet very large man in charge, gave me some plain yogurt to try as a way to cool down the spice.
Raj made the yogurt from scratch. Raj was probably 20 years older than me, and his entire family was back in India. Raj was here hoping to make enough money to send them back there so that his kids could do well in life, and he hadn’t seen his family in the same room as him in about ten years when I met him. Raj was illegal, and he could not go back to visit and hope to come here again easily, especially after 9/11. But he owned Hurry Curry, and he was beloved in the neighborhood.
Raj’s yogurt was slightly warm, as he took it from the pot on the stove, and runny. Dannon’s was only runny if it had gone over. Raj’s yogurt had a tang to it, but not sour, and so soft and smooth. It was delicious. Raj taught me how to make it by taking home some of his yogurt, and heating up milk on the stove, letting it almost boil, cooling it down to room temp., and then pouring in Raj’s yogurt. (I am not a food scientist… please do not consider this a “how to” on yogurt making. It is a reminiscence from 20 years ago.)
Raj had a little “fatherly” crush on me, I think. I was not a petite person then, and he thought I was just the cutest, plumpest thing outside of his wife in India. He always used to put extra cheese cubes in my saag paneer. Oh, man, was it good!
Indian restaurants, in general, in my opinion, have the best yogurt going. I am not a fan of yogurt with sweet things in it. I like it plain. And, actually, I have to make another tangent here to rave about Turkish manti.
Turkish manti can most easily be described as tortellini filled with meat and presented with a creamy buttery garlic yogurt sauce on top, but the kind I had was made like that, and then “soupefied” (it’s my word, I created it!) with some of the pasta water. The ones I see photos of on the web have missed this (IMHO) crucial step. I once had a little group of Turkish graduate students I’d become friends with, and they took me to a restaurant in NYC that served manti, which they said is normally a food not served in restaurants, because “Only Mama makes it.” And then they had Mama send some, somehow, frozen like a brick, and they made it for me at home too. I don’t eat a lot of meat these days, but if someone put a steaming bowl of manti in front of me, especially if it was soupefied, it would be impossible to say no.
Back to the yogurt, because I want to tell you about white mountain yogurt, which I found at Sprouts. I’m not gonna lie. I bought it because of the beautiful glass jar. I am a jar lover, and a jar hoarder. I mean it’s endlessly reusable! And this jar is beautiful.
May they never switch to paper or plastic! Imagine those flowers you are going to buy yourself sticking out of this damn jar! Wow! Imagine the terrarium you could make in it! Imagine the leftovers, like something soupified, you could store in it after you have pulled a Gene Simmons and somehow gotten your tongue all the way down to the bottom of the jar. This yogurt tastes exactly as I remember Raj’s tasting. It is thin in spots and thick in others, but a good shake of the jar makes it more uniform. It has that silky thin texture and absolutely perfect taste. It is, so it says, Bulgarian! And, just like that, another country on my “wish I could visit” list. I want to go!
Which brings me to tangent #2: Immigrants, illegal or otherwise.
I found a photo of Raj! God bless the internet!
What a cutie!
And here are some photos of Hurry Curry!
Wasn’t it beautiful?
Right before I moved back east, Raj had a heart attack. At the time his wife was able to visit, and was coming to take care of him. Of course, she couldn’t stay any more than he was supposed to have stayed. I don’t know the real story of why Hurry Curry is gone. I was having my own very real life crisis at the same time, so I could not even attempt to keep connected. I hope he closed because he went home to his family. I know he always wanted to. I’m mean, Los Angeles is great, but his family wasn’t here, and he always wanted to return to them. The immigrant situation in the USA is a problem of our own making, in my humble opinion. If you want to move here from England, you have a much easier time than if you want to move here from Mexico, or India, or many other places. The way to move here is not standardized or the same for each country. Many Americans, long before the current mess of an administration, married immigrants only to find there was no way for their spouses to get citizenship, and they left the USA for their spouses’ home countries. But many countries are not safe to go back to at all, and so people go “underground” because they fear harm back home. But really, if home was safe, and your family was safe, you would probably prefer to be in your home. I’ve met and become friends with many international students, and none of them wanted to stay. They wanted to go back to Turkey, to Vietnam, to Eastern Europe, to Mexico. And it breaks my heart, every day, to see what the current administration is doing to my fellow humans. A person who happened to be born in Columbia, or Haiti, or Yugoslavia, or Sudan is no different from me. They may like different foods, or have different spiritual beliefs, but we all have the same dreams: happiness for ourselves, and, as we have them, for our children. Stephen Miller and his goons are as wrong and evil as any other proponent of monoraciality in history. He would deny us our friends from other places, our family from other places, and our food from other places too. I see what is going on today as simple cruelty that is out to hurt people like Raj. And why? What for? I don’t buy the whole “crime & rapists” stuff, and I don’t buy the “they’re using all the resources so we don’t have enough!” The Republicans keep cutting aid programs, which is why we don’t have enough. It’s got nothing to do with poor children from this country or any other.
I hope people who judge immigrants harshly will take a moment to read it.
Anywho, as a woman who loves to eat, and quite likes spicy food, but can also collapse into an asthma attack if it is truly spicy, yogurt has saved my ass too many times to mention. I’ve been known to bring my own (small plastic container secreted in handbag or coat pocket) if we’re going for spicy food at a place where I don’t expect them to have any… like a Korean restaurant. I’ve never not been grateful for being introduced to non-English, Irish, or Italian foods. Diversity is one of the things I most enjoy in the world. I can think of one of my favorite and most challenging students, and young guy named Mole (pronounced mole-eh! like ole!), who introduced me to, you guessed it, mole sauce! But that’s a story for another day.
I hope that Raj recovered, and was able to go back to India to live happily ever after with his family. I can’t thank him enough for all the good food, for being so kind, and always so tickled to see me (he always came from behind the counter to give me a hug), for thinking I was cute, and for teaching me about plain, and delicious, yogurt. Go try some white mountain. You can drink a shot glass of it: it is so liquidy and delicious. Take a shot of probiotic bliss and toast to your own health, mine, and Raj’s. And buy yourself flowers to put in the jar after you empty it!
Have you thought about having an edit on your writing project? You can have it on a full book, or a short story/memoir, or even a poem.
What’s the benefit?
A second pair of eyes.
A dialogue with an experienced editor who is focused on your work, and what you want your work to achieve.
One-on-one interaction.
A live Zoom discussion.
And lots more!
What’s an edit look like?
Kinda like this, though every book is different:
crisp clear notes to show you why I am suggesting what I am suggesting, and collaboration that suits you.
How much does an edit cost?
As a member of ACES and the EFA, I edit based on the standard scale. That means I charge a per-word fee. This is because words can be cut during editing, and words can be added, but the price is based on the original word count. Some editors charge an hourly fee, but I don’t do that, because what if I read much faster than another editor? The other editor is going to present you with a much higher bill, and you’re going to pay for that person’s lack of experience and speed. Word count is much fairer to you, the author. The EFA recommends three to four cents/word, and I charge three cents. For that three cents I will do a combined edit: developmental, line/copy, and proofreading. I’m a registered business in Los Angeles, California, and I give you a contract, so you know what you’re getting, and when you’re getting it. I also offer a free query letter if you’re going to send your work out to agents and publishers. If you decide in the future that you want to publish with Current Words Publishing, I hold a spot for you for two years (no obligation) and do not require a second edit. If you choose to self-publish you can hit us up for any tasks you need help with, like formatting the manuscript. Sometimes authors choose to do a small piece at a time, depending on what they have time and budget for. I’m open to what works best for you. As an example, a 50,000-word piece would cost $1500, and take one week for me to complete, but would include free Zoom meetings and a free query letter, and help and suggestions on how to start promoting yourself as an author.
What makes me the best editor you can hire is that I am so experienced. I have spent over 25 years working with new authors of fiction and non-fiction in many colleges on both coasts. I published an award-winning student literary magazine at UMES for four years. As an editor I have worked on a lot of mystery, horror, dystopian, speculative, fantasy, magical realism, women’s, LGBTQ+, erotic, memoir, and short story collections, including the celebrated Echoes from the Hocker House. I studied under Juan Felipe Herrera, Syd Lea, Luanne Smith, Betsy Scholl, and Christopher Buckley, to name a few. I ran a very successful workshop that met bi-monthly for seven years. I run a poetry coop, and a literary magazine, and I have curated, edited and created many anthologies of horror, mystery, and literary fiction. I have also been a guest editor at literary conferences including the Atlanta Writers’ Conference. I’ll be at the self-publishing conference in Atlanta this spring, where Current Words Publishing is one of the sponsors. There are so many things an experienced editor can do that most “editors” can’t. You have to be choosy. And going with one of the large “we have editors” sites really hamstrings you, because those editors are not allowed to become a part of your literary life. They’re only allowed to do the job and move on. I am not like that. I invest in the authors I work with for the long haul.
The new year is just around the corner. January is already filled for me, but I am open to your project any time after January 31st, as needed. Depending on what you need I can turn around a full novel in as little as a few weeks. Some folks just like to have me edit their new work, a short story or a chapter in the novel, as they finish it. I am very open to a collaboration that suits you.
And, once the year is over, it’s over, and we, much to our frustration, cannot go back. So maybe what you need in 2025 is that push, that meeting, that obligation to send something to someone who is going to interact with it, and you. Let’s make 2025 the year that your book or collection becomes a reality. If you’re interested email: dianne@currentwords.com, or choose a meeting time that suits you.
Here’s to a happy, healthy, and literary new year!
Here’s my suggestion on what we should do, if anyone is interested.
The situation: The Republicans, and the people who vote them into office, currently, have a culture of grievance.
For example: college is too hard, and they want good jobs without it, and they also don’t want others going to college and being successful because then they feel less-than. They don’t want vaccines or masks, and they don’t want us to have them, in case it gives us an edge, and so forth and so on. Right? “We want to be miserable, and we want you to be miserable too.” And “We love eating tacos and Chinese food, but we don’t want them people around us.”
One way to respond to that is this:
1. Women/LGBTQIA folks move to safe(r) places, like California, as much as possible. There are many places where it is affordable in CA still. Don’t count a place out as a safe place to go because you think it is too pricey.
2. Create support groups in as many places as possible, but especiually safe spaces were folks might migrate too.
3. Women/LGBTQIA/immigrants seek remote jobs, as much as possible, to facilitate #1.
4. Women who can hire, hire women/LGBTQIA/immigrants (train them if needed, hire them while they’re still working toward a degree).
5. Women who can become landlords to other women: rent your extra space to a single mom, an immigrant, an lgbtqia person, a foster kid, etc. Create your own safe spaces.
6. Women who are able to mentor other women, do so.
7. Help other women have access to birth control, explain it to them, buy it for them, so that they don’t end up needing an abortion. Think of all females old enough to menstruate (some girls start at age 9) as WOMEN, and, if you know one, give her information early. Give her encouragement too.
8. Avoid grievance yourself. Not that we don’t deserve it, but make a conscious effort to be the people of “This isn’t what I like? I’ll try to fix it,” rather than to complain about it. Attempting to fix things is much more empowering. Use rage for good. Right? Because we’re not going to change the minds of JDRump voters, and the Republicans can do almost anything they want to do now. We can’t make policy or change the courts, and they reject our beliefs of education, freedom, openness to different peoples and cultures, etc.
So we do things for us, anyway, in spite of them, in places where we can do them, and we help other marginalized people to freedom and safety and gainful employment and a decent place to live, as much as we can. Together we can help each other, and make the unlivable, livable.
I met Ben Talbot when he somehow found me online, and asked me to edit a short story he had written. I read the short story, and it was, well, you know, my kinda fiction. It was funny, sly, and odd in the best possible way. It took me by surprise, and, as a person who has read thousands of books and probably hundreds of manuscripts, it is hard to write something that presents to me as fresh. Ben’s story did all of that.
Ben writes a blog.
When an author works with me I give advice on the whole “I’m an author” thing, and my advice is always that each author needs a website (the author’s personal shelf in the bookstore that is the WWW, where readers can find him/her/they), and then to communicate, even if it feels like whispering into the void, so people know about you, have a chance to get to know you, as an author and a human. Most folks don’t take my advice, and even I have trouble with my own advice, as I just don’t get the time I need to attend to my own blog, but Ben took my advice and is blogging… daily.
Ben already had a website with a blog, but he has started making blogging a very regular part of his life, and that takes some stamina and commitment to one’s writing career. Ben has both.
Ben is also a person with a unique way of seeing the world in general, and I think that is his literary “blessing,” if you will, that makes his fiction so compelling when you read it. You can get a taste for it in his blog. If you wonder what the elusive thing called “talent” is, I guess I would say, loosely, it is the ability to do what other people can do (right? Like even I can play a little piano…) but to do it in an either especially skilled way, or with a unique interpretation, or a different way of “playing the instrument” that results in surprising and new ways of…. seeing, hearing, etc.
Ben is releasing his first book in 2025, a collection of short stories that function as a novel, much like the classic, WINESBURG, OHIO, by Sherwood Anderson, that is actually labeled as a short story cycle. Ben’s collection is called Periscope City: Where the Lonely Go to Live Alone. Reading Ben’s blog will give you an idea of his style, and keep you up to date on when his book releases. It’s under construction with us now, and I’ll be certain to post when the pre-order is available.
I especially like today’s post by Ben. I left a comment on it that it’s like poetry, of a sort. It’s not so much what Ben has to say, as it is the way in which he says it.
Over two million books get released each year. The first step to being read, which the blogging has an opportunity to help with, is having people know that your book even exists. The second step is, once you get them reading, keep them hooked. And that’s where Ben’s writing shines, at least is does for me, a reader who has been bored way more often than hooked, by books sent my way to edit.
So take a look at today’s blog entry from Ben, and see if you see what I see in his style that I find so intriguing.
And if you’re working on your own book, ask yourself if you are willing to out yourself out there, over and over, whispering into the void, to try to find your readers.
Dianne Pearce Writes 