Velya Jancz-Urban's Blog

Life is an Experiment

I’m a hands-on science teacher. My family lives amongst my lesson plans. In our pantry there’s a plastic tub of lively mealworms. I’ve kept them alive for over eighteen months on a diet of organic oatmeal flakes and organic potato slices. There are assorted snake skins, antlers, and rodent skulls on a shelf in the garage. A five pound box of two-inch galvanized roofing nails waits on the dining room table. Eighty of them will be used in the Bed of Nails prototype my husband is constructing for me.

In our house, it seems that no matter what product we pull from the kitchen cupboard or bathroom cabinet, it is invariably labeled with some cryptic number or letter. The six assorted shampoo bottles in our shower niche are labeled 1 through 6 in black Sharpie marker. I used them in a Shampoo Analysis Lab to determine if price makes a difference in a shampoo’s effectiveness. I won’t be a spoiler, but my students now know the terms viscosity and flash foam. There’s a big red Sharpie A, B, or C on the three toothpaste tubes in the bathroom vanity drawer. They were part of my Secret Formulas unit. The kids identified the attributes of toothpaste, and then made their own blends. But first, they crafted “colonial toothbrushes” from small branches I snipped off trees in our woods. You should have seen those little baby teeth gnaw the ends of the twigs to get the “bristles” just right – my little beaver scientists! The 625-count pack of Q-tips is labeled “for Grossology.” I used them in conjunction with my Microscope unit. The kids investigated their own ear wax and then swabbed the water fountains drains (you will never, ever drink from a water fountain again if you see the results!).

Did I mention the Chicken Mummies? There are eight raw Perdue chickens in my garage. They are part of a six-week after-school Mummification unit I’m teaching. The chickens are heavily salted, wrapped in layers of white gauze, adorned with glue-gunned sequins and jewels, and are slowly dehydrating. We’ll repeat the entire salting/gauzing process next week and the kids will eventually see that, just like ancient Egyptian mummies, the chickens don’t rot or smell. On the last day of class, they’ll wear the hieroglyphic clay necklaces they created and bring their chicken mummies home. Some parents will throw them away before they even make it to the front door, and maybe some will not.

People ask, “How do you come up with this stuff?” I always say the same thing, “I just try to think like a kid.” I don’t really care what they examine under a microscope. My goal is to have them learn the parts of a microscope, and to associate science with a love of learning. I think kids are actually drawn to people who are real and down-to-earth. They can sniff out authenticity as fast as a pack of bloodhounds can track a chain gang escapee in the swamps of Louisiana. My experiments are messy and imperfect, and kids deserve the right to know that life is messy and imperfect.

If you haven’t been in an elementary school lately, you may not know that the Scientific Method has become the focus of science lessons. The scientific method is a way to ask and answer scientific questions by making observations and doing experiments – it involves a lot of predicting and hypothesizing – which is wonderful. But here’s the sad part, and maybe it’s a reflection on today’s perfectionist society – I can’t tell you how many times one of my students makes a prediction, gets it wrong, and then furtively erases their answer. Last week, in a Mealworm Madness class, each giggling child hesitantly selected his/her own squiggly mealworm from a big yellow bowl. Then, they introduced themselves to their mealworm, gave their mealworm a name, and predicted how long their mealworm was, in inches. The responses ranged from one inch to nineteen inches. Each child used a green plastic ruler to measure their crawling worm. Cries of, “Hey, hold still little buddy!” and “Stop wiggling so much!” filled the classroom. Then, the kids discovered that all of the mealworms were about two inches long. Two little girls actually scolded themselves for making an incorrect prediction. One kid hit himself on the forehead with his palm. Four boys shielded their papers with their arms and surreptitiously erased their predictions. These were first and second graders who had gleefully assigned their worms names like Zippy, Sparkly, Unicorn, and Bob. When did it become wrong to make a mistake?

I suspect that standardized testing has something to do with this. Tests that expect all children, no matter their birthday, and no matter their developmental speed, to achieve the same levels at the same time. I always tell my classes “Don’t just think outside the box, let’s totally avoid the box!” But is this what they’re hearing at home or in their classrooms? I don’t think so. Not anymore. I think they’re hearing, “Be the best.” First and second graders should be happy, carefree, and playing – not weighed down by school. And school should be a fun place of learning, not of stress and pressure where incorrectly predicting a mealworm’s length ruins your afternoon.

I left public school teaching five years ago because I didn’t want to be part of it anymore. I didn’t want to teach from a script as my former colleagues are forced to do, because life and learning are not scripted. The quest for perfection is exhausting and unrelenting. Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be your best.

Experiment. Fail. Learn. Repeat.

Fifty Shades of Jim

My female goddess awakened as Jim tickled me down there with an ostrich feather. I chewed my lips as he salaciously cocked his head to the side and rocked his groin upward.

“Holy crap,” I gasped, about to reach my seventh orgasm of the day. Jim stroked his humongous male organ with a riding crop while he slowly tied my ankles to my elbows with his silver necktie, my favorite necktie, the one that always made me gasp – but first he freed my breasts from the restraint of my black lace bra. He made me repeat our safe word: Fiddledeedee, as he ran his hand over my sex. His manhood pushed against my belly and I bit my lip to keep from crying out. His ginormous tool bobbed as he strode to the playroom cabinet where he kept his toys. He made a low primal growl as he inhaled sharply. Yes, he did both things simultaneously.

“Jump down. Turn around. Pick a bale of cotton,” he commanded. I gasped at his words, my insides liquefying. He was about to push me over the brink once more when he slipped a Delta airlines eye mask over my face.

“I want you upside down on the nightstand!” he ordered.

“That’s a little tricky, Jim,” I answered in a hoarse whisper. “I’m kind of tied up right now,” I purred.

“Do you want me to spank you?” he hissed, his breathing labored.

“Yes, yes,” I begged and murmured. A moment later I heard him open a drawer. I sensed him behind me.

“So you want it rough?” he breathed.

“Yes, oh yes!” my female parts moaned.

His erection trailed across my back as he growled, “Do you know how hot you are right now, Wifely?”

WIFELY??!! My building orgasm came to a screeching halt.

Can you tell I’ve been reading Fifty Shades of Grey? Are you wondering why? A paperback copy from Woodbury Library sits on our coffee table and I wonder why myself. The plot is terrible, the characters are two-dimensional. The term inner goddess is used fifty-eight times and someone murmurs one hundred ninety-nine times. Some people see a story about a man who was abused at a young age and a woman trying to free him from his demons; a man who is afraid to love and a woman trying to show him how, as they mend the broken parts of each other. Some people are disturbed by the materialism and feel if you take away the kinky stuff, it’s just another Harlequin Romance. It’s been suggested the book’s focus on a BDSM relationship appeals to a woman’s desire to be dominated. Could women love the book because it shows a man doing all the right things in bed – without having to be asked?

Jim and I – the real Jim, the one who doesn’t own a riding crop but does have a humongous male organ – were in the shower yesterday afternoon. He kind of half-heartedly slathered shampoo around on my head with one hand and washed his face with the other hand. As shampoo lather dribbled down my shoulders, I turned to him and said, “You know, this isn’t how that Christian Grey guy washes hair.”

“Who’s Christian Grey?” he asked as he soaped us up.

“The Fifty Shades of Grey guy,” I said.

“Why, how’s he do it?” Jim asked phlegmatically (EL James isn’t the only one with a thesaurus!).

“Oh, he kinds of holds the woman’s face in his hands, peers into her eyes, acts like he doesn’t even realize she’s naked, and totally concentrates on gently washing her hair with some exotic jasmine shampoo,” I explained.

“You beguile me, Wifely,” Jim said (no, he didn’t) as he held my face in his hands, peered lovingly into my eyes and slipped his fingers into my nostrils (yes, he did). This is my Christian Grey. He doesn’t buy lingerie or send me erotic texts. Actually, his last text consisted of one word: Great. He’s never heard of Manolo Blahnik’s, doesn’t have an Audi R8 Spider, or a helicopter We don’t have red paint on our playroom walls, he doesn’t lavish me with praise, and we don’t own nipple clamps. In November, we celebrated our thirty-second wedding anniversary. My stomach still flutters when he comes home from work and he’s the first person I call with good – or bad – news. He doesn’t try to control me, yet his is the advice I most value. When I wake up in the middle of the night he’s always worked his way over to my side of the bed. He never panics. He never flirts with other women. He’s always believed in me, even when I haven’t believed in myself. He’s a man of honor and integrity. He doesn’t hold my hand in public, but he’s been at my side for the last thirty-two years. He loves me with his actions, not with butt plugs, handcuffs, or words. Last night, when I told him how much I loved him, he said, “Alright.” It is alright and I’d marry him all over again.

Laters, baby.

Interview with Velya Jancz-Urban, author of “Acquiescence”

colonialgoodwife:

Thanks, Pat Bertram, for the author interview!

Originally posted on Pat Bertram Introduces . . .:

What is your book about?

When Pamina Campbell learns of a murder committed over two hundred years ago in her Connecticut farmhouse in order to avenge an unforgivable crime, she accepts that she has no idea how the universe works, except that it requires acquiescence at every point. Two plot threads twine in Acquiescence, as one woman calls to another across three centuries. One story, featuring Susannah Mathews, takes place in the late 1700s, while Pamina’s story is set in modern day. Pamina learns that disaster – the sort of disaster that leaves you numb on a park bench or aching for your husband to come back to you – can be a freaky thing of beauty. As Pamina and her family try to piece their lives back together in their 1770 home, little do they know that secrecy, homophobia, and a ghastly confession await.

Is there a…

View original 1,367 more words

The Doe

This morning, on the way to get my hair cut, I saw a dead deer on the side of the road. Its dark brown eyes were filmy. She was a doe and had already stiffened. Pieces of her were splattered, splintered, and smeared across the road. In the rearview mirror I saw broken glass, plastic grille fragments, and her two front legs bent at stomach-churning angles. That heap was once a living thing, I thought.

Here in Connecticut, we see dead deer on the side of the road all the time. But this winter, I’ve thought a lot about the deer out there in the woods behind the house. I’ve watched our dogs snooze away the winter in front of the woodstove. Genetically encoded dog DNA compels them to circle their beds before plopping down. Their wild ancestors flattened the grass by circling around it a few times before settling down. They were creating a safe and comfortable nest. Hunkered down under a canopy of evergreens, I suppose the deer do the same. But it’s been such a brutal winter. Even if they’ve been able to stay warm, what have they eaten? How much of their fat stores have been burned as they trudge through three feet of snow looking for food in the bitter cold? On the nights the thermometer dips below zero, I think about them out there in the same absurd way I think about people in coffins, and how cold they must be.

The recent thaw may have driven the doe out to forage for food. If only she could have made it a few more weeks. By late April, Connecticut comes back to life and trees start budding. Chickadees, blue jays, and nuthatches gossip as they build their nests. The days are much warmer. The woods begin their slow costume change from a gown of winter frost that blinds the eyes to the wispy greens of spring.

The mangled deer was still there on the return trip home from my hair cut. When I drove by the first time I noticed, but didn’t want to think about it – large in the belly, she was heavy with fawn.

How ironic that it’s the first day of spring. Life ends. Life begins

Velya Jancz-Urban is the author of ACQUIESCENCE, published by Second Wind Publishing. Visit her at: http://www.acquiescencethebook.com. Her entertainingly informative presentation, The Not-So-Good Life of the Colonial Goodwife, is a result of the research completed for ACQUIESCENCE.

What’s Up With My Name?

I’ve realized that people who don’t know me may be checking out my dust jacket or website  and wondering what’s up with my odd name.

My first name, Velya, is pronounced Vealia and comes from a Viennese operetta, The Merry Widow by Franz Lehar. Vilia/Vilja was the mysterious Witch of the Woods:  “a hunter beheld her alone as she stood.” Of course you can imagine the hoots of laughter, and agreement, once my kids learned this. I guess my mom was on an opera kick when she was pregnant with me. Her name, Neysa, comes from a famous illustrator in the 1920s, Neysa McMein. My daughter’s name, Ehris, comes from my mom’s maiden name, Ehrismann. I’ve just learned to go by the nickname, Veal.

I love having an unusual first name but I think it’s hard on others. It usually takes people a long time to work up the courage to try pronouncing my name and they kind of don’t call me anything for a long time. If you have an unusual name, you know this. People think you don’t notice, but you do, and you understand. But, once people are comfortable with my name, they never forget it and it’s kind of cool to be able to sign things with just one name like Beyonce, Madonna, Oprah, Sting, Charo (no, not like Charo!).

Of course, as with most names, kids teased me about mine. For a brief period at East Ridge Junior High (for it was junior high then, not middle school) I heard “Velya, I wanna feel ya,” “Veal Parmigiana,” and “Veal Chop.”  We have a friend named Mark Yamnicky and he loves to hypothesize about how funny it would have been if I had married Bob Vila, the guy from “This Old House” who became the Sears spokesperson. I would have been Velya Vila.

According to an online article I recently read, psychologists and sociologists have studied the unusual first name question for years and still cannot agree on the answer. “College women with uncommon first names score higher on scales of sociability and self-acceptance; they are also more likely to have a positive sense of individuality, which helps them to resist peer pressure. They can develop a positive, individual self-concept unhampered by the negative images that go along with names such as Adolf, Ethel, Myrtle, or Elmer.”

 I’ve never seen my name emblazoned on a key chain or a room plaque at the mall, and I doubt Myrtle has either.  But, when someone gets me something with my name on it, it’s EXTRA special because I know they probably had it custom-made. And, I can actually set up a Google Alert for myself without being bombarded with results!

Evans, Cleveland Kent. “Baby-Naming Trends” 13 June 2006. HowStuffWorks.com. 02 September 2010.

Celery and Mousetraps

The only food my husband won’t eat is celery. I think it’s because his mother, in the 1960s, made a dish called American Chop Suey. I think she made it many, many times. With six kids in the family, she had to be resourceful in the kitchen. American Chop Suey had absolutely no resemblance to Chinese food – it was more like a kissing cousin to goulash. I remember it appearing on the hot lunch menu at our elementary school, and in other parts of the country it may have been called Slumgullion or Johnny Marzetti. But in New England, it was American Chop Suey. From what I can piece together, on the rare occasions my husband will discuss it, his mother went heavy on the celery in order to stretch the hamburger meat in the recipe. Today, if I have a chicken salad sandwich for lunch, my husband’s celery radar is so fine-tuned that when he comes home from work and gives me a kiss he accuses, “So, you were eating celery again!” in the same incriminating tone a district attorney might use in a high-profile murder trial. If I buy deli potato salad, I’ll find a neat little pile of celery cubes on the side of his plate when we’re done with dinner. Since he’s a cooperative eater in all other regards, we never have celery, ‘the devil’s vegetable,’ in the house.

Currently, my husband’s on a special assignment for work and has been “commuting” to Georgia from Connecticut for the past six months.  Like a sneaky teenager who dips into the vodka when her parents aren’t home, I went a little wild at Stop & Shop and bought celery. Celery with a ton of feathery leaves! I open the fridge to that uniquely-celery aroma (good luck trying to describe it!) and ignore my husband’s ranting in my head, “It’s ninety percent water and tastes like WOOD! It tastes just like it smells! In kindergarten, I had to hear all that ‘ants on a log’ peanut butter raisin bullshit!”

And so I come to the entire point of this essay which is not about the evils of celery. It’s about the fact that you never really know what goes on in other people’s houses. The other night, as we were preparing dinner, I said enthusiastically to my twenty-two year old daughter, “Hey, since Daddy’s not here, how ‘bout if we live it up a little and put celery in the salad!” She looked at me with revulsion, as if I had suggested chopping up our puppy and adding him to the salad!

“Celery in SALAD?  Are you crazy?  Nobody puts celery in salad. You have to eat celery hot,” she insisted.

“Well, when I was little we always put celery in salad,” I argued.

“Yeah, but your family’s weird. Nobody in the entire world puts celery in salad,” she persisted.

“Let’s just see about that,” I countered.  “We’ll put it to a vote. Let’s post the question on Facebook and see what people say.”

The response was overwhelming and comments started popping up within minutes. They varied:

I can go either way. A lot of times I think it’s too overpowering.

No!!! Not in my household! I hate celery!!!! Toxic!

Yes! We always have!!

NO ONE likes celery. It’s only in the grocery store for decoration.

Yup, but I peel the strings off.

I like the passive-aggressive crunch!

Lima beans, okra, and celery should be banned from the planet!

Clearly, our scientific survey proved that there are a couple of people out there who do indeed put celery in salad.

“You know,” I admitted to my daughter. “I just assumed everyone put celery in salad because we always did when I was growing up. This reminds me of the mousetrap story.”

“Oh no, not the mousetrap story again,” my daughter groaned.

We live in the country. We have mice – but I never liked the idea of killing them. I always catch them in Havahart traps, take them for a drive, and let them go. But, if I were a mouse, I’d rather die instantly in one of  those old-fashioned wooden mousetraps with the metal bar that comes down fast and breaks the mouse’s neck, than eat creepy d-Con poison and die from internal bleeding, or have my feet stuck to a glue trap and starve to death. One day, several years ago, the mousetrap topic somehow came up in the faculty room during lunch. When I mentioned how disgusting, yet sad, it was as a little kid to have to take the dead mouse out of the trap, the people at the lunch table looked at me in horror.

“Are you serious?” the fourth-grade teacher had asked in disbelief. “You took the mouse out of the trap?”

“Well, yeah. How else do you get it out?”

I got a quick tutorial from my colleagues. I had no idea you were supposed to throw the traps away after you used them, with the dead mouse still imprisoned under the metal bar! I guess having Depression-era parents had something to do with it. My father always re-baited the mousetraps with peanut butter, so I assumed everyone else did.

Celery in salad, and mousetraps…it’s kinda like finding out the lyrics to a song you always sang wrong.

How about you?  Is there anything you thought was ‘normal’ as a child, only to discover that’s not how the rest of the world does it?