Jessica Hayles
October 13, 2019 7:48 PM
Well, you asked (mail for Felipe). by Jessica Hayles
Jessica had, within hours of promising them, seriously considered politely ‘forgetting’ Felipe’s request to read some of her poems. She had journals full of them, but mostly at home - the only ones she had with her were the ones she had worked on in the past few months, and while not as hysterically unhappy as her journals from last year, it turned out that it was still hard to find a decent number of verses which were presentable enough for public consumption, or at least consumption by a friend, who would probably rather not see her worst thoughts.Keeping one’s word, however, was important. Nobody would ever do business with a liar twice, not if they could help it, and since every second-rate Internet celebrity seemed to be able to come up with someone willing to formulate a lipstick for them, people could help doing business with her in future if they wanted to. So she copied out some of the more presentable verses she had, reasoning that a boy would not want to read a lot of a girl’s poems anyway, and then revised them, and then made fair copies in a painstaking hand, trying to make it look as much like type as she could. That done, she had visited the art room and been able to bind them together with a brown ribbon, more or less like a proper chapbook, and then, on a whim, wrote up a letter in Spanish as though it were from a publisher and braved the owls to send it along to its recipient.
Senor De Matteo,
As requested, here is a collection of poems by the American poetess Senorita Jessica Hayles. We hope you enjoy it with our compliments.
Sincerely,
Art Room Publishing.
The poems, however, were in English. The most verse Jessica had ever written in Spanish had been silly rhymes for her baby sister Lola, and even with a dictionary to help her, she did not feel remotely good enough to write real poems in Spanish for a native speaker who wasn’t also three years old.
The bee buzzes past my head
The ant rises from his muddy bed
No authority gave me leave to roam,
But I don’t care; I am alone.
The breeze is warm and sweetly smells
Who knows what stories each bird tells
The leaves stretch low, the grass grows high,
The sun is a golden seal on a brilliant sky.
Behind me stretch leaves of deepest green
Up above, they have a different sheen
Light glows in these living shards of colored glass
They admit no heat; I am content at last.
The tulips are beautiful, but we cannot keep them.
The weight of their own glory draws them down -
Bright waxen petals bend and break the stem
Which gives life and supports the crown
The tulips smell like honey
To eyes and noses both they’re sweet
But they must pass away as swiftly
As all the sweetest things we meet.
Sifting used to be rare
A job for one with everything to gain
Now the fields are open there -
The old prospectors think the sifting’s in vain
They used to sift for gold
Gold that all the world would think fair
Now we only hope for rubies,
We later ones sifting there
Rubies - rubies true -
But rubies without Indian fires.
Most are nearly too small to view
But even these fragments fan desires.
And once in a while, someone will turn
And spy a rare and valuable stone
Perhaps its fires will only sullenly burn,
But it’s something - something of one’s own.
Shrill sounds the specks of brown
Flittering far from the tree
They dark and peck all around
And show up clear against the green
The breeze that blows is a spring breeze
Cool and damp, soft on the skin,
The petunias dance among their leaves
And send their fragrance from within
Within this porch I cannot smell
The rose’s breath pooling beside the stair
I see, though, where a dozen petals fell
To dot the earth where it is bare.
Another bit will remain bare
Where a cedar tree once grew
The breeze softly twists my hair
As I wait for the falling dew.
A sliver of sun -
Salt-sharp sea drops slash the Earth
Clouds gather quickly
Grim mountain ranges up above
The air is thick and hot now
Each breath comes slowly
Glancing showers
Fresh drops drip onto old stones
Memento mori
16
Jessica Hayles
Well, you asked (mail for Felipe).
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Jessica Hayles
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Felipe De Matteo
October 19, 2019 9:11 PM
And you answered. by Felipe De Matteo
Felipe had received Jessica's poems formally in the mail and had thought nothing of it. While he had expected them to come by hand, it was not odd to receive them this way, and he appreciated the gravitas of it. It also meant that he had the right to privacy and time, as Jessica wouldn't know precisely when he'd received them or read them. He wanted to do them justice by taking the time to savor each word, each verse, and each stanza. While he was no poet himself, he was fairly well educated on the subject. Literature served an important role in any proper education, particularly one focused on the appropriate ruling of subjects. Besides, Los Jardines de Plata was sort of a living breathing poem, and Felipe appreciated that Jessica had chosen poems which seemed to speak to the beauty he knew she knew he loved in the world.Nearly a week had passed since he'd first received her poems and he'd taken the time to read them several times over, even meditating on them. It was, he thought, the only real way to appreciate this sort of art - or any sort of art for that matter - and Jessica deserved his treatment of her work as professional. Finally, he broached the subject with her when they were the only two in the Common Room. It was evening and he was predictably munching on some of the snacks he'd brought from home. His supply was beginning to run out but his parents always sent more than enough for just him periodically, encouraging him to share. He'd brought some of the snacks he knew Jessica particularly liked when he'd noticed her in the Common Room as well, and brought them to her to sit down.
"Tus poemas son muy hermosos. Gracias por honrarme al compartirlos," he said. Your poems are very beautiful. Thank you for honoring me by sharing them. While her work had been in English, he suspected that she was beginning to sense the fact that he rarely used Spanish at Sonora and that it usually meant something when he did. Then he switched to Italian, favoring the language that he'd read most poems in, and said sincerely, "Le tue poesie sono bellissime." Your poems are beautiful.
Taking a seat near enough to Jessica where he could talk quietly with her and share snacks without being so close as to be uncomfortable, he smiled at his friend. It was nice to spend time with Jessica. It was easy and, for the most part, she "got" it. She understood almost none of his life experiences and yet somehow, she seemed to understand very much of them. She was his guilty pleasure in a way that Zara was not, and the two of them were an important balance for him. Together, they kept his hubris in check.
"I've never seen tulips before, but I feel like I have breathed them in through your words," he told her, knowing that it wasn't really very meaningful to say the poems were beautiful without really having any evidence of the fact that he'd read them. "They do not grow well in Mexico and they were out of bloom when I was in Italy."
OOC 1- Thank you, Google Translate. Sorry, native Spanish and Italian speakers.
OOC 2- I don't remember what snacks Jessica liked but I assume that Felipe would have some idea, so feel free to assume what you will, particularly insofar as snacks with native Mexican ingredients go.
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Felipe De Matteo
And you answered.
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Jessica
October 23, 2019 5:21 PM
And now you are flattering. by Jessica
Jessica did not speak Italian, but poesie and bellissime were close enough to words she knew that she would have blushed, had she not already been rather pink in the face from the compliments in Spanish. She bit her lip, but this could not quite stop a smile - pleased, proud, and embarrassed - from spreading across her narrow face."Gracias," she managed, baffled by her own emotion for a moment. She had been put in front of people all her life. She was accustomed to receiving recognition from smaller crowds, too, at school - or at least, at her old school....
That, she thought, was it. How long had it been since someone had gone out of their way to talk about how good she was at something? Something she had once taken for granted as just her due in life was now such an anomaly that she blushed over it.
Plus, there was the way Felipe said it, and continued on. It was possible he was just being flattering because she was a friend, or that it was some quirk of expression - even in countries with a common language, there were different ways of using words, putting them together, that could give altogether different sounds that sounded more formal or something to outside ears - but the compliments felt uncommonly personal. "That was beautiful, Jessica" was something Daddy or her teachers had said before, but then immediately moved on. Nobody flat-out said it was an honor to read her work or that they'd experienced something with it. It seemed such remarks were heady stuff.
"Really? I didn't know that - about tulips in Mexico," said Jessica, getting her face a bit more under control as she busied her hands with food and her mind with this new tidbit of information. "They're my mom's favorite flower, so we have them around a lot." Jessica thought partially that her mother favored tulips simply to be difficult, as everyone insisted on giving her roses because her name was Rosalie. It made Jessica wonder why Mommy had then decided to give Jessica 'Rose' as a middle name, unless it really had just been to name a lipstick shade...
“They’re really lovely flowers. Add that to list of things to show you whenever you come to Atlanta,” she said. “So we’re up to museums, tulips, and of course we’ll throw in World of Coke, I don’t think it’s even legal to visit Atlanta for the first time and not go to World of Coke...Do you like zoos? Throw in Zoo Atlanta and you’ve got a good few days there,” she joked.
She toyed with the end of her red plait. It was pleasant to imagine spending a day showing Felipe and Leonor the sights of her city, but her hair, combined with her skin, would make her stand out in the group. It was unlikely anyone at such heavily-populated attractions would recognize her, but it wasn’t impossible, and then there would be questions. Mommy would throw a fit if Jessica tried temporary hair dye, but maybe if she arranged things so she did so last-minute, while Mommy was either in South Georgia or at least not at home for the day….A visit to the Golden Dome would still be out of the question, too many people there actually knew her personally and the right side of the aisle might try to have Felipe and Leonor deported or something dreadful like that, but if she could just be sure she was unrecognizable, they could have a fun day of it. Maybe she could brew some potion before leaving school and take it home to use as a quick temporary dye at need….
This was all a bit premaure, though, as nothing had ever been said about the De Matteos visiting her by anyone but her, and always half in jest. She let go of the ends of her hair and shrugged the braid over her shoulder. “I’m glad you enjoyed the poems,” she said. “I hope you didn’t mind the delivery system.”
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Jessica
And now you are flattering.
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Felipe De Matteo
October 23, 2019 5:46 PM
Only honest. by Felipe De Matteo
Felipe hadn't noticed before, but Jessica was rather . . . cute. At least when she blushed. He'd known of course that she was an attractive young lady of some esteem and was aware that such a thing was a Good Thing. But it was different when she didn't mean to be and when he didn't mean to notice. He found his smile shaping into something more genuine and more adventurous as the urge to make her make that same little smile show up on her face again. If nothing else, she'd stop being such a toad about stuff if she was smiling.Jessica thanked him and then started talking about what they would do if he came to visit her in Atlanta and it was a hard picture to resist. He had, of course, traveled before, but never like this.
"World of Coke?" Felipe repeated, not sure he had heard correctly.
The zoo, a museum, a World of Coke, and pretty flowers . . . altogether it sounded like a perfect day and Felipe was glad that they had the same sort of idea of a perfect day. Mostly. It was one of those perfect days that he wouldn't have wanted to have every single day because then he would miss out on all the nice stuff that came with being outside or working on some problem or another. He liked those things and would not like his entire life to look like a perfect trip to Atlanta, but he still wanted that perfect trip to Atlanta.
He tried to imagine what his father would say about him going to visit Jessica over one break or another, and decided that both his parents would help him pack his bag if that were the case. They'd be just as happy as anyone to have him off on what they would undoubtedly view as an important trip, both for his education and his future. The thought made him mildly ill, but he couldn't help humoring the idea in one sense: Jessica would be an easy enough person to spend time with, whether for a week or for the entirety of a minor monarchy's duration. Whichever.
"That sounds good," Felipe smiled, his expression still one of liquid sincerity. "I'd like to visit you."
When the subject turned back to the poems Jessica had written, Felipe took the opportunity to reach for a can of pineapples and took a sip of the juice within. Munching on a piece of the fruit while Jessica talked for a moment, he nodded in response.
"I appreciated it," he agreed. "It's nice to see you getting used to owl post. You pick up etiquette fast. You're going to unleash a storm of skill and pretty faces on the wizarding world," he joked, thinking of the Georgia-based cosmetics that might be becoming very popular very soon.
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Felipe De Matteo
Only honest.
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Felipe De Matteo
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Jessica
October 23, 2019 11:22 PM
*blushes* by Jessica
Jessica was momentarily stumped by the idea of how to explain World of Coke to someone who, she realized for the first time, might actually not know what Coca-Cola was. Every time she felt as though her feet were slightly under her, some new novelty would present itself, wouldn’t it…“Yeah,” she confirmed. “World of Coke. It’s...a thing. Obviously,” she added, embarrassed to sound stupid. “One of the biggest businesses in Atlanta is something called Coca-Cola,” she explained. “It’s a drink. A kind of fizzy caramel sweet drink. At least, that’s the original Coca-Cola. There’s a lot of...different fizzy drinks they sell in other places. And World of Coke is...you go there, and there’s a history lesson, and you get to try a lot of drinks from around the world. The Italian ginger ale is really good for some reason,” she added. “It’s...cooler than it sounds I guess? Or maybe I’m just biased from so many field trips with my old school,” she joked.
It was just one of those things one grew up with in Atlanta, she thought - it was hard to avoid having good memories there, and around Zoo Atlanta, and the botanical gardens, and….
Well, she definitely wasn’t going to take Felipe to Stone Mountain. She had a lot of good memories of watching light shows there, and fake snow and hot chocolate and Santa Claus there, and riding, it seemed, to the top of the sky to get to the summit, but she quite understood why it was...problematic. She wouldn’t say so out loud because Mommy (despite being as far to the left of center politically as the rest of the Groves family of course) was passionately opposed to the idea, but Jessica privately numbered herself among those who thought the thing needed a face lift. Carving a giant goober (boiled peanut) and peach into it would be better than current conditions, which seemed to do nothing but draw negative opinions from the press and make bad feelings between people in the state and remind the whole state that they had once been very much on the wrong side of things - even more than a good half of the state was even now, which was saying something. Probably definitely better not to take foreigners there unless a face lift happened in her lifetime.
She was distracted from less enticing elements of Atlanta by a comment from her proposed guest, indicating he’d like to an actual invited guest. She smiled again at this confirmation. “Cool,” she said. “And our dads seem to get along great, so that’s probably not a problem - we’ll set that up. Though then what will we do next summer after that?”
This was more a joke than anything, but she had to admit, it was nice, the thought of seeing someone at least briefly over the summers who didn’t - to one degree or another, no matter how hard they tried to hide it - secretly think she was a freak.
She grinned again at the compliment about picking up etiquette quickly. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “Because they did not cover owl etiquette at my etiquette school at home.” She looked at Felipe curiously. “Do you have etiquette school?” she asked. “Like, not necessarily in Mexico, but as wizards?”
Jessica knew most of her classmates had hated etiquette school (one new money doctor’s kid in Jessica’s class had made his displeasure known by letting a snake out in the swimming pool, therefore failing out, though his escape had been short-lived: his father, determined to get his kids in among polite society, had made him retake the course), but she had rather enjoyed it. Having rules and things to practice soothed her, made dealing with people and unfamiliar situations less scary, somehow. In a way, she thought wizards in particular ought to have etiquette - their culture was so old-fashioned, with everyone toting a weapon at all times, that it was presumably necessary to keep the streets of their towns from looking like a cross between Medieval Times and the Wild West. From the books about wizards she had read with Daddy over the summer, though, it seemed a lot of magical families basically lived on compounds isolated from most of the world until they went to school at age eleven, which made etiquette schools sound complicated to manage.
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Jessica
*blushes*
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Felipe De Matteo
October 25, 2019 4:08 PM
*grins sheepishly* by Felipe De Matteo
Felipe's smile grew into nearly a smirk but he stopped it before it got all the way there. He listened to Jessica talk about the World of Coke, nodding in the appropriate places, and enjoying how much effort she was putting into explaining it to him."I think I've seen 'Mexican Coke' is famous here. It is a popular drink in Mexico, although not one I've had more than once or twice myself." His father had purchased a soda for Felipe and Leonor to share when they had traveled to some of the bigger cities in Mexico before Felipe came to Sonora. "It's hard to imagine a world of it though."
It was nice to think that Jessica would like to see him this summer and next summer and maybe more summers after that. It was a bit frightening to imagine just how excited his father would be about that, particularly since he doubted Mr. Hayles would agree, but that was not going to be an issue for many years to come. Maybe, if he was lucky, it would never be an issue, and he would be allowed to just be a hermit instead.
"Then we will be halfway through school," Felipe realized. "And then we will go see the world. Have you been to Italy? It's nice."
He laughed at Jessica's comment about owl etiquette, confident that she was at least making half of a joke. He cocked his head to think about wizarding etiquette school.
"I am not quite sure," he said. "Most families who would care so much about etiquette would hire private tutors. Leonor and I had private tutors until we came to Sonora, and I think most other affluent wizarding families do as well." He had learned a login time ago that "pureblood" wasn't a nice way to distinguish one group of people from another, and it wasn't even always accurate for what he was talking about. There were pureblood families who wouldn't care an iota for etiquette lessons, and there were muggle families - like Jessica's - who obviously did. "Tutors don't usually teach about owls though," he added with a smirk. "Mostly they teach about math and language. It's all the newspapers coming by owl that make us learn that works."
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Felipe De Matteo
*grins sheepishly*
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Felipe De Matteo
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Jessica
October 25, 2019 11:24 PM
*fiddles with hair* by Jessica
Jessica nodded at the mention of Mexican Coke. “Yeah, same company, I think. It’s just made with sugarcane in Mexico instead of corn syrup.” She shrugged slightly, shifting her thick mane of pale red hair. “I know a lot of people really really like one better than the other, but I’ve never been allowed to drink enough of either to have much of a preference.” Coca-Cola was something she got only as a treat at birthday parties, or on rare occasions when her family needed to be seen doing something ‘normal’ for some reason. Otherwise, it was verboten in her household; too much emphasis was put on good skincare and maintaining appearances generally to allow her to consume much soda.Halfway through school. Jessica knew that her face changed a little at the thought, but she thought she managed to hide just how strange it was to think of. Halfway through school…
Next year, she was supposed to be in eighth grade. She was supposed to take high school Algebra and Spanish. She was supposed to study Honors Language Arts and Georgia History and Earth Science. She was supposed to spend hours debating with friends and family over high school pamphlets and working on her high school applications and going to interviews. She was supposed to start stepping into a more and more public role. Maybe she was even supposed to start thinking about whether she could get a date to the eighth grade formal, something that would help her maintain her status in the pecking order among girls in her grade, in case she decided to spend another year at home or…
And none of it was going to happen.
“Yeah, once,” she said, turning away from the thought. It wasn’t the first time she’d had it, just the first time in this context. “I didn’t get to see much, though, and I don’t remember that much about it - it was a long time ago.” She glanced at Felipe. “This is the second time you’ve mentioned Italy,” she observed. “Do you go there a lot?”
Jessica listened to the information about how wizards were educated, interested to hear it from someone who had been there instead of just from a book. It still seemed strange to her, even though she assumed that was what most people thought was happening to her. Wasn’t that how really sick people were sometimes educated? It went, like, Elizabeth Barrett Browning becoming a genius that way, then suddenly to people who were sick. But here, they were all still learning like Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Jessica had to admit, it was a little easier to think of it that way. She liked Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s work.
“Yeah, there’s a lot more etiquette this way than our way at home,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever laid eyes on the person who puts our newspaper in the box every morning. We do have some tutors, though - I know a lot of people who take extra classes with university students and stuff. We learn math and things in day schools, though. Mine was private, it was really good - my parents paid for me to go there - but there’s public schools that anyone can go to. It’s the law that you have to go to school and pass certain tests even if you’re homeschooled, I think. It’s still so weird to me that there’s so few standardized tests here.”
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Jessica
*fiddles with hair*
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Jessica
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Felipe De Matteo
October 29, 2019 4:41 PM
*finds something interesting to look at on the floor* by Felipe De Matteo
"Tuscany is beautiful," Felipe explained, letting his mind wander there. "It's unlike anywhere else in the world. I think you'd like it. Beautiful art, beautiful food, beautiful everything. Have you heard of Pompeii or Mount Vesuvius? When Zaccaria Innocenti cast the Dancing Feet Charm on the mountains and made them explode, some say the whole of Italy's mountain range became so full of magic that every tree and shrub that grows there now let's a little more of it into the sunset everyday. It's probably hyperbole, but the history with Zaccaria Innocenti makes it a little more believable. Either way, it's gorgeous. I think I'd like Los Jardines de Plata to look a little more like that someday."Talking to Jessica was easy, if for no other reason than she didn't seem to think it was odd for him to have spent so much time abroad despite being so young. It was nice, and not that uncommon among his housemates, but made him feel good. It was easy to be who he was and not think about whether who he was was good or bad.
"You would notice your postman if he pecked you for forgetting to feed him," Felipe pointed out with a wry smile. "But you're right, it does sound different. Some people send their kids to muggle school before they can go someplace for magical studies. Our tutors were much older than college students, but I think that's because no one else would want to come all the way out to where we live. We would travel with them sometimes, so they had to be willing to drop everything else." He hadn't really considered what a burden that must have been for them until now, and wondered where they were these days. "How can a standardized test tell you very much?" he asked, genuinely curious, if a little skeptical. "People aren't standardized. I'd much rather have my best shot and really get people sorted out based on what they can do or not. Have you enjoyed Mr. Row's tests?"
OOC - Legend of Pompeii and Vesuvius from https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Italy and then expanded. Mr. Row's tests were given in a previous post and also I write him.
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Felipe De Matteo
*finds something interesting to look at on the floor*
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Jessica
October 29, 2019 5:49 PM
*clears throat* by Jessica
Jessica listened, startled and a bit fascinated, to Felipe talking about Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius. A witch had caused two of the most famous disasters in history, killing all those people and perfectly preserving the towns as archaeological marvels, by herself? They had that kind of power…?She shivered a little, uncomfortable with the thought. When she had been at her most extremely miserable, it had been comforting to think of punishing all these people, but she had calmed down enough that she was back to a sane person’s terror at the idea. Though she suspected she would have been a little terrified by that idea even had she still been at her most miserable. Being able to wreak that kind of destruction….
“I’ve heard of the volcanoes and towns,” she said. “We learn about Pompeii and Herculaneum and Vesuvius in class, too. We never heard anything about a witch or wizard blowing everything up, though. We learned it’s just because of a natural eruption of the volcano.” Her brow creased slightly. “Does that kind of thing happen a lot? That’s sort of terrifying to think about.” She said it lightly, but was now slightly concerned.
Knowledge was power. Everyone knew that. Part of the reason she still struggled to deal with being here was because of all the knowledge she was being denied by not having proper classes. However, what did it mean if massive swathes of information was actually false? Like, actually false, not just conspiracy-theorist-babbling false? That was disconcerting.
“It does sound beautiful though. Definitely going to add that to my list of places to see. Promise me you won’t blow up a mountain to make Los Jardines de la Plata look more like it, though,” she laughed.
Adult tutors who would travel with the family to teach. Yeah, this sounded much more Elizabeth Barrett Browning than anything Jessica had ever experienced in real life, or heard of anyone she knew experiencing. She wasn’t sure if she was jealous or not. On one hand, she could have learned a lot more, faster, and she wouldn’t have had to deal with the stresses of going to school with other kids and worrying about dealing with them all the time. On the other hand, dealing with people under stress was what she had been born to do, so….
“Not much,” she admitted honestly about her experience of Mr. Row’s tests. “I’m still so clueless about what you can even do around here that I just end up feeling dumb, trying to think of things to write. At home, the point of the tests is...well, you know if everyone knows enough,” she said. “And it helps the school figure out who needs remediation, and who should get into honors classes and stuff. I think it’s a thing...this school is tiny even compared to my old school. You can’t study every kid individually even there, much less in the public schools.” Daddy had made sure Mara was assigned to a good school, but Jessica had heard about parts of APS. Schools packed with double the number of students they had been built to hold. Teachers who changed jobs every year, or even half-year. Violence, chaos. All Jessica knew about both prison and that sort of school, she had learned from television, and from television, she wasn’t sure she’d really notice that much of a difference between being shoved in a bad public school and being shoved into a prison. She thought of Sonora still as more or less like a residential treatment facility, but at least it was big enough for all the inmates….
“So you need numbers to help sort everyone and figure out who needs more or less or whatever,” she summarized. “People say it’s like a conveyor belt, or an assembly line, and I guess I see it, but - Professor Skies looked at me like I had two heads when I tried to explain I have to have all these pre-recs to get into good schools. Does the government really just never test you before you get sent here? How do they know if you know how to, like, read basically?”
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Jessica
*clears throat*
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Felipe De Matteo
October 29, 2019 6:52 PM
Sooo do you like weather? by Felipe De Matteo
"I don't think it happens very much. At least not now. Magic is different somehow I think. I remember one of our tutors explaining that. I'm not sure exactly, but I think it's a little bit less wild now. Most of the time." Felipe was well aware that the background experiences of some of the students at Sonora would beg to differ on that front. Between accidental magic, home-grown spells, and any variety of superstitions that could creep into what was otherwise perfectly respectable spellwork, there was much that was still arcane about the magical arts. "Plus Zaccaria Innocenti killed lots of people by doing that, and would be arrested for lots of different things if he tried it now. Magic itself may be wild, but the magical world is full of checks and balances."He laughed at her joke. "I promise. No exploding mountains for Los Jardines de Plata." He hated to imagine his major's face if he suggested the idea, although it almost made him laugh to think of that too.
Felipe was pretty sure that muggle tests were one of the worst inventions of the population he'd heard so far, but wasn't about to say so. His people had little access to formal education since they were limited only to what other community members could teach and the occasional information from travelers, and there was no use for standardized tests in either regard. "There aren't too many children in Cuidad de Matteo," he said, knowing Jessica had seen the city when she'd visited. "So maybe that's why? I'm not sure how other areas do it. I don't usually travel to residential areas when I am abroad."
The next question mostly just confused Felipe. The thought of being tested to see if he could read made little sense to him, as if he couldn't read, then he would be taught. They'd find out soon enough, and that was why there were support classes for students at Sonora. They were only eleven when they arrived here after all.
"I'm not sure. Lots of people learn it, but if you don't, then you probably didn't need to know it I guess." Felipe wasn't a great reader himself, much preferring numbers to letters, and wondered what Jessica thought of that. "But if they all take standardized tests," he countered, automatically taking Jessica out of the 'they' category and lumping her in with himself and the rest of the magical world. "Then how do they know if you have any particular skills worth cultivating? A standardized test wouldn't even get Leonor and me very far, as we have different strengths. Why take the time to get everyone at the same level when you could be really focusing in on everyone's best talents?"
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Felipe De Matteo
Sooo do you like weather?
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Jessica Hayles
October 29, 2019 7:08 PM
In some climates, yes. Do you? by Jessica Hayles
Magic was somehow different. Jessica wasn't sure if that was good or bad. On one hand, less massive disasters, maybe. On the other hand, it was discomfiting to think of magic as something that could...change. Be wild or civilized. Like it was alive or something. She dug her nails into her forearm for a moment, assaulted briefly by a mental image of bugs crawling out of control under her skin, but then caught herself and let go.Plus, Zacca-person was a dude apparently. Good to know. Better than thinking about living things under her skin, much better...
"That's good anyway," she said when reminded that there were at least a lot of laws to regulate use of magic these days. Pompeii had been a long time ago, though she couldn't help thinking that Rome had been roughly as civilized as the modern era in a lot of ways, and even more regulated in terms of acceptable behavior. There had been laws about what colors were permissible but not about how it was a bad idea to try detonating Mount Vesuvius? At least among wizards.
Jessica stared blankly for a moment at the notion that 'if you didn't learn it, you didn't need to know it.' What in the world? Did they seriously just...not teach people how to read as a matter of course? Their government didn't mandate that? She didn't know that homeschoolers had to prove they could read - she heard vague things occasionally about weird religious schools that didn't teach anything, but usually because they were being called out for it - but she suspected so, because everyone else did...how backward could you get?
"For...at home, there's just too many people," said Jessica bluntly, to begin explaining why individualization wasn't practical. "But even besides that - if they don't teach you a little bit of everything, how are you ever supposed to figure out what kind of strengths you have?" she challenged him. "We're all just kind of...dumb when we go to kindergarten - that's what we call your first year of school," she explained. "You don't know anything really, so how are you supposed to know what you're good at unless you're exposed to everything?"
Challenging, however, was not her basic mode, and she drifted soon back to practical issues. "Plus...at home, you seriously need a basic understanding of a lot of things just to...manage. But you can't do anything later unless you learn a ton of things first." She frowned. "This should make sense," she pointed out. "It's not like the classes here don't have different levels. You have to get through the first set of classes before you go to the next set of classes. It's almost the same as a pre-rec, except that you could never start a class at our age unless you'd passed the tests to show you could keep up in all your lower grades."
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Jessica Hayles
In some climates, yes. Do you?
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Felipe De Matteo
October 30, 2019 7:04 PM
Yeah. Yup. Weather's nice. by Felipe De Matteo
Felipe wasn't sure how to respond to Jessica, in part because his education had been far removed from the educations of other magical children. He had hardly met any magical children before beginning at Sonora and could hardly say what was or wasn't normal. He also was a bit embarrassed, as his own reading skills were hardly anything impressive. It was an ability he possessed - as any important person did - but not one that he would brag about. He also sort of hated the implication that there was anything wrong with his people, many of whom could not count literacy among their privileges. However, many of them did not need to."Many of my people will be farmers or craftsmen for generations. Their needs are not the same as yours or mine and their priorities must necessarily be different," he said coolly. "Some people don't need to learn how to read and aren't any worse off for it. They instead have the time and privilege to learn other skills."
He wasn't angry, and there was no mistaking it for that, but it was a sensitive subject for him as it related directly to the people he was meant to be serving. If there was any failure or shortcoming on their part, it meant there was a shortcoming on the part of leadership. While there were many things that could be said about the De Matteos, that they weren't doing their best was not one of them. They absolutely gave their all, whether it was to tyranny and greed as Felipe's father had insisted that his father before him had done, or to enforced altruism as the modern generation opted for.
The explanation for a lack of individualization in Georgia was hard for Felipe to wrap his mind around as the student body at Sonora was the largest he'd ever seen. However, he knew objectively that there were larger schools, particularly in the Muggle world, and he nodded to affirm that part of her statement.
"Schools were all in one schoolhouse for a long time. Even at Sonora there are only three levels for classes. Your year determines your placement, but you are able to work on remedial skills if necessary." He spread his hands innocently, the way he had seen his mother do when she was not giving in but not going to argue either. "I think there are probably lots of different philosophies about education and none of them could be right all by itself."
Desperate not to talk about something so close to home for him, he gestured back to her poems. "Did you learn poetry in school then? Or was that something you learned on your own?"
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Felipe De Matteo
Yeah. Yup. Weather's nice.
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Jessica Hayles
October 30, 2019 7:46 PM
I like to write about it a lot. by Jessica Hayles
Jessica was not satisfied with Felipe's answer, exactly. It went against the principles her grandfather and Uncle Jason talked about in all their speeches, and the Arvale Foundation's principles. Those principles said that while it was fine and dandy to learn to be a carpenter if that was what you wanted to do, it was morally wrong for anyone to demand that you work as a carpenter and learn nothing else just because your dad and granddad had done it.The irony of her, of all people, thinking this did not occur to her. Business was different; businesses brought with them lots of responsibilities to lots of people, just like ruling Felipe's fiefdom did. Other people needed a chance to work their way to the top, whereas Jessica was already there.
It was hard to know how to respond, though, because while she had a clear thought, she wasn't sure if she was allowed to say it, socially speaking. The problem was that they were veering close to what was Cultural, and that was an area Jessica had been reliably informed she was too white to talk about. She would have personally happily traded every scrap of anything that was distinctive about Southern culture in order to have access to literacy, but she had a feeling people who were neither white nor just the older of her two half-sisters would get very angry at her if she said that, so she was left at a bit of a loss. She didn't want to say the wrong thing, or even think the wrong thing, and hurt Felipe's feelings, but she felt like she was skating on very thin ice here.
"I learned how to write it in school," she replied when he asked something she could answer clearly without giving offense, unless of course he was offended by a flat statement of fact. She strongly suspected this was still the kind of thing that would make Mara laugh and say I think you are too white to explain this to, Jezi, but a fact was a fact. "First I had to learn how to, well, write - the physical action, putting letters down - and then we learned about how rhymes work and different kinds of poem - like those haikus I sent you, how many syllables each line can have and things - and about all the other things you can do with words to create different rhythms and things. That's the thing, though - I mean, I get your point that people can get really good at other things if they're not spending all their time learning how to write poetry, but if nobody had ever given me the chance to learn a little about it and then see if I wanted to learn more after that, I wouldn't know that it's one of my favorite things to do. I'd be completely miserable if I didn't have my writing, if all I knew was only what I needed to know so I could do what everyone else in my family did - except if Great-Grandma hadn't broken all these rules, we wouldn't even be doing what we are, so...I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know." She tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear. "You're right that education is weird. It feels like one of those situations where you wish you could...have both worlds I guess. I don't know. I'm sorry if I said something wrong. I guess it's just...so different it's kind of hard for us to understand, yeah?"
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Jessica Hayles
I like to write about it a lot.
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