In the mid-seventies Helene Hanff took a job writing a guide book of New York City for visitors, and as she set out to research the book (by becoming a tourist herself, with her intrepid friend Patsy by her side) she realized that there are a lot of places that native New Yorkers never go. As a guide book it is quite dated -- the World Trade Center was almost new, the tram to Roosevelt Island was brand new, and Ellis Island had just opened as a historic site. It is, however, written in Hanff's highly entertaining style and filled with the kind of people's history tidbits that I like, such as her observations that many of the wonderful artistic venues of New York (Carnegie Hall, the Frick Museum, the Cloisters, etc.) were essentially paid for with the lives of mine and factory workers. Good book, I recommend it, especially for New Yorkers.
This one is really hard to classify. The author calls it "domestic fantasy". It is the story of a family that lives a seemingly idyllic life in the village of Applekirk, a place that exists in the middle of time. Further east is ruled by gods and goddesses (who seem awfully human,) while the land to the west is largely ruled by reason. Trouble arises when a scholar from the west arrives in Applekirk to study a long-vanished civilization at the same time that an elderly woman -- a former lord of Applekirk -- arrives from the east fleeing the wrath of the goddess of marriage. At times I was bugged by the language that Walton invented for the inhabitants of Applekirk, but the story raised a lot of interesting questions about what constitutes marriage and family. I liked it. (But if you want your novels to move in a linear fashion through time, you might go bonkers reading this book.)
I am a huge fan of Wendell Berry's writing. This is another story set in Berry's fictional Kentucky river town, Port William. It takes place over the course of one day -- the last day, in fact, in the life of 93-year old Jack Beechum -- as he recalls the many turnings of his long life. I've read enough of Berry's Port William stories that the recurring characters are like old friends, and it was wonderful to be among them again. Beautiful, tender, evocative writing. I cannot get enough of it.
The second book in the witches' strand of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Desiderata, one of two fairy godmothers has died and bequeathed her magic wand to the young witch Magrat, with explicit directions that she is to travel to Genua to prevent Emberella from marrying the prince. Magrat embarks on her quest, accompanied by her formidable companions Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg.
I finally got around to reading Personal Effects. (It's been in my "to read" pile only since it came out last fall.) This is a debut YA novel that happens to have been written by my neighbor Emily, so I can tell you that not only has she written one heck of a good novel, but she's also a good dog walker and lawn mower, not to mention a lovely person. But the book: Matt Foster is a 17-year old boy living with his emotionally distant and abusive father as he struggles to cope with his brother TJ's death in the Iraq War. When the family receives TJ's "personal effects", Matt discovers letters and photos that send him on a journey to find out more about his brother. I loved this book -- I could not stop reading it! The author did such a good job of portraying a grief-stricken, emotionally stuck, teenaged boy and I wanted to find out how the story would resolve for all of the characters. On a side note, it was fun that part of the story took place in Madison, in places that I recognized. I highly recommend this book!
There came a time sometime in the last year or so, when I feared I was no longer much of a reader. Books just weren't grabbing me the way I remembered that they once did. I would pick up the latest title my book group was reading and read 2 or 3 pages before I just had to close my eyes. Or I'd get a stack of books from the library, and one after another would fall by the wayside … just … not … that … interesting. What was happening to me?
And now … summer. I'm not working, except to make stabs at getting things whipped into shape around the house. I'm reading again! It's like I've recovered from a long malaise and my appetite has returned. Let me see, what have I read?
A coming of age novel that takes place in 1987, still the dark ages when it came to public awareness about AIDS. While 14-year old June Elbus struggles to come to terms with the untimely death of her beloved uncle Finn, she slowly comes to realize that there are other people in her life who also miss him. Sometimes I felt that June's voice was just a little too wise for a 14-year old, but all in all I found this story to be really compelling and well-written.
What do you read when you want something light and refreshing, yet not stupid? Terry Pratchett, of course! The first of the "Witches" strand of the Discworld series, a glorious send-up of MacBeth with overtones of Hamlet, seen through the lenses of the incomparable Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax, and Magrat Garlick: The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin. Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain-lashed hills. The night was a s black as the inside of a cat. It was the kind of night, you could believe, on which gods moved men as though they were pawns on the chessboard of fate. In the middle of this elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes like the madness in a weasel's eye. It illuminate three hunched figures. As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked, "When shall we three meet again?" There was a pause. Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones, "Well, I can do next Tuesday."
This is a biography of Mary Granville Pendarves Delaney, a woman whose life spanned most of the eighteenth century, always on the fringes of British high society. She befriended a substantial number of luminaries of the day, was married twice -- unhappily at 17 (and widowed at 23) and again in her thirties to an Irish clergyman, from all accounts the kind of happy marriage that many people only dream about -- but the extraordinary story begins when Mrs. Delaney is 73 years old, widowed again, and begins to create stunning cut paper flower collages (all of which can be viewed at the British Museum's website.) The weak link in this book was the biographer's attempt to muse on the nature of creativity; I found the parallels she drew to her own life to be somewhat tiresome. Mary Delaney's story stands quite well all on its own (kind of like Mary Delaney herself.)
I love reading about Vietnam. In some ways it reminds me of Ireland or Palestine, an underdog of a country, a place that has maintained its culture and dignity through a history of occupation by a succession of bully-nations and despots. Fourth Uncle is a memoir of Quang Van Nguyen, a Vietnamese man who escaped to the U.S. during the reign of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (whose influence extended from Cambodia into Vietnam.) He was adopted as an infant by an extraordinary Buddhist monk/doctor and trained to follow in his footsteps. The book chronicles Quang's education (including his teenaged rebellion when he dabbles in sorcery.) While some of his accounts stretch the boundaries of belief for someone like me, I was also reminded (again) that there is waaaaay more to this world than meets the eye. Good book.
Call me a nerd, but some of my favorite books are books about books. And this one is a book about a book about books. I've reached new heights in nerd-dom. One of my top top top all-time favorite books is 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff. If you haven't read it, well, you don't know what you're missing. (The movie adaptation -- in a sweet addendum to the story the rights to produce it were a gift from Mel Brooks to his wife Anne Bancroft -- was pretty good too.) Q's Legacy is partly about how Helene Hanff came to write her mega-bestseller, and then what happened after people like me fell in love with it. I just love her voice: she's funny, self-deprecating, down-to-earth, all salt and vinegar … but she loves what she loves fiercely. Sadly Ms. Hanff died, mostly penniless in a nursing home, in 1997.
More later. I just started reading Helene Hanff's Apple of My Eye in which she wrote the narrative to accompany a late seventies tourist's guide to New York City. I'll let you know what I think. Stay tuned …
Just in case you didn't hear me screaming yesterday afternoon, I am thrilled to announce that I have a new position for next year -- School Library Media Specialist at Frank Allis Elementary school! Like many of the best things in life, this is bittersweet. I've had this as a goal for over a decade, I am very ready for a change from classroom teaching, it is a position that will fit me well … but as it turns out, it means I have to leave my community at Emerson Elementary School, something that I have really resisted. After my initial elation, I sat down in my classroom and wept. Leaving my friends, the families with whom I've bonded, the children I've nurtured -- that's a big big deal. Emerson holds a large chunk of my heart.
I don't have a crystal ball to see how this adventure will turn out. My dear family and friends tell me that I will be a swell LMS. I'm a little daunted by the learning curve, but I think I am going to love it. I feel like I've finally been granted membership into a prestigious club, decoder ring, secret handshake, and all.
I've long declared that when I got a job I would buy myself a Bunny Rabbit puppet, like the one on Captain Kangaroo. I found a nice vintage one on Etsy today, and it's on its way. I also subscribed to School Library Journal. I think I might have to buy an iPad as well, so I can preview all the cool new learning apps. I'm so excited! (Ridiculous big grin on my face as I write this.)
Please … if next year I start talking about teaching summer school again … if I say, "I'll be in a library, it will be fun" … do me a favor and ask me if I'm out of my mind. I just finished my 3rd straight day of working in a 97˚ library. Humidity was at 56%. I've been uncomfortable, but I make a point of staying hydrated and moving as little as possible. The kids however, are miserable which does nothing for their behavior. To me it's veered over into the realm of ludicrous. For the kids it seems criminal.
Which brings me to another point about our summer school program: MMSD thinks it's a good idea to take all of the kids who were not "proficient" in reading by spring -- who for whatever reason, were not particularly engaged in or struggled with learning during the school year -- and give them more of the same (aka MOTS) for 6 weeks in buildings without air conditioning. Recipe for success? No, I don't think so either.
It's particularly sad for me when so many kids come to the library and can't find anything to read. The most popular books are Sponge Bob, Spiderman, Pokémon, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. There are limited numbers of those books and when they are all checked out, the kids are frequently at a loss. They frequently go and search for them in the online catalog, as if the act of typing the desired book will conjure it up. They can't hear me when I say "It's not here," and they frequently get angry.
I do what a good librarian is supposed to do. I've been going to the shelves and pulling a lot of books that I know they will never look at otherwise. I give book talks. I pay attention to what they're interested in, and try to find similar titles. I look for movie tie-ins. Occasionally it works. Tintin books were flying off the shelves today, after 5 weeks of plugging them. My first class was all over Neil Gaimann and checked out Coraline, The Wolves in the Wall, and The Graveyard Book -- and proceeded to lay down on the floor and actually read them! With few exceptions my next four classes were testy and unwilling to try anything. (Maybe it was the 97˚.)
I drove home, musing on the whole summer school experience, feeling kind of frustrated. Then I remembered a situation from yesterday. I had one kid -- an upcoming 2nd grader -- who was mad that I was out of Pokémon books. After 20 minutes of a slow motion tantrum (him, not me) I finally got him to tell me that he wanted a book about "hot air" (Appropriate, right?) which I took to mean hot air balloons. We went to nonfiction. No, he didn't want that book or that one either. No, not that one. (As you can imagine, the selection is somewhat limited.) He's frustrated. I'm frustrated. He finally says, "I'll SHOW you what I want!" and goes and gets the book that I had set aside as a read aloud for the next class: Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade.(A WONDERFUL picture book biography of Tony Sarg.)
I tightened my bun, sucked in my girdled abdomen, pushed my glasses further down on my nose and hissed, "No, you can't have that one. I'm reading it aloud!" Just kidding. I said, "You want THAT ONE? COOL!!" and let him take it. There are lots of books in the library, I could always find something else to read.
I think that the educator Susan Ohanian was correct when she observed that teachers ultimately teach themselves, or to put it another way, it's a lot about the relationship that you build with kids. Why should they listen to me when I say a book is good? They don't know me. They're only just starting to know their summer school teachers.
Social dancing -- it's one of my soapbox topics. As in, we as a society don't do enough dancing just for fun, as a way to socialize with our fellow human beings, anymore. Oh yeah, "young people" go out to clubs and dance, and sometimes "women of a certain age" might drag their spouses to a mini course on ballroom dancing. But just to go to a dance for fun doesn't seem to happen all that often.
So, when I got an email from some listserv or other that I am on, announcing a square dance with a visiting caller and LIVE MUSIC on Friday night at our wonderfully funky WilMar Neighborhood Center, I had to go. (And I dragged my spouse, though it wasn't really much of a drag. He feels much like I do about social dancing. We were even joined by our 16 year old daughter later on in the evening.)
My main experiences with square dancing were, first in elementary school gym class in 6th grade ( a surprisingly happy memory, actually) and then at my alternative high school, where the only dances we had were square dances with a caller named Vern Weisensel from Sun Prairie. (I often wonder what he thought of calling square dances for a bunch of stoned wannabe-hippie kids in thrift shop finery … Who knows? Maybe he wasn't nearly so straight-laced as I remember him.) It was a great way to dance and socialize … you could be flirtatious, touch the other lust-filled adolescents, maybe even snuggle a bit, and then "Cab driver, once more round the block …" and you'd move on to the next person.
The caller last night was T-Claw from Nashville, TN. He takes the tradition of calling dances seriously, but he was anything but straight-laced. I knew I was going to like him when I opened up a copy of his square dance calling 'zine (!) Dare To Be Squareand found this variation on the Virginia Reel:
All join hands, up and back
Let's get our troops out of Iraq
Allemande right if it takes all night
Allemande left, this war is theft …
As the evening progressed he was lounging back in his chair, a microphone in one hand and a beer in the other, calling out "Same old gent with a brand new girl, down the center and divide the world!" He was clearly having a good time. He seems passionate about getting people to participate. (Isn't that one of our great societal ills in the U.S.? People will pay big money to be consumers of lots of things, but it's harder to get them to participate -- not just in the arts, but in things like VOTING, for instance. But I digress.)
He was accompanied by Can I Get An Amen!, a really rocking quartet of old timey musicians (but definitely not old!) out of Chicago. I urge you to check them out. Not only did they play a good reel, but they threw in a couple of achingly beautiful waltzes (the most romantic of dances, in my opinion) and sang in glorious Louvin Brothers-type harmonies. Sigh.
Which leads me to another point. In recent years when I have attended folk events, it's been disconcerting to look around at the audience and realize that I am the youngest person there. (Although I still regard myself as 27 or 28, I'm nearly 53 years old, hardly qualified to be called "young", for Pete's sake.) I have frequently wondered what the future is of a lot of traditions which I hold dear, if the card-carrying young people aren't carrying them on. Well I'm happy (sort of) to report that at last night's dance Ed and I were maybe not the oldest, but among the oldest people there and there were an awful lot of youngsters ("dirty hipsters," my daughter informed me, and that's a good thing) dancing away. It did my heart good, it really did. Even when the sweet young man I was talking to asked me if I was retired.
So … meet your partner, pat 'em on the head, if they don't like biscuits, feed 'em cornbread, promenade across the floor, that's all there is, there ain't no more.
T-Claw "Breaking Up Winter" w/ the Georgia Crackers
For the last 17 years, the first Saturday in December has been set aside for a remembrance service held by the Bereaved Parent Group of Madison. The first year after Sophie's death we simply attended. Then we started contributing a song to the service: The Water Lily by Australian poet Henry Lawson, set to music by Priscilla Herdmann. We've missed just one service since Sophie died, the year I ended up in the hospital with pulmonary embolism (yuck.) I love it; it's a chance to catch up with friends whom we know only in this context and see once a year. People who speak the same language we do, so to speak. Members of the same club.
The most powerful part of the evening is when somebody reads off all of the babies' names. To hear someone else say your baby's name means so much. Last year, the people compiling the list made a mistake and got Sophie's middle name wrong, and I felt terrible. This year I checked the list to make sure it was correct. I hope I didn't seem too obnoxious.
Today brought a strange coincidence: Ed was at work and Sophie's cardiologist came in. We run into him from time to time around town, but today of all days? The world works in mysterious ways. And another year is past.
I have an admission to make: I had a hand in Scott Walker's victory last November. No, I didn't vote for him and I did vote for Tom Barrett, the Democratic candidate. But voting was all I did last fall. An act that added up to about 10 minutes of my time -- walking the one block to my neighborhood polling place, filling in my ballot, and walking home. Walker won, and I went around saying, "How bad can he be?" In reality, I was despondent and had disengaged from the process. 8 years of GeeDubya compounded with the disappointment in Obama. (YES, I AM disappointed, and I'm not afraid to lose friends on Face Book for stating that. Obama is a big disappointment to me.)
Well, February came and we learned very quickly how bad Walker could be. All of a sudden virtually everything that I had taken for granted here in my beloved home state of Wisconsin was in danger. Much has changed, and it is uncertain that we will be able to get it back. The recalls did not gain a majority of Senate Democrats, though they did slim down the margin enough for one Republican who shows signs of retaining a sliver of his humanity (all the rest have sold their souls to the corporate devil, as far as I can tell) to perhaps be able to step across the breach.
Like many of my fellow Wisconsinites, what our state's "Arab spring" did was to shake me out of my despondent stupor, and get me to put my shoulder to the wheel of change. You see, for 10 years I've been singing, "Come back Woody Guthrie …" and wondering where the leaders were. Where were the charismatic and eloquent people who would lead us Americans out of the wilderness? I was waiting … and waiting … and nobody was stepping up. I am a child of the sixties who grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, one of the hotbeds of anti-Vietnam War protests. I knew what my leaders should look and sound like, and they just weren't forthcoming. And I was losing hope.
The protests of February and March were exhilarating, galvanizing, and inspiring. What I realized was,
We the People are the leaders, the agents of change. "Be the change you want to see" is more than just words. We are the ones who must turn the wheels of change. And it's not easy. It takes work. It takes time. It takes you out of your comfort zone perhaps. Puts you in danger of arrest (or in some places, worse.) But it is the only thing that makes things better. And those rights that we hold so dear? They can, will, indeed have disappeared in the blink of an eye, because the powers that be -- all of the powers other than the power of We the People -- don't really believe we should have those rights. They have always been precarious. We were lulled into thinking that they were a given, but they're not … unless we fight for them.
There are leaders -- politicians and whatnot -- who will help us fight for our rights, but it is my responsibility as a citizen to be out there being a leader. What can I do? I am required to teach my students social studies … civics! Sure, I teach the larvae, the kindergartners, but there are appropriate ways to teach them important concepts that lay the groundwork for being good citizens. Ta dah!
We've got the big recall coming up -- the puppet himself, Scott Walker. With the gerrymandering and the voter suppression (yup, I believe that's what it is) getting voters to the polls is more important than ever, and it is a tangible place to put energy.
I'm not asleep anymore. I am not despondent. I've made me some hope. It was civil rights activist Bayard Rustin -- look him up if you don't know him -- who said that hope wasn't something you find, you have to make it.
Today my dear friend Chuck sent me this article -- the inspiration for my post. I hope that it inspires you the way it did me.
I went to a memorial service this week for a long-time family friend, Louise Uphoff. She was an ardent progressive Democrat (with Socialist leanings). My parents were married on her in-law's farm 65 years ago, I used to babysit her firstborn child, and our paths crossed many times over the years, though as usual, not as often as I would have liked. At the service I learned that she was a passionate knitter who took her knitting to every meeting (including the Democratic National Convention, where she was a delegate); I never knew that we had that in common. I also learned that she loved Broadway show tunes (not me) and was an employee and proud member of the state teachers' union.
With the recall elections of 6 Republican state senators just days away, it was no surprise that amidst the tears and the funny stories, the service was really a rallying of We the People to renew our commitment to Democracy, to not give up the struggle because in the end, we on the Left are on the right side. Louise's husband, Charlie, wore a "Stand With Wisconsin" t-shirt to the service. The final eulogy was delivered by John Nichols, our Wisconsin-grown, progressive, Socialist journalist, and I don't think I was the only one to walk out feeling inspired and heartened.
When I was younger I avoided going to funerals. That was something the grown-ups -- i.e. my parents -- did. My parents have been gone a good many years now, and somehow I have become the person who goes to the funerals and memorial services of my parents' friends and associates, the representative of our family. (My oldest brother always goes too; the oldest and the youngest kids in the family -- I wonder if that fits some pattern in family psychology.) I started to do it because it felt like I should, to honor the interwoven threads that made up my parents', and thus, my history.
Along the way something funny happened. I started to like, no, love going to these services. Not in a Harold and Maude kind of way; funerals of strangers hold no attraction. I am a person who savors connections, and funerals are great places to reconnect, even for just a short time. When I see old friends of my parents I often feel like I've gotten in touch with a little piece of my parents whom I miss so much. And they're cathartic; a good cry is a good thing.
Maybe it's an age thing, but I have come to like funerals more than weddings. At the recent weddings I've attended, I often feel as if I have little in common with the bride and groom or their friends. In fact, it's often as if we middle-agéd people are invisible to them. (I suspect that will be different at my own kids' weddings, should they choose a state-sanctioned route.) Besides, 3 out of 4 weddings are destined to end in divorce. Call me cynical, but sometimes that pops into my head when I see all of the money being spent on wedding celebrations!
So I've become a fan of the well-thought-out goodbye.
After months of deliberating back and forth, should I or shouldn't I? -- I registered for a weekend-long songwriting workshop at the end of this month. I realized that the only thing holding me back (except for the money, and what's money anyway? After all of the shit ScottWalkerCo is pulling in our state, I've developed something of a devil-may-care attitude toward my hard-earned, easily-stolen pay) was my inhibitions. But the thing is -- as I get better on the guitar, I really don't want to just play other people's great songs. I want to write my own, possibly mediocre, songs.
What is the worst case scenario? As with my guitar playing, I fear that I will channel the couple from A Mighty Wind. I will write verses not even worthy of a Hallmark™ card, be like Rod McKuen's younger and much less talented sister, be defined as part of the Sylvia Plath group (that's a high school reference.) And the best case? I will learn and grow, just as I have with my playing. I am much more comfortable on my instrument than I was even 6 months ago. The lesson is, old dogs can learn new tricks.
I preach to my student teachers what a good thing it is for us teachers to put ourselves in the role of being a beginner at something. It really makes you think about what we're asking our young students to do, how they go out on a limb every single day …
So I mailed my registration in and I'll be trucking off to Dodgeville, Wisconsin in a couple of weeks, notebook and guitar in hand, ready to learn songwriting. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Yesterday I attended a "croning" ceremony for my friend Frances, who just turned 60. There were 20 or so women at the event, and I suspect I was the youngest one there, still wet behind the ears at almost-52. At one point we were invited to share stories of significant transitions in our own lives. Always slow to speak up in situations like that, the group moved on to the next scheduled activity before I had collected my thoughts sufficiently. "Transitions?" I was thinking. "Every day feels like a transition!"
Later I was thinking about one big transition which I'm still trying to navigate -- that of being the mother of young children to being the mother of a grown and almost-grown child, respectively. From the time I was 12 or so I knew I wanted babies. Badly. I wrote lists of prospective baby names ad nauseum. I bought little items of clothing that caught my eye, to put away for "when I had a baby." It was bad. Really bad.
Still, I didn't have my first baby until I was almost 30. It was hard in all the ways you might expect, but also an incredibly joyous time. Except for the sleep deprivation, I believe I was in my element. 5 years later we had our second child, who died in infancy. I was 37 when our third child was born, and I got to experience all of the parenting a very young child again, another joyous time, though admittedly tinged by the loss we had experienced.
I absolutely loved my children's childhoods. I was the mom who knit sweaters, sewed little sun dresses and stuffed toys, froze healthy popsicles in the summer … Oh, it wasn't all a bed of roses. It was as a young mother that I was first diagnosed with low-grade chronic depression that sometimes made it hard to be the mother I really wanted to be. It also brought out some of my very best intentions.
You readers who have raised children know, I'm sure, how when you're in the thick of it you think it will last forever -- for better or worse. You might listen to the Malvina Reynolds' song Turn Around and get all sad about the future (at least I did, when my first baby was still under a year old!) but it doesn't seem all that close. All of a sudden -- WHOOSH -- they're grown up (or nearly so.)
And I'm left holding the bag. The bag of bedtime stories, little dresses, star-shaped baby dolls, plastic horses, and all of the other flotsam and jetsam of my kids' childhoods, wondering where to go from here. I'm not worried about it. There are many times these days when I revel in the freedom to just go somewhere, without either packing Cheerios and a wet washcloth or finding a babysitter (okay, I exaggerate -- I haven't had to do that in a long time.) I adore the young women my little daughters have become, even if I look askance at their fashion choices much of the time.
This is a transition that I find particularly bittersweet.
I just want to say that I, for one, do not take the decision to participate in what amounts to a strike lightly. For a teacher of young children it's pretty painful and I would much rather be teaching my class tomorrow. But the stakes are so high, not just for me or my fellow teachers, but for so many other workers, for both the poor and what we still quaintly refer to as "the middle class", and a quality of life here in Wisconsin. In a very short time Gov. Wanker has turned Wisconsin into a "pay to play" state. If you donated the bucks to his campaign you get favors, or at least he won't go after you … yet. If not, you're a big old ZERO to him. This is nothing less than class warfare of the kind we've been witnessing for some time now, but ramped up to a new level. It's redistributing wealth, upwards into the pockets of the already rich. THAT'S why I feel compelled to participate.
I get a lot of pleasure out of Facebook (too much pleasure, some might say.) I'm one of those people who seeks out connections with other people. However, Facebook has its drawbacks, one of which is that one's postings there disappear so quickly and are seemingly gone forever (although I'm sure the FBI could retrieve them with no trouble at all.) I also really enjoy writing, and have a hard time limiting myself to the small number of characters allotted for status updates, and what have you. I am therefore going to try to do more regular blog posts, and no, that's not a New Year's Resolution™. (I don't believe in them, at least for myself. Daisy the cat, on the other hand, could resolve not to use her claws and my thighs as the means to get her chubby body up onto my lap at the computer. Just a suggestion.)
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, New Year's Eve. We walked to our friends Shel and Vicki's annual potluck/party where there was a whole lot of social networking of the face-to-face kind and connectivity going on. I saw a lot of friends, some of whom I hadn't seen in a l-o-o-o-ng time (like Lenny, with whom I went to alternative high school, and got more stoned than any other time I remember on a field trip to a very much not alternative high school and couldn't stop laughing, due to some killer brownies that Lenny had brought along. And Dan, whom I met for the first time maybe 31 years ago when he picked me up hitch-hiking and explained what a "loss-leader" was in grocery store terms -- funny the things that your brain remembers -- and later was my downstairs neighbor, and became a fellow teacher.) Then there were the friends I see pretty frequently, but always enjoy. It was a quite delightful evening. I love that Shel and Vicki don't feel the need to keep it going until midnight, so that we were home by 10:00 p.m.
At 10:30 I was walking the dog and ran into my neighbors out on the sidewalk with their 5-year old daughter, banging pots and pans with spoons. I stuck my tongue in my cheek and harassed them about noise pollution, to which they replied, "It's midnight!" (wink, wink) Oh yeah … as Terry Pratchett says in Hogfather, you tell children small lies when they're young, so they'll believe the big lies later. I remember those days.
I also saw this sad scene:
Bad Santa -- No more cognac for you!
Back home, I didn't get to bed early as planned, because we watched the movie Gran Torino in its entirety. Aside from the vigilante mentality which is kind of hard to take, it's an excellent movie, and the first I've seen that even acknowledges the existence of the Hmong people.
There you have it -- a play-by-play of my ho-hum life. 2011, here we are.
There is a lot of fear floating around these days, as Wisconsin prepares to inaugurate a new governor: the climate change-denying, virulently anti-union, anti-high speed rail, anti-teacher, anti-everything Fighting Bob LaFollette stood for Scott Wanker (oops -- there's that pesky typo again; my finger slips off the "L" onto the "N" every time!) Fear has also been on my mind since I finished Barbara Kingsolver's stunning novel The Lacuna a few days ago, some of which revolves around McCarthyism and the ability to control people through their fear.
One of the things I truly looked forward to when Obama was elected was an end to the kind of fear that the Bush Administration constantly stirred up, and to some extent I think that has been the case. But election 2010 happened, with fairly draconian overtones for us in Wisconsin, and there is a lot of fear of what it will mean for the public servants that the new governor seems to hate so much. I don't want to be a Pollyanna, nor do I want to put my head in the sand. However, I'm not finding it helpful when people come up to me and say, "What do you think it's going to mean for us teachers? Don't you wish you could retire?" etc. etc.
I've been wishing (not for the first time) that I could talk to my parents about their experiences living through dark and scary political times, because from my perspective they did so with their heads held high, without fear, and managing to convey an unfailing sense of hope.
This is how I want to meet the new regime: to speak truth to power (and not just in the vacuum of Blogdom or Facebook,) to be effective, to not give in to fear and to give my children hope. Being on the Left means being frequently lonely, but I will seek out like-minded people, I will try to lead by example, I will encourage the quiet ones to speak their truth as well. I choose to remember that there is power in numbers, and perhaps this is the kick in the beehind that's needed for the masses to stand up. (And if not, I'll still hold my head up high.)
One of my favorite quotes for times like these is from Bayard Rustin, the long-unsung hero of the civil rights movement, when he was asked where he found the hope to go on. His response (paraphrased) was that hope isn't something you find, it's something you make.
Friends, go forth into the new year without fear and make hope.
Yes, it's that time of year, when you hear the scraping of sleigh runners and the prancing of 16 tiny hooves on your rooftop, when the fellow in the red robe comes down your chimney with his HO HO HO, a time to be jolly, with mistletoe and holly and -- other things ending in olly. That can only mean one thing: It's time for the annual reading of Terry Pratchett's Hogfather!
It's Hogswatch Eve, and the Hogfather has gone missing under mysterious circumstances. Paid assassin, Mr. Teatime (pronounced Te-ah teem-eh) and a band of petty thieves are messing with the beliefs of the world's children, leaving an inconvenient surplus of belief elsewhere -- especially at the Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork. Someone has to step in to save Hogswatch so that the sun will continue to rise each day, and that someone is … Death? HO HO HO. Also featuring the Verucca Gnome and the Oh God of Hangovers.
Another delectable offering in the Discworld series, Hogfather manages to poke fun at everything associated with holidays while honoring the underpinnings of tradition. A story with many twists, turns, and seemingly loose ends, but in the end you are richly rewarded. Pratchett's books may seem light and insignificant, but they offer so much food for thought. Honestly, what are you waiting for? HO HO HO, Happy Hogswatch!
My book group is reading Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. I have 200+ pages to read in order to finish it by Thursday night's book group meeting. But that's not why I'm writing tonight. This is a book review of Terry Pratchett's most recent book -- his fourth YA novel about the young witch, Tiffany Aching.
The Tiffany Aching series begins with the delightful The Wee Free Men, when the 9-year old Tiffany first is identified as a witch, meets the Nac Mac Feegle (or "wee free men", a race of tiny blue men in kilts who enjoy drinkin', fightin', and drinkin') and goes head to head with the queen of the fairies to rescue her younger brother, as well as Roland, the son of the local baron. In A Hat Full of Sky, Tiffany is 11. She's left her home on the Chalk to go to the mountains and get formal training as a witch, but a malevolent spirit called a "hiver" has taken up residence in her body and she must outwit it or die. In the third book, Wintersmith, when the 13-year old Tiffany makes the impetuous decision to join in the age-old Morris dance honoring Winter and Summer, she attracts the amorous attention of the Wintersmith and stirs up jealousy in the heart of the real Lady Summer.
In I Shall Wear Midnight Tiffany is 16 and has returned to be the local witch for the people of her beloved Chalk. But all is not well. She has had a falling-out with Roland, whom she had supposed she would marry one day, and he is betrothed to someone else. Furthermore, there is rising sentiment against witches that threatens to break out into the kind of violence that was seen in the past, and whatever is causing it appears to be focused on Tiffany.
Like the previous Tiffany Aching books, this one is filled with Pratchett's trademark intelligent humor spiced with a little bawdiness (courtesy of the Nac Mac Feegle and the delightful old witch Nanny Ogg) and infused with serious social commentary. There is also a bittersweetness to it: Pratchett has been very public about his diagnosis with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, and this book felt like an extended good-bye to many beloved characters from his earlier Discworld books. At any rate, Tiffany Aching is a child no longer, so I suspect it is the last children's book about her.
My introduction to Terry Pratchett was The Wee Free Men, and after that I was hooked. Tiffany is one of the best female characters to come along in a very long time, and I absolutely love Pratchett's take on witchcraft. I highly recommend that you read this series (and then make the leap over to his Discworld books for adults.)
I loved this response to a "Gawker" column at Worldwide Hippies: President Orders College Kids To Do Something.
Here's the deal, Mr. President.
I am going to vote Democrat in the midterms. Not because I believe you or your party will accomplish a single goddamned thing that I care about; they are clearly inept to the point of ridiculousness and your fetish for compromise would be laudable if the other party shared it but since they have openly stated they are unwilling to negotiate on anything it's an enormous handicap. But I will vote Democrat, because the alternative is actually horrifying.
I am disappointed that the public option was dropped without a fight in favor of drug price fixing deals with Big Pharma and a mandate to purchase insurance from the same handful of companies whose monopoly on insurance is why we have a WHO score on par with a third world country in the first place. I am disappointed that your party has rolled over on fighting the crooked Bush tax cuts, or extending health benefits for 9/11 first responders, or repealing DADT. Want to know what those four things have in common? They were all overwhemingly popular with the public during a period when your party had a majority (briefly even a supermajority) and yet without exception the Democrats in Congress either traded away core parts of their party platform in exchange for absofuckinglutely nothing or just completely bobbled the ball and let the GOP control the debate. You people are sexually attracted to failure.
Just a few years ago the GOP passed spectacularly unpopular legislation with considerably less votes in Congress...granted, unlike you they were able to count on the fact that the opposition party was so spineless they'd vote for things they claimed to oppose out of fear of being painted as unpatriotic. But the Democrats don't have the advantage of getting to fight against Democrats, so at some point you people are going to have to grow a goddamned backbone.
So why vote Democrat at all, if your party is determined to fail at everything you try? Because at least you're trying, and the opposition party is a veritable death cult with no plan beyond getting back into power so that they can do the exact same things that ran the country off the rails in the first place.
But don't expect me to get excited about it. Don't expect me to volunteer my time and money to help Democrats get elected the way I did in 2008. You squandered every opportunity we gave you, ignored your professed values, punted on the first down at every opportunity, and ignored your base in order to court the votes of people who wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. Then election season rolls back around and suddenly you remember to pay lip service to our values? Piss off. You don't get another dime from me until I see you people care about progress sometime other than election season. And stop mistaking my disgust for apathy, or my expectation that Democrats in Congress do their goddamned jobsfor unrealistic magical thinking. No one expected a magic wand to be waved and the trainwreck the GOP spent 8 years created to be undone in 2, but what we did expect was that you would at least make an effort. Your party has failed to meet the already exceedingly low expectations I set for it.
Stop mistaking my disgust for apathy … Do I have an AMEN?
President Obama spoke in my hometown yesterday, and I had a hard time mustering much enthusiasm for him. I made some comments on Facebook to that effect, and a friend of a friend commented that liberals shouldn't be blaming him for his failure to right the wrongs of the Bush administration's 8 years in just 20 months -- something which I have heard often. It led me to want to clarify why I am so disappointed in the Obama presidency, to find a way to put it into words so I don't just sound like a disenchanted liberal who feels that Obama has failed to deliver the goods fast enough.
The essence of it is this: Aside from the backpedaling on campaign promises (which I consider to be standard political fare,) I resent that the Obama White House treats people on the progressive left (like me) as part of the problem instead of part of the solution. Because the ideas that we champion -- ideas such as universal single payer health care, a WPA-style employment recovery plan, removing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan -- are common sense, good for the country, and tried and true. We are not obstructionists, nor are we naysayers. We are the yea-sayers, the ones who would happily pick up the mops and get to work, as Obama exhorted his critics to do last year.
We are the ones who got to work to elect this guy.
And they treat us as if we are, at best, inconsequential. Irrelevant. Then we are chastised for not wanting to come to the rallies to hear the pretty words. And it disturbs me greatly that so many who do the chastising are other progressives.
Obama is charasmatic. He is smart, and a good speaker. However I am wary of the cult of personality that continues to surround him. I want action in the right direction on his administration's part. I want acknowledgement and respect.
BTW, this doesn't mean that I am not voting in November. I am quite aware that people in other places die for the right to vote. But let me remind other liberals who might criticize my stance, questioning my government is also a right we hold dear -- or used to.
Blogging hasn't been happening much lately. Blame it on grad school, blame it on Facebook, blame it on the Bossa Nova. But I can at least manage book reviews, can't I? Oh yeah, I've been reading. A little of this, a little of that. And always something by Terry Pratchett to break up the monotony. I spent this past week in self-imposed exile (a.k.a. vacation) on a nearly deserted island, which seemed like a good time to reread Pratchett's most recent children's book Nation. Nation is a departure from Pratchett's other books, maybe even something of a disappointment for die-hard Pratchett fans. It isn't set on Discworld; instead Pratchett plays fast and loose with some of the history and geography of Earth to create a parallel world. It was also the first book he wrote after the sad revelation that he has a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's disease. (His disease has most noticeably affected his motor abilities; he can no longer type and must dictate his stories to a typist.)
Nation opens in a time of upheaval in the mid-nineteenth century. There has been a flu epidemic in Britain which has claimed the King and a great number of his heirs, and a ship has been dispatched to one of the furthest outposts of the British empire to fetch the next living heir. Meanwhile in the great Pelagic Ocean there has been a massive tsunami that brought death and destruction to the many island nations there.
Mau is an inhabitant of one of the islands, his people known simply as "the Nation." No longer a boy and not yet a man, Mau was returning from his initiation into adulthood on a distant island when the wave struck. He returns to his home island to find that he is the only survivor.
Daphne is a well brought up British girl, who was sailing out to join her father in Port Mercia in the Pelagic Ocean. The Sweet Judy, the ship on which she travels, has already withstood an attempted mutiny when the tsunami hits. The captain and remaining crew are drowned in the wave and the ship is driven to Mau's island. Daphne and a foul-mouthed parrot have survived.
Inevitably Mau and Daphne meet. They form a bond based on mutual survival, that grows into a friendship over time. As time goes on, more survivors of the tsunami find their way to the Nation, and Mau -- lost in his grief, in limbo between childhood and manhood, and questioning the gods of his people who would take so many innocent lives -- must act as the chief of the Nation.
In some ways Nation is less satirical than Pratchett's other books, but many of the themes are familiar. As always he raises questions about government and organized religion, and also white supremacy, class, and empire. Because it was written for a younger audience, at times the narrative seems too simple, but ultimately Nation is a very wise and thought-provoking book. I recommend it, and if you can read it while marooned on an island, so much the better.
Excellent article from the editors of an excellent publication, Rethinking Schools.
Teachers have always been devalued in the United States, but in the past months the pace and intensity of the attacks have escalated sharply. Spurred by the June 2 deadline for the second round of Race to the Top, states have raced to fire more teachers, tie pay and evaluation to student test scores, close or reconstitute more schools, and disempower teachers' unions and teaching as a profession-trampling teachers, students, and communities in the process.
What lies behind this unprecedented assault on teachers? And, even more important, what can we do about it? We believe that these attacks are part of an effort to dismantle public education and that we need an effective, collaborative strategy to combat it.
I was teaching first grade at a high poverty school back in the mid-nineties, when a lot of these so-called reforms started coming down the pike. The changes we were being asked to make at that time were distressing. We were being told to give up what I considered to be developmentally appropriate practices in the name of meeting the "standards and benchmarks." It was so distressing that I fled first grade for a Pre-K program, and even considered leaving teaching altogether.
That was 15 years ago. Since then I have taught both first grade and kindergarten (sometimes both at the same time, which is just crazy-making.) And while I am still very concerned about teaching in a developmentally appropriate way, I have also made my peace with the increased emphasis on academic achievement -- as long as it is done effectively. Over the last couple of years my district, and particularly my school, has been looking very closely at targeted interventions to give kids the basic skills they need, and I think we are slowly seeing what is known as "the achievement gap" close. And I feel good about it because it is good for the kids and their families. I understand that some of my teaching practices from the past were good for the kids that were going to succeed anyway, but less so for the kids that struggled.
How does this relate to teacher bashing? Every teacher I know who is working in so-called failing schools is committed to seeing all of their students succeed. We work hard and are willing to partner with parents to see our schools become the best that they can be for all students. Oh yeah, and we are the teachers' union.
I would like to see the people who bash teachers, who want to weaken the unions that represent us (and tangentially the students and families) spend a week doing my job. Just one week. I'll bet they couldn't even finish it out, much less actually teach anything. The article is correct to point out that it is patently unfair to single out teachers.
It would be nice if Newsweek were suddenly worried about how race and class affect student success. But these diatribes against teachers are not based in a commitment to equity.
No, if closing the achievement gap were the goal, we would see demands for adequate, equitable resources and funding for every student in every school-demands, for example, for quality early childhood education programs, full-time librarians, robust arts and physical education programs, mandated caps on class size, and enough time for teachers to prepare and collaborate. We would also see a renewed commitment to affirmative action in university admissions; a drive to recruit and nurture teachers of color; a commitment to ensure that students come to school ready to learn because their families have housing, food, medical care, and jobs; and an end to zero tolerance discipline policies that criminalize youth.
But if these attacks on teachers aren't about ending the systemic racism that continues to undermine our education system, what is the goal? With forces as seemingly disparate as the Obama administration, the Walton Foundation, the late Milton Friedman, and the New York Times all pushing the same ideas, this is a complicated question, but there are at least two major goals: destroy the power of the teachers' unions, and turn the public school system from a public trust into a new market for corporate development. From the time of Reagan, who used his "welfare queen" stories to scapegoat the poor as a basis on which to destroy the welfare system, this has been a tried-and-true approach to privatization: use visceral anecdotes to whip up hysteria that a system is "broken," argue that only market competition can fix the situation, and then sell off pieces of the public sector to private corporations. This time, teachers are the scapegoats.
What can you do? It is as easy as speaking up the next time your co-worker or ill-informed brother-in-law starts bashing teachers and public education. Ask them if maybe they'd like companies like BP, Blackwater, or Halliburton to be running their children's schools.
Proud to be a public school teacher for 26 years, I see teaching as a radical act. Practitioner of Neo-schoolmarmism. School Library Media Specialist. I am a convinced Quaker, born again agnostic, mother of 3 daughters, passionate about issues of peace and social justice. My mom was a "red diaper baby", my dad was a conscientious objector during WW2, and I grew up in the thick of anti-war protests in Madison, Wisconsin in the sixties. Not a Republican bone in my body and not many Democratic ones either.
