Life Goes On

So first of all, how is school? Yesterday was fantastic, today dragged. The funny thing is, I changed my plans for yesterday (the first day of school) at almost the last minute, while my plans for today had been sitting around for weeks. Anyway, we've discussed What It Takes To Be Good At Math, which was amazing--out of 25 groups of four (100 students), only one group shared something like "knowing your basic skills and being able to do problems fast." Most groups said things like "work hard," "listen," "work as a team," "determination," "patience," and my favorite: "Don't be embarrassed when you don't know stuff. Ask questions." Wow! I'm looking forward to referring to that for the rest of the year. Another big thing I'll get to pull on is group roles. I'm using Team Captain, Facilitator, Recorder/Reporter, and Resource Manager, and I got the whole middle school (six or seven teachers) on board! The other teachers are great, and I can already tell that they're doing fantastic things to make these roles really useful across our classes.

Um, what else. We played a Silent Board Game, where I make up rules for the game and the students have to figure out what they are. Without talking. Hahaha. I was very impressed by them as risk-takers; I had hardly any trouble getting people to come up and guess the outputs for my inputs. This is such a huge asset for students to have, that willingness to just put themselves out there. One girl even brought Green Eggs and Ham into my START class (a fun reading class at the beginning of each day, stands for Students and Teachers Reading Together). She read a well-selected passage to connect the story to the risk-taking we discussed in math. (The Cat in the Hat or somebody keeps refusing to even try green eggs and ham--will not eat them in a box, will not eat them with a fox--but in the end, Sam (I am) convinces him to have a taste, and he likes them a lot.)

Right. That's enough for school. Oh, the photo is from Capture the Flag, one of the many activities enjoyed by all at the overnight retreat for all middle schoolers last week.

Here's a photo of Chinatown, where Patrick and I went last Sunday. Picked up some cheap slippers, a cute jar with a panda climbing into it to put my pens in, and some groceries. And lucky bamboo, which Patrick loves and which doesn't need much sun. Had a huge lunch, too. I discovered that the cold thing I love, the round slices made of soy sheets with mushrooms in the middle, that's the only vegetarian part of the dish with the jellyfish and the ham and stuff, is called "Vegetarian Shanghai Chicken." Strange.

Chinatown is also host to a small museum of the history of Chinese in the Midwest. Maybe one day we'll go there.

Hotel Rwanda

After holding on to it for about two weeks, Patrick and I finally watched Hotel Rwanda.

This comes at an interesting time. I have just been working on a Theory of Not Watching the News, which is sort of a spin-off of a satirical piece written by Leszek Kolakowski called, "The General Theory of Not-Gardening: A major contribution to social anthropology, ontology, moral philosophy, psychology, sociology, political theory, and many other fields of scientific investigation." The preface: "Those who hate gardening need a theory. Not to garden without a theory is a shallow, unworthy way of life. ... The alternative to not-gardening without a theory is to garden. However, it is much easier to have a theory than actually to garden."

Recently, my Theory of Not Watching the News (this includes news on the television as well as other media, such as print and internet news) was greatly enhanced by something I heard on the non-news radio, via the internet, in a piece from 2002 by Ira Glass, the host of the wonderful NPR show This American Life. He was sharing some of his thoughts on journalism. What follows is a brief excerpt.

"... and I think unintentionally, because of the super-serious aesthetic of the news, it’s like all humor and surprise and pleasure and a sense of discovery are totally removed from the real news part of the newscast. And what that does is, this part of broadcasting which is pretending to capture the world, it’s like it’s saying, it's saying, this is a world, by accident almost--It describes a world where there is no pleasure, and surprise, and joy, and curiosity, most of the time."

Ira expresses so well the problem (or one of the principal problems, at least) that I have had with the news ever since I started trying to take it really seriously. Or maybe not, maybe he just provides me with the theoretical justification for my very real aversion for the news. The news makes the world look like a horrible place and makes me feel like I am powerless to make it better; I reject the notion that the world is horrible and that I have no agency to change it; I must not watch the news. Q.E.D.

Last night, Isabel was over, and I asked her what she'd been reading. She brought up her own sense of obligation to read the news, as an educated person and as a citizen in a democracy and so forth. Unrelatedly, we'd been talking about the Prisoner's Dilemma and various forms of it. It doesn't matter if you aren't familiar with this problem; the basic idea is that the people in it can choose to be either cooperators or defectors, and they each get a certain prize (fewer years in prison, or money, or whatever) depending not only on their own choice, but also on the choices of the others. Anyway, I was struck by Douglas Hofstadter's definition of defection: "A defection is an action such that, if everyone did it, things would clearly be worse (for everyone) than if everyone refrained from doing it, and yet which tempts everyone, since if only one individual (or a sufficiently small number) did it while others refrained, life would be sweeter for that individual (or select group)." Examples, given by Hofstadter: 1) Loudly wafting your music through the entire neighborhood; 2) Not worrying about speeding through a 4-way stop sign, figuring that the people going crosswise will stop anyway; 3) Not being concerned about driving a car everywhere, figuring that there's no point in making a sacrifice when other people will just continue to guzzle gas anyway; 4) Not devoting time or energy to pressing global issues such as the arms race [the book was published in the mid-80s], famine, pollution, diminishing resources, and so on, saying, "Oh, of course I'm very concerned--but there's nothing one person can do."

Excuse me for jumping around. I'm writing as I think, but I have faith that things will come together in some way by the end. I think the general idea at this point is that Not Watching the News, with a theory or without, makes me something of a defector. This may not be the general case, I haven't really thought about it, but in my case, I am quite aware that I don't watch the news because on some level, I accept that I can do nothing. So why bother. The news is always so upsetting.

Hotel Rwanda, if it should be classified as journalism, is not the kind Ira Glass described in my excerpt. The film does an excellent job of showing that even in the most terrible situations, when the gross majority of what is happening reflects humanity at its worst, there is hope, dignity, surprise and even joy.

But still I feel powerless.

A purely hypothetical question: If one is truly powerless, is it less moral to choose to be blind to injustices and atrocities than to face them?

Forget about that, because the question is hypothetical and as such, relatively useless. I respond to myself: No one is ever truly powerless. Least of all you.

In the short term, I am. I am convinced that nothing I could have done would have altered any detail of what happened and happens in Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq, or Washington. And yet ... apathy breeds apathy. Those who would make a positive difference in this world need support, not just money and signatures but emotional support, because the work is hard. We, I have to get over the feeling that I will always lose on every issue and focus instead on building a culture of support. If it didn't make me feel like a self-help book, I would remark that feeling powerful is being powerful.

If I'm not convinced of that, I at least believe this: feeling powerless is being powerless. It's empirically proven. And hermetically sealed. (What does that even mean?? Why is it printed on my tea bags?? -Don't try to answer that)

But "building a culture of support" or whatever I just said sounds lame in the face of genocide.

So I still feel totally conflicted. Powerful, or powerless? To watch the news, or not to watch the news? To cooperate, or to defect? Powerful, or ? ... And when is enough enough??

Holla back, y'all.

Settling In

So here's a picture of our apartment. The number did end up to be 1B; at first we wanted to try to get a different unit (it wasn't cleaned very well, and Patrick wanted to try to get a greener view), but we finally decided that we should just get comfortable. The leasing agency did get us a new refrigerator and $100 for our cleaning troubles, and that was nice.

I'm liking the apartment a lot. The kitchen and bathroom are kind of small, but the other rooms are spacious, and there are beautiful hardwood floors everywhere. (We put your rug down in the dining room, Auntie Noreen. It makes so much difference!! Thank you!!) We got a bunch of plants from Patrick's mom and from yard sales, and some light green curtains with a floral print, so the view is green enough. I'd love to have a cat, too, but we aren't allowed to have pets, and I also worry that we'd get the wrong cat, one that would love to scratch everything, and pee everywhere, and be very upset about being cooped up in an apartment. So no kitty right now. Maybe later. But then there's also the worry that a cat would get Patrick's allergies up, so maybe never.

Went to a White Sox game last week. It was a lot of fun--at least, the first 9 innings were. The Twins tied the game in the top of the ninth, and it took another seven innings for the Sox to lose, 9 to 4!!! We left at the bottom of the 12th. It was a good time anyway, hanging out with the other YWLCS faculty. The seats were pretty good, too; even though we were pretty high up, the stadium (formerly Cominsky, now Cellular One or something like that) seating is practically vertical, so it feels like you're right on top of the field.

I like the faculty a lot, and the benefit of these two weeks--even though I don't feel extremely ready for students--has been to get to know the staff and really begin to feel like a part of the organization, something that never quite happened for me at the school where I was student teaching last year.

Finally saw some students today! We had a registration BBQ, which was hot and hectic, but the parents and students themselves (a whole lot of women! men, where were you? thank you to those fathers who did come, although I doubt you're reading my blog) really impressed me by how sweet and friendly they were. (Of course, about half the enrolling students didn't come at all.) Anyway, I'm looking forward to actually getting into the school year, even though I haven't written all my outcomes and aims and goals and objectives (as the school actually requires for each class).

I guess I'll go work on that now ... bye!

Happy Birthday to You ...

Only slightly belated, a tribute to my dear old dad. Complete with a photo from the Graduate School of Business at the U of C, which we visited after seeing the Frank Lloyd Wright- designed Robie House across the street. Supposedly, the GSB lifts the style of the Robie House on the north side (which faces the house), and the style of the neo-Gothic Rockefeller Chapel in the "winter garden," where this photo was taken. A picture of a guy I look up to, looking up.

Happy 35th birthday, Dad.

At Last!

Finally got DSL yesterday! It's still not as fast as good old Stanford internet, but it's much better than dial-up. Thank you, Patrick, for setting it up. To begin with, here's Patrick jumping on bubble wrap. That was probably on Wednesday, before we took our 38 boxes to FedEx. We left on Saturday morning ...


Day 1: We drove out of California, through northern Nevada (which was pretty boring, I have to say), and into Salt Lake City just as the sun was setting. I was impressed by how big it was--but I was disappointed that the Salt Palace wasn't really made of salt (it's just a normal conference center). We visited Temple Square on Sunday before taking off.

Got to Yellowstone in the evening, set up camp, and went for a swim in Lewis Lake. It was cold, with pokey rocks on the bottom, but it was very clean! It felt good after sitting in the car all day, too. After that, we went to see the hot spot around Old Faithful. Walked around the boardwalk, chatted with other visitors, and saw Old Faithful erupt.

The next day, we hung around Yellowstone some more. Saw the huge, 300-foot Lower Falls, and the river winding through Yellowstone Canyon. Lots of bison, too. It rained and even hailed, but we didn't mind that much. The mudpots were really smelly, though! We drove on, getting no service and free pizza at a very busy Pizza Hut in Cody, Wyoming.

South Dakota was an exciting state. Made the obligatory stop at Mount Rushmore, which was sort of mind-boggling, then discovered Badlands National Park, which was a surreal and gorgeous combination of prairie (so much grass! and groundhogs!) and sudden gorges full of mud mountains. We walked along the weird fossil trail and saw the sunset.

The Mitchell Corn Palace ("It's a-maize-ing!") was another South Dakota treasure. The whole building is covered with gigantic corn mosaics. We stopped for lunch and experienced the first in a series of vomit spottings. Stoicly, he (the vomiter, an elderly gentleman) turned to his wife and commented on a shop display: "Hey, $6.75! That's a pretty good price for a T-shirt!"

We got to Mount Vernon, IA, that same day. It was a good break; we'd gotten really sick of driving, and our charming car pastimes (for example, listening to Richard Russo read some of his short stories and learning Portuguese and Mandarin from language CDs) had gotten really old. In Mount Vernon, we had dinner with Patrick's mom, Mary, and took a short walk around the town before bed. The next morning, we went to Palisades Kepler, a nice local park, then drove to Chicago! I'll describe that more in my next post ...

Dear Readers ...

Hello from Chicago! We arrived last Thursday and have been spending the last few days putting our apartment together. Dad was here for the weekend and was a big help.

I'll post again soon with pictures and details about our trip and our new home. Maybe when our DSL gets connected. (I'm on a dial-up connection for now, which is actually faster than I thought it would be, but still very sluggish with images.)

Here's an outline of the account you have to look forward to:
Salt Lake City, Utah; Yellowstone National Park, Mount Rushmore, and the Badlands of South Dakota; Mitchell, South Dakota; Mount Vernon, Iowa; and lots and lots of Chicago, Illinois.

Time to grocery shop!