Happy Mid-Autumn Festival

It doesn't feel like mid-autumn (more like mid-summer to me), but that's what it's called. Anyway, I was browsing the internet and found that Chicago's moon festival/mid-autumn festival was happening, so Patrick and I took the commuter rail up north to check it out. Here are the notable bits, in the order that I observed them:

A) The web advertised the festival's features as "supercool mooncake" and "one frickin' giant moon."

1) Almost no one there was Chinese, apart from some of the performers and booth-workers. I guess the festival wasn't in Chinatown.

2) On stage, there were two girls engaged in a sword fight set to a loud, traditional Chinese song--techno remix.

3) The spring rolls and potstickers were kinda mushy.

4) We were only around for the last half hour, but we caught the grand finale: teenage lion-dancers, doing their thing first to a brief burst of cymbals and drums, then to the stereo accompaniment of "Lose Control" by Missy Elliot and Ciara. They ended with Mariah Carey's "Shake It Off" (though they didn't dance to that last song quite as vigorously).

5) There was no mooncake. Supercool or not. None, period.

If you could make your expectations of this event as low as possible, then add in a few random quirks, you would probably have a pretty good idea of what it was like. We only caught the last half hour, so maybe it was partly our fault. Anyway, we had a good time people-watching and walking by the lake by the light of the full harvest moon.

I didn't get any good moon festival pictures, so I did a web search for some. Couldn't find any. This led me to a Google Image Search for "san francisco," which turned up this awesome photograph from the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, which took place in SF. It struck me that although I know all this stuff about Chicago's Columbian Exposition, I've never even heard of the Panama Pacific International, and I have no idea where this "Tower of Jewels," as it was called, stood in its day. The only structure that survives is the dome-thing at the Palace of Fine Arts. (Is the dome itself the Palace? If not, what is? See, this is the extent of my ignorance.) Pretty amazing.

The Latest

I'd like to leave my earlier post, with all the nice pictures, at the top of the heap for longer. You'll just have to scroll down for it, I guess, because ish just keeps on happening.

Patrick remarks that in a smaller community, the whole community would share the job of taking in a family that had fallen on some hard times. But we live in an atomized society without much sense of community, where the assumption is pretty much that institutions bear the responsibility for the welfare of those in need.

If we were to attempt to take in Darrell and Matthew on our own, we would not find the support we would in a small town; we would be on our own. So for our own sake, we have to get them to take advantage of the services being provided by churches, the government, etc.; we can provide some assistance in the interim, but in the long term, we cannot assume that responsibility.

I think this is a very nice way to ease my conscience. But it still leaves a lot of unanswered questions. For example: today, Patrick and I went to Target and spent over a hundred dollars on odds and ends: an electronic toothbrush that his dentist recommended (he has sensitive gums and other dental issues), slippers because the hardwood floors are hurting his feet, granola bars on sale, toothpaste, socks. Nothing extravagant. But also nothing that was absolutely necessary. We spent that money without thinking too much of it--but what would it take for us to be willing to hand that money over to someone more needy?

How much do you have to do before you've fulfilled your moral obligation? The way I see it, everyone has to figure out her own answer to this question, and I have yet to do so. At this point, I don't think I would alter my lifestyle; I wouldn't move to a smaller, cheaper apartment to be able to donate more money, for example, nor would I accept having people move in with me. But I do have a lot of disposable income. What percentage of that ought I be willing to part with rather than save?

And then the real question seems to be about so much more than money, which in the end is an easy sacrifice. Easier than time, easier than privacy, easier than a million other things which may or may not add up to make more of a difference. (Is it naive of me, does it reveal my class privilege that I can be equivocal about this? Is money really it, if that's what you don't have?) But so when do you say, "Look, I can't drive you there," or "No, I'm sorry, but you can't stay." When have you made enough of a sacrifice to feel unburdened? Does it make a difference who the other party is? Should it make a difference?

Patrick contributes a comment, something about rational views and religious views, the rational values being equality and justice and the religious ones being love, loving others above oneself. I can't really see where either of these align with what I am actually willing to do enough to suggest some kind of brightline standard.

Matthew was ringing our bell at a little past midnight last night. We were asleep, and unfamiliar with the bell's sound besides (I guess it works now!), so it took us a while to figure out what was going on. His granddad hadn't come back from the church meeting he went to, and Matthew was locked out and needed a place to sleep.

Before he left this morning (we gave him a ride back to 66th on our way to Target), he folded the sheets we'd put on the futon for him. That was nice.

The Limits of My Generosity

are pretty narrow.

Yesterday Patrick found a grandfather and grandson (the younger is 33) who've come up here from Mississippi in the wake of the hurricane. Their house was destroyed, and now they're staying in an apartment building owned by a pastor they have a connection with. (Darrell is a pastor, himself--though Darrell isn't his real name.) Since the building needs renovation and is currently vacant, they are staying free of charge, but they don't know how long this arrangement will last.

To my surprise, Darrell and Matthew were over when I got home from work this afternoon. It was clear enough that for Darrell, at least, it's difficult to feel, act, or be dependent on charity. Anyway, after much persuading, Darrell accepted Patrick's offer of a ride, and Patrick spent the next two hours driving around the South Side while I stayed home and graded quizzes. Traffic in Chicago really sucks.

I'd been thinking of listing our apartment on the Stanford Alumni list as a potential refuge for a single person displaced by the hurricane (I feel a little odd about the name Katrina, as though a hurricane is anything like a human being), but now I'm pretty sure I won't. I'd forgotten how particular I am about things. It raised flags of varying colors for me when I went to the bathroom after Matthew's shower and the soap was at the bottom of the bath tub, my wash cloth was draped on the edge of the sink (even though Patrick had given Matthew a clean one to use), and the toilet brush was knocked over. What's more, they had called saying they were hungry, then they left the spaghetti that Patrick cooked for us all half-eaten. We ended up throwing their leftovers away.

Patrick's comment is something about how when you try to do good things for people, you can't go around wishing that the people were different. I guess this is sort of akin to the argument that if you give money to a guy on the street, you have no right to tell him what to use it for and what not to (although opening your home to someone is pretty different from just giving away money). Anyway, this all seems to reflect on my awareness that I love humanity in general, just not any specific humans.

I don't mean to speak badly of a demographic, and I hope no one will take this account as a sign that the refugees of the hurricane (I understand that "refugee" is not an approved term because of the negative connotations relating to refugees in other countries. My response: What the heck is that supposed to mean about refugees in other countries???) don't deserve aid. I don't even mean to speak badly of Darrell and Matthew; on some levels that I'm aware of and others that I'm not, their actions are not rude or unjustified. On the contrary, I mean to illustrate my own limitations, to wonder whether my standards are absurd or hypocritical, to stop taking for granted a few of the things which I do.

The trouble with trying to get past these limitations is that it's easy to end up in a missionary phase where you'll do anything for anyone as long as you're convinced that you're better than they are. One benefit about teaching middle school: it is wholly appropriate to treat the students like children, because that's what they are. And as such, I can accept all kinds of immaturity, meanness, apparent stupidity, and silliness from them without judging them.

I walked downstairs to do laundry and ran into another new resident in our apartment complex. Turns out he's from Irvine but hates SoCal (perfect) and fraternities (also perfect). I said that Patrick and I had been living in Palo Alto, and he immediately mentioned Stanford and a few things he's heard about it from friends who've gone there (like the fact that there's no life off campus). Then somebody he'd been waiting for came by and he left and said "See ya later."

This brings to mind a thought I'd been having: I've run into a couple of people who I really didn't expect to see here, didn't know they were in the Chi at all, but then on the street, in the grocery store, whatever, there they are. But maybe it's not really a small world after all at all. More likely, it seems, is that the stratum of people that most individuals associate with is narrow, and everyone in your same stratum goes to the same places you go and knows the same sort of people you know.

I don't know what this is supposed to suggest. I'm just feeling very stratified, I guess. Not quite disconnected or isolated, but stratified.

About Town

We've been taking weekends to wander around Chicago some more. Here you see the Water Tower, one of the few buildings to survive the Great Fire of 1871. We spent the evening on the Hancock Building's 94th-floor observation deck, then got ice cream at the Ghiradelli on the corner. I'm renewing my love of opulent window-shopping on the Magnificent Mile. I actually had a dream about going to the mall with Patrick and looking at iridescent dresses with huge skirts.




Buckingham Fountain
at night. The largest illuminated fountain in the world, supposedly. The lights change colors quite spectacularly, but this picture came out
the best.




Patrick's dad was here last weekend. We wandered around Evanston (visiting Patrick's great-grandfather's house), Millenium Park (free concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), and the Chicago Cultural Center, which used to house Chicago's main public library. It features two magnificent glass domes, one by Tiffany and this one by Millet. The light on the floor is not sunlight shining through the windows, but artificial light shining through tiles in the floor. The overall effect is quite beautiful.




We went on one of those architectural boat tours of the Chicago River, too. Then we wandered around downtown, past the most beautiful Bloomingdale's in the world. It was built in 1912 in Islamic Revival style for the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. Now it's Bloomies Furnishings and Housewares or something. Anyway, we found this LEGO man in another mall nearby. He has a chicken (LEGO also, of course) on his head and a busted Lego egg on his shoulder. But look at his face! Have you ever seen such humanity!?!

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Comments, II

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Outrage

is so lukewarm. It is devastating, devastating to see photographs of the Gulf coast, to hear on the radio the calls in to call-in shows from people in New Orleans who can't find their families ... Surreal to imagine swimming out of a second-story window ... Horrifying to imagine being trapped without even a window to swim out of ...

It is shocking that there was NO organized response for such a long time. Infuriating that all levels of government but especially the federal have been so extremely incompetent, and now this scandal. Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, quoted by Kevin Drum on his blog at the Washington Monthly:

"I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims — far more efficiently than buses — FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.

"But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast — black and white, rich and poor, young and old — deserve far better from their national government."

A Dutch news agency on the event: "ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time."

What can be said?

What can be said?

I am so angry with everyone. With the American people for electing this man again, with the media for their incompetent reporting on this administration and its agendas, allowing us to believe that it is less sinister, less incompetent than it is--The media is the new opiate of the masses, convincing us that there are two sides to every issue, so we may as well choose one that's easier to believe; shattering the world until it is so big that there is no impact we can have upon it, yet so small that it fails to contain people who exist for more than twenty seconds. I am angry, too, with the future which I fear will do nothing, nothing in response to the evidence that institutional racism is alive and well in this country, nothing in response to the poverty that clearly continues to exist in this First of the nations of the First World. I am angry that writing a check is a gesture with such little meaning to me, because it is all I feel I can do. (Well, make the check bigger, I suppose!)

Panelists on the News Hour (with Jim Lehrer) commented that they gained a new appreciation for Rudy Giuliani in seeing what the lack of him amounted to in the aftermath of the hurricane. It made me remember that it does make a difference, after all, that it's not all one mess of government-is-evil-at-worst-and- incompetent-at-best (there's a book I've been meaning to read about the effects of various administrations' economic policies, showing that they do have tremendously different impacts on people's lives). It made me wonder what qualities are really important to have in a leader, and whether our system of choosing leaders--at least at the presidential level--gives us much hope of finding people with those qualities. Or if we'll keep ending up with cardboard cutouts and ideologues, maybe getting lucky once in every fifty or a hundred years.

All of these thoughts lead to more thoughts, but I will truncate the process here. I need to plan for next week's classes. There's been some talk of incorporating discussions of Katrina and efforts toward relief in our curriculum, but I haven't had any brilliant ideas yet. "OK, so if the water is 20 feet high, and one pump can pump X gallons per hour, but there's no electricity to run the pumps, how many hours will it take to get all the water out?" Or "Here, kids, read this article about FEMA. I want you to underline all the reasons that the Bush administration is bad." (They're already very anti-Bush. For our reading campaign, I suggested that they take someone else's perspective and write about why reading might be important to that person; to give them some ideas, I suggested a grandma, a five-year-old, or the President of the USA. One girl actually wrote as Barbara Bush, and in her paragraph, which did describe the joys of reading, she managed to squeeze in some insults about her son ...)

Lukewarm, lukewarm. It must be, or life is impossible; if outrage were always red as blood, there would be no function for me in life. I would always be turning to the next thing, always emotionally exhausted, never good for much ... This is why people like Romeo Dalliere, Iris Chang try to kill themselves. Yet lukewarm is so ... argh. I have to pee.

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!

More summer!

Went to the beach yesterday for the first time in ages. Drove down Highway 84 through the beautiful redwoods to the coast, then drove south on 1 until we found the sun.

Getting a lot of sun lately. Spent last weekend in shorts and a t-shirt at Disneyland. I was pretty impressed! The old attractions (Pirates of the Caribbean, the Disneyland Railroad, Space Mountain, the Jungle Cruise) were as fun as ever, and the new stuff was awesome.

What impressed me the most was in California Adventure, which I didn't want to even bother with at first. Most of the attractions there have sort of a carnival feel, nothing that overwhelms you with glitz or branding. Yet the roller coaster had so much unexpected punch! And there was something special about the ride that spins you around on a swing (or maybe it was just the way the ride operator talked ... "Aw wight, Bumbobees! Weady, set, go!!"). The "Soaring Over California" attraction was definitely something else, though. The seats glide through the air, while fans and little spritzes of scent give you the distinct feeling that you're flying over the forests, fields, and oceans shown on the most amazing screen I've ever seen. It was bowl-shaped, so even when I looked straight down, there was no indication that I was in a theater; I saw the tops of trees, waves, whatever was being projected ahead of me. Then there were the fireworks. Really, really well orchestrated with music and themes to match attractions at the park. I didn't expect much out of this trip, but it turned out to be almost worth the $70/ticket.

It was great to see Jarrett, too, and that made the whole trip worthwhile. It reminded me of the time we went to Alcatraz and saw another side of Matthew (the criminal side!!). Jarrett led us all around the park, filling us on in all kinds of details about park history, guiding us to the things we wanted to see, and getting us lots of discounts. :) It was really wonderful.

I'd like to thank you for reading my blog. And I'd like to thank my legs for always supporting me. And my arms for always being by my side. And my fingers and toes--I've always been able to count on them. (Lines from our guide on the Jungle Cruise, always campy, and always fun.)

Summer

It's finally here! I'm done with every responsibility until August (except for all the moving stuff). My week teaching summer school was hard; three-and-a-half hour classes were a bit much for me and the students, I didn't have much of a curriculum (so I was making stuff up again, which never comes out that well), and managing the boisterous ones continued to be a challenge.

I've been spending some time as a visitor in other people's summer school classrooms, and I really like that. Maybe Uncle Dennis' hint was in the right direction, and I'll soon be back in school. The classroom is a really rich environment for research; there's so much to observe. What are the teachers doing? What are the students doing? On a social level? On a mathematical level? What's working, what's not, and why?

I am looking forward to Chicago, though, and teaching there.

I should attach some photos of my parents' kitchen. But I don't have any yet. I'll work on that. The remodel was a huge improvement! The whole space is much more sunny and welcoming. I was home last weekend on July 3. Had a little fall while biking in the morning with Dad and Patrick, but seems no major damage was done. I scraped my knee, and there's a big bruise on my leg, but nothing that won't heal. What's really amazing, though, is my head. I guess I didn't break my fall very well with my hands, because my face hit the ground kind of hard; there's a huge scratch on my sunglasses, and a couple of little cuts on my lip--and bits of asphalt ground into my front teeth. I went to the dentist (good old Uncle Anson, what will we do without you in Chicago??), and he x-rayed it and checked for fractures. Didn't see any problems (whew) but said I should come back in a couple of weeks to have the tooth cleaned. ;)

Speaking of July 3, July 4 was pretty neat. Had a picnic with some friends, then came back to the apartment and since we're on the 8th floor, we could actually see really good fireworks from our balcony. At one point, we were watching fireworks in three different locations, all at once.

I saw Batman Begins a little while ago. It was a lot better than the latest Star Wars. But I didn't enjoy either of those movies as much as Russell Peters (thanks, Mike) or the campy Kung Fu Hustle that was made even more enjoyable by the non-subtitled admonishment before the movie (which I got from my dad on two clearly bootlegged discs) to refrain from illegal copying of this very good film (the speech ended with a yell of "Zui hao dianying!!! Yeah!").

Happy day.

Oh, I Know ...

what I wanted to write about earlier.

I had lunch today with Julian, who was in the STEP math cohort with me. It was very, very strange to think that this was some kind of goodbye. I'm still in total denial that the people I know best will be far away for years to come. I really didn't say goodbye properly; as our paths forked, I called out, "See ya, Julian," as though it were September, when we saw each other practically every day in class and STEP was just beginning.

On the one hand, I hope that modern technology--email, telephone, blogs--will make the distance seem short. But on the other, I don't completely trust those things, and I have a weird sense that I'm robbing everyone of sincere moments in which I feel and express my appreciation of our relationships.

So if you see me between now and July, don't let me do that to you! I don't know how to say goodbye, though, so you'll have to teach me ...

Boxes

are what my apartment is full of. Mom, Dad, Auntie Nancy and Uncle John came up last weekend, and it's a good thing they didn't wait any longer. The bookshelves are gone now, and there are piles of books on the floor, on the table, and in boxes all along the walls. It looks bare, but at the same time very cluttered. I really should tidy up, but everything in a transitional sort of phase; nothing can really be put away, because there's nothing to put it away in (furniture keeps getting up and leaving), but it's too soon to pack a lot of stuff. Boo.

Summer school is swimming along. I'm doing a lot of pressing for explanations, yet I don't feel like I'm really pressing for deep conceptual understanding--and we're just doing proportions, which aren't that difficult to grasp. Part of it is the timing; I think our pacing is right in terms of the number of days we've actually spent, but we have three and a half hours of class every day, so maybe we should be going faster through the material. But it takes time to absorb concepts, and more hours per day doesn't really speed that process ... at least, it doesn't seem to. Plus, things don't go totally smoothly. Students are still getting used to working in groups and stuff like that. For the most part, I think they're doing a good job--but not everyone shares that opinion. In their journals, the students seem reasonably happy with their groups, and in conversations I've had, they do say that they're learning things, which is confirmed by my informal assessments of their classwork. But a parent volunteer stepped into class today to announce a missing wallet, and when I saw her after school in the copy room, she said, "So, you have all the freshmen? ... um, is it always that disruptive?" Apparently, she is used to seeing the rigidity of her daughter's current school (which is Catholic). It was pretty noisy, though. It's hard to manage a class of 30+ students. I could be doing more to make my expectations clearer, though. Targeted retaining during the break and after school, for example. I should be doing a lot more of that. Did some today at break, and it was very productive. It's a weird situation, though; two more days, and I'm out of there! So I'm investing all this energy in setting up expectations just so I can leave. Well, not true, it will help the next teacher, I hope, and it will help the students while I have them. But it's so easy to be selfish and just let things slide for two more days. In any case, I'm learning a lot about classroom management. I'm starting to understand some of the things Deborah told me last year.

I'm starting to develop relationships with a bunch of the students. I feel goofy about this, too, since I'll be leaving so soon. One of them reminds me strongly of a girl in my class last year. Exuberant, popular, such potential for leadership--combined with a desire to be cool, to be accepted and adored. Sometimes a great leader, sometimes a horrible distraction. Troubled in her personal life, too. One of her friends just died in a car crash.

I think that's all I have to say for now.

OK, listen up. I am leaving the Bay Area at the end of July. Patrick's last day teaching will be July 22, and we hope to be ready to take off shortly after. So now you know.

iExcitement

I got a new computer today. It has, among other things, the capability to burn DVDs. Thanks, graduation-gift-givers! Just in the nick of time, too. My old laptop has been crashing a lot lately, and I spent at least an hour on online chat with HP support this afternoon. Boo.

So, the new computer is an iBook. 14" screen, definitely much lighter than the 15" HP I've been using. 1.33 GHz processor (whatever that means), 256 MB of RAM, 60 G hard drive. It has twice as much storage space as my old laptop. But it's about the same speed. Maybe I'll go to Best Buy or something and pick up some more RAM this weekend. It would be really nice to have a faster machine to deal with photos and stuff.

I'm still figuring out a lot of conversions from PC to Mac, and I'm not happy about that. I was pretty satisfied with the way my PC handled itself, besides all the crashing. Clearly, I have a ways to go before I can join the die-hard Mac fan club. One thing that is really cool, though, is this game that came with the computer. It's called "Nanosaur 2: The Hatchling." The year is 4022. Humans long ago took dinosaur DNA and created some super-smart dinosaurs, but then humans went extinct, and the dinosaur gene pool was suffering from serious inbreeding, so the super-smart dinosaurs sent one of their own back in time to gather eggs that could then be hatched in the future. The graphics are crazy; apparently, if you have 3D glasses, you can play in 3D.

I graduated!

Last Sunday, the University finally recognized my five years here. It was hot! Here I am with Caroline, one of my best friends (how will we get along without each other next year??), in a goofy shot ... she has a big red balloon on her head, and well, my hair is doing this funny flippy thing ...

The leis are from Hawaii, thanks to Auntie Donna and Goong-goong Herb. Aren't they pretty!

Our blue velvet hoods (you can sort of see them around our necks) are for the School of Education.

Hooray! I graduated!

Graduation!