Summer 2006

OK. On July 3, I took off from Midway to Tel Aviv, with a 7-hour layover in Newark. When I landed in Tel Aviv, Na'amah was at the airport to meet me. We took a train and a bus to her apartment, just two blocks away from the Mediterranean. We went swimming twice in the sea. The second time, I got stung (very minorly) by a jellyfish!

Tel Aviv is huge and modern. Lots of fancy hotels ... but also lots of tiny shops and crooked streets that give the city character. Here in the background, you can see Jaffa, the original fortress-city out of which Tel Aviv grew. Jaffa has a long history, dating from its founding by the Canaanites over 3600 years ago. It has since been ruled by ancient Egyptians, Romans, Christians who captured it during the Crusades, Napoleon, and the Ottomans. Not to mention modern Israel.

Our first destination: Jerusalem. The old city is walled in, and everything (including the pavement) is made of stone. Aggressive vendors try to sell you everything from backgammon boards to nargile to soccer balls to magnets. In some ways, it's picturesque, but in others, it's overwhelmingly touristy. Na'amah and I both bought beautiful tapestries pieced together by Bedouins, with amazing beadwork and embroidery. I'll post a picture of mine when I finally get around to hanging it ...

My favorite part of old Yerushalayim (Jerusalem in Hebrew) was the Temple Mount, which we were lucky enough to catch during a rare open period. The area surrounding the Dome of the Rock is like a park, where lots of women were sitting in the shade, watching their children play. At the same time, it's very quiet. The temple itself is beautifully tiled all around the outside. They don't let non-Muslims enter, a policy I understand and respect.

I have more pictures, but you would probably be able to find their equivalent or better by doing a Google image search. In fact, I just did, and here is my favorite. From one Kristine Grumme. She has some very nice images. Looking at them makes me realize that one thing I'd like to work on in my own photography is photographing people. With their permission, of course--though I suppose language barriers can make that somewhat complicated. My book of the month is Guatemala, photography by Jorge Aramburu paired with poetry (in both English and Spanish) by Humberto Ak'abal.

The Dead Sea was the next stop. We passed a horribly hot and mosquito-ridden night in this hut (there's Nami!), but swimming in the salty, salty water the next morning was worth it. You really do feel weightless, and the cool water felt so good on my bug bites! I'm not convinced that the mud is as therapeutic as legend has it, but we pulled some up from the bottom and coated ourselves. There weren't too many people around, which was nice, but everyone who was there was covered in mud!

Nami's sister and brother and Adar, a friend, met up with us in Tel Aviv to drive north to Golan. We hiked through the hills and swam in the rivers and picked (and ate!) Adar's family's pears. It was very beautiful. Na'amah is back in San Francisco now, where she is beginning work on an MD/PhD at UCSF. I'm so proud of you, n-raz, and excited for all the things you will do! She says that things in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are mostly the same, that our friends in Haifa are fine, and even Adar's family in the north are ignoring the war. Pray that they stay safe.

Here's Haifa. A beautiful city, hilly and surrounded by the Mediterranean. Home to a Bahai temple, the holiest Bahai temple ... I don't really understand why the Bahais put it there, though; the shrine houses the remains of one of their prophets, but the guy was Persian and lived and died in Iran as far as I can tell. Also, while Israel has allowed them to use that land to build their temple, they've forbidden Bahais to become Israeli citizens. Gotta preserve that Jewish identity ...

Here's a photo you probably won't find anywhere else. There was a fair in Haifa showcasing Filipino culture, to demonstrate that Filipinos are more than caregivers for the elderly and infirm (jobs that they often hold in Israel, as in the U.S.). So here are some little girls waiting for their turn on stage!

Well, that's it for my Israel post. Again, look at Patrick's blog if you want to know about South America right now! I'll keep working on that part ...

Youth Video

I'm working on a post about my trip. It'll probably take me a while to put it together, though, and in the meantime, I want you all to know about this collection of short documentaries made by teens about issues that matter to them as part of a series called "Media that Matters." There are a whole bunch of organizations that are involved in various ways, including What Kids Can Do and Reel Works Teen Filmmaking. You have to check some of these videos out.

The one that really blew my mind won some kind of award this year. It's only about 7 minutes long, and it's #2 on the right if you click "video" above. There's a small segment of it where the filmmaker, teen Kiri Davis, repeats the experiment conducted some fifty years ago by Dr. Kenneth Clark, a prominent African American psychologist whose work played an important role in Brown v. Board of Ed. In Davis' test, black children are presented with two dolls, a black doll and a white doll, and asked a series of questions. Asked to "show me the doll that you like best, or that you'd like to play with," 15 out of 21 choose the white doll. Even those who choose the black doll respond to the next question, "Can you show me the doll that's the nice doll?" by quickly selecting the white doll. You have to watch it. There's more. It is a more obvious measure than any I've seen in a long time of the violence that our society is still doing to our black youth. At the same time, the video presents quite a few smart young women who know exactly what's going on and, god willing, will do something about it. I'm thinking about what it all means for my students and how I can/if I should present the video to them.

That's all for now. Oh also, Happy Birthday, Dad!

Back in the Chi

Hi folks. I'm back. Got in Tuesday night around midnight, then back at school the next day! I'm already tired, but looking forward to sleeping a lot this weekend ...

I'm actually at school at the moment. Blogging is on my to-do list, but I don't think I'm going to get to it for a while (maybe sometime this month??), so just content yourself with Patrick's blog for the moment. He's put up some nice pictures and hits some of the highlights of the trip. I'm curious to know whether you can tell our writing apart ... sometimes I can't!

Lots of love.

happy summer!

So I finally got to stop going to school. Patrick and I moved into our condo, and it's wonderful. Gwen, who lived here with her husband, Clint, left us a lot of stuff: these stiff lacy window dressings, a dining room table, a huge old desk, a cool lamp. Silk flowers to put in the kitchen because the lamps under the cabinets killed the real ones she had at first, and a catalogue for more silk flowers, just in case. Labels for the mailbox and buzzer, two versions of each: Louie/Iber and Iber/Louie, so we have a choice. A chart with all our neighbors' names and little descriptions of what they do. Cans of paint labeled with colors and which rooms they go to. It's amazing.

My mom came out and helped paint the dining room, which is still yellow but a much milder tone. She's still here, just hanging out with me, the good people of Dahn Yoga and Dahn Mu Do, and Mrs Gomez (who I am now supposed to call "Diana"). We went to see the da Vinci exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. Leonardo sure had an impressive mind. I wonder if he ever got lonely.

Patrick's mom drove up last weekend, too. We took a walk in Jackson Park and saw tons of birds. Barn swallows, an oriole, a great blue heron, a night heron (seeing a lot of them lately, despite their supposed elusiveness), some kind of goldfinches, redwing blackbirds, eastern kingbirds, canadian geese, purple martins, house sparrows, monk parakeets, a cardinal, mallards, rock doves. I'm really enjoying the birding in Chicago (even though it makes me feel very elderly). I'm curious to go back to San Francisco and see if I've been missing all kinds of birds or if there just aren't as many species there.

I started using the handblender I got a couple of months ago (after extensive research into various makes and models on amazon.com). It's great. I made yam and peanut soup (tell Sarah thanks for the recipe, Dustin!). It was delicious.

On another random note, my sewing machine broke. It was made in 1948. I paid Singer Sewing Machine Repair on Milwaukee $60 to fix it. I figure it's worth it. After all, I got it for free, and the use I've already gotten out of it is worth at least that much. 1948 was a long time ago.

I'm leaving on Monday. Tel Aviv--Buenos Aires--Santiago de Chile--San Francisco. Bay Area from August 3-8. Holla atcha girl!

June Festivals

Every time I think about California, I miss it. But summer has come to Chicago, and I am loving being here. We've had a great weekend; yesterday, we hit up a bunch of Hyde Park yard sales (didn't buy anything) and the 57th Street Art Fair. The fair was expensive, but we got some really good corn on the cob and saw some cool stuff. My favorite booth was "kinetic sculpture" by Jeffrey Zachmann, which provides us with the image below. Basically, he makes beautiful whirring Rube-Goldberg machines.

His website is pretty cool. You can see more of his machines, including some gigantic ones that seem to fill up entire rooms. There are links to movies of them working, but I couldn't get any of the movies to play. Maybe you'll have better luck. You can also commission a piece from the website--but I wouldn't suggest it. The small ones we saw in his book at the fair were thousands of dollars already!

I liked some of the photography, too. A San Francisco photographer was there with serious and beautiful shots of Gui Lin. There was a also a fun series of miniature people-figures doing funny things, by Audrey Heller.

If you look closely, you can see the tiny broom that the tiny woman is using to sweep up the crumbs.

So that was yesterday. Today, we went to the Printer's Row Book Fair, which was awesome. We met up with Isabel and spent all afternoon wandering around the three or four blocks of booths. We got an armful of books and visited Printer's Row Fine and Rare Books, a small but absolutely beautiful bookshop with books that are indeed fine and rare (autographed copies of books by Kerouac, Hemingway, Melville, etc.). I picked up some supercheap art books. There were some neat posters, too. We bought an 1863 map of South America, showing Bolivia back when it still had access to the Pacific (before Chile took that part of it, along with part of Paraguay). We avoided buying a poster that I was immediately drawn to, in a love-hate way; it was probably about fifty years old and very big, and it advertised the glory of the Cultural Revolution with bold colors and the smiling faces of our comrades. It cost $40 and was gone by the time we went around its booth again at the end of the day. I didn't want it, really, but it made me feel horrible to think about some college student tacking it to their dorm room wall as a monument to kitsch. Communism, as it has existed on this earth, terrifies me.

Anyway, I had a wonderful weekend. Now it's time to get back to writing my end-of-trimester narratives! Oh but before I go, one last treat: hands on stanzas, a poetry center where one of Isabel's friends works (until next fall, anyway, when she will begin the MFA Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa). Their latest project has been to get the poems of some of their elementary school students printed big in bus stops. The project is called "elevated verse," since the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) is famous for its El (short for "elevated") trains. The poems are side-splitting and heartbreaking. More so than Dave Eggers, I would dare to venture. One thing that makes me mad, even furious about it though is that CTA put all the posters in nice neighborhoods (thinking I guess that the program would be more interested in advertising itself there?). The kids whose poems they are won't even see them unless they venture out of their neighborhoods. And the whole spirit of the project, to bring poetry to people who don't have much of it, is lost.

Anyway here is a sample.

Homework

My work has been done
to experience the city.
The big city sits in
land. Far away from Chicago
sits Texas. To day
dream far away in a
land of big. Bigger than an
ocean. My eyes fold to
see a surprise so big.
I start to think I own
that place. I feel like I've
even been there.

by Jonathan R.
Bernhard Moos Elementary School


Dear Tree,
Tree! Where were you
yesterday? I miss you.

My friend Book, he told
me all about you.

I hope you come back
soon so we could have

a big party today at 5:45
Your friend, Air

by Loc N.
Helen C. Peirce School of International Studies

New link

to Dale Chihuly's website. I discovered it a couple of years ago and my mom recently re-directed me to it. Here's a sample.

Civic Duty

I got summoned for jury duty about a week ago. It took hours for the attorneys to select 12 jurors. I was pretty sure I was home free when the clock struck 3 and I was still sitting on the sidelines, but then I ended up making it to the questions stage. I was a little surprised by how easy it was for people to lie their way out of it; a few people were pretty obviously making up stories about their biases and beliefs just so they wouldn't get chosen. But when I found out that I had been picked, I felt like I'd won a prize. Five free days away from school.

The trial itself was really interesting. It was a medical malpractice suit, so I got to learn all about catheters, fibroids, and the iliac arteries. We found in favor of the defendant, almost immediately unanimously. One juror held out for quite a while. Relating my experience to school: 1) It is very hard to sit still and be quiet (I couldn't even raise my hand to ask a question!) for several hours a day. BUT adults are capable of doing it! 2) It is very useful to require unanimity (as I sometimes do during groupwork), since it forces everyone to think more deeply to defend their opinion and listen carefully to what others think and why they think it. 3) Coming to a unanimous conclusion requires skilled facilitation. Luckily for us, our foreman was very gracious in how she made sure everyone was heard, and very intelligent in how she directed the conversation. We also set up ground rules (such as "No interrupting"; very 7th grade. Lots of times people broke the "Raise your hand to speak" rule, and it made me angry!), which may have seemed childish to some, but I think they were actually more useful than not. Anyway it reminded me of the roles I sometimes assign to girls in groupwork (Team Captain, Facilitator), and of how important those roles are, and how I could do better in training the girls to do them.

I only have two days of regular classes left.

After that, we'll have a week-long Intersession, during which the girls will prepare and deliver presentations to sum up the year.

I've booked my summer travel. Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, San Francisco. I'll be in the 'sco from August 3 to August 8. I'm REALLY excited--I just hope I survive the 80-something hours I'll be spending in airports and on planes!

The Y-Dub Update

My school has been featured on a Chicago Public Radio series on education. The particular segment is ten minutes long and deals with private funding in public education in Chicago. You can hear it here; scroll down to the bottom of the April 25th show. In spite of all my complaints, I am proud of the school. The vast majority of students care, all the staff do, and, like our cheesy bulletin board says, "Something good is happening here," even if it's happening more noisily and more chaotically than I would like. The weather is slowly getting warmer, and I feel like I've made it past a wintertime slump. I'm beginning to genuinely look forward to returning to YWLCS next fall.

Blooper of the week: in a book report, one of the girls spelled Destiny (the name of an important character) as "Density." But everyone seems to comprehend the concept of surface area (for rectangular prisms, at least). Oh and you'll like this: one of my sneaky tricks to get students involved is to use their names in word problems (everyone does this these days), and to mix it up a little bit, I started using the names of their favorite rappers and singers. It's so brilliant that it's stupid!! All I have to do is put the name Chris Brown in my problem about selling hot dogs and corn dogs, and they're falling all over themselves to read it. On a page full of problems featuring Makita, Keyanna, and Alexa, everyone wanted to do the one with Bow Wow in it first. They were fighting about who was going to get to present it to the class (but then, they always fight over presentations. They love to give them, which is great; if only they were more competent at listening to other people's!)

In other news, I got a really sweet letter from one of my advisees, saying basically that she appreciates having me around, and I shouldn't let it get me down when nobody listens to me.

Only twenty-something days of instruction left!

Oops, I accidently pasted a link to the Department of the Treasury where my Chris Brown image was supposed to be. It's fixed now, but did you know, the national debt changes daily, and its current amount is easily accessed by the public? (Click on "current amount.") It's a pretty scary number.

Our Nation's Capital

Patrick's spring break was last week, so I took off two days from school and we flew to Washington for a long weekend. We had a great time staying with friends Steve and Sanne, and we enjoyed all of the free museums, too.

Our first stop was the National Gallery of Art. We spent all day there. The permanent collection showcases lots of French Impressionists, Italians, Dutch, Rodin, that sort of thing. Special exhibitions that we saw included Audubon birds and Dada. When we finally got museumed out, we walked to the Library of Congress to look at the books. (Guess whose idea that was!) Then it was Metro back to meet up with Steve and Sanne for Ethiopian dinner in the Adams Morgan neighborhood.

The next day, we hit up the Botanic Gardens and gawked at their orchids for a while. The Museum of the American Indian (in the background in my photo) was looking crowded, so we walked on to the Hirshhorn and discovered Hiroshi Sugimoto, a very interesting photographer. We then spent an hour at the Sackler Gallery, which featured a gorgeous exhibit of Hokusai's prints and paintings. By then, our feet were getting tired, so we went to the natural history place and caught an IMAX movie about deep sea animals. In the documentary, teams of marine biologists and astrobiologists went hundreds of meters down, exploring what types of life might exist in the environments on other planets, which are sterile compared to a terrestrial rainforest but may be similar to the cold, dark waters deep in our oceans.

Besides walking around the monuments (White House, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, all more attractive at night), the other big tourist thing we did was go to the zoo. We saw the pandas, including the baby (who was trying to sleep and played an adorable game of peek-a-boo, covering and uncovering its eyes with its paw in an attempt to get comfortable). We saw the young elephant, too, and a video of its birth (probably one of the most dramatic moments ever captured on film: 325 pounds dropping in a wet mess from a distressed and flailing mother elephant). But the best part was probably the Bird House, where we walked through a room full of flapping, singing, uncaged birds. There was a similar set up in an outdoor enclosure, where I couldn't stop photographing the ducks. They were so beautiful. Whoever is in charge of duck design deserves a raise. On this blog, I'm only showing two of the half-dozen or so exquisite species that we saw. Their lines are so lovely; their colors are perfectly coordinated; they dabble and dive so sweetly.

Take me to your leader

In Humanities, the 7th graders are starting a unit on China. In this unit, they will learn that Chinese women had bound feet. I know because the 8th graders told me about it at the beginning of the year. They wanted to know if that ever happened to anyone in my family.

This year's 7th graders began yesterday by making a big chart on the board, listing things they already knew and things they wanted to learn. (This strategy is called KWL, and they will come back at the end of the unit and list what they have learned.) On the "already know" list:
1) Different decorations
2) They trade with the U.S.
3) Great Wall of China
4) China wanted boys instead of girls
5) Major cities have a Chinatown
6) Do carate
7) Eat very different food
8) Worship Buda
9) Known for wearing robes
10) Different calendar
11) Tounge cut off if you lie.

Good job, kids.

Want to know:
1) How long was the Wall of China around?
2) What gods do they worship?
3) Do they have a town for U.S.?
4) Why do Chinese people love cats?
5) Do they have responsibilities?
6) How do you make fortune cookies?
7) What's the aconamy?
8) Who is their king?
9) Was China made befor Asia?

I'm not sure what some of those questions mean.

Their other big idea is that since I got my hair cut, I look like Mulan. You be the judge.

We just planned Spirit Week (and I got the fun job of being faculty chair of the Spirit Committee. No, I'm not joking, it really is fun). Proposals for themes for each day included Jersey Day (but they tried that last year, and not enough people owned jerseys so it sucked), Pink and Purple Day (but not everyone likes pink and purple--thankfully), Backwards Day (rejected because "What if we have to go to the bathroom??"), Bum/Hobo Day (they had some other word, I forget what it was, but anyway I said no), and Favorite Rap Star Day (Brie came through, reminding everyone that they might "wear really big jeans and they might fall down and show our panties" or, alternatively, they might dress like a female pop star, which would be inappropriately hoochie for school, though I don't think she actually said hoochie). We ended up choosing Twin Day, International Day, Cartoon Character Day, and School Colors/Rally Day. I hope it turns out good ...

Problems

School is rolling along. I've really been appreciating the Middle School team lately. Shannell, who has been away for a long month on doctor's orders (the same vascular issue that Olympic skater Irina Slutskaya had), is finally back, and we've been having some good conversations. I'm learning more all the time about the school's functions and disfunctions, and how people on different levels are attempting to address both. I'm optimistic about the process.

Matthew from Mississippi had decided to go back, but now he's changed his mind. After getting laid off at the bank, he got another job at a public library closer to where he's living. He'll be making $9.50/hour, 6 hours/day, 5 days/week, and his rent is just $80/week, so he should be fine as long as he has this job. (I congratulated him and said, "So maybe you can start paying us back then, bit by bit?" He seemed happy to agree. We'll see what actually happens; I won't hold it against him if he doesn't.) He really doesn't want to go back to the South, he says; his people aren't there anymore, and it feels like a land full of strangers. Plus, he wants to pursue his GED, something he doesn't know how he would do back in Biloxi (again, the limitations of illiteracy).

He came over looking for some food to tide him over to his next paycheck. Patrick talked to him a bit, trying to clarify what happened after the hurricane, and expressing his frustration that there was no end to these donations of food and money in sight. Matthew was very understanding and told Patrick he was a good friend, and that he wouldn't be calling on us anymore except to say, "I'm still alive." Patrick also acknowledged that it must not be "fun" to have to call on us the way he has been. Then Patrick offered to take Matthew to the grocery store, since we don't have his kind of food in the house. At that, some red flags went up in my mind, and I put my foot down. I said something about how it wasn't an issue of generosity or some kind of personal thing, just of our needs at this point, and we could give from what we had at home at that was that. Patrick is working on his seminar paper right now, I'm working on my grades (due at midnight), we've already been to the grocery store today, and I just don't see accommodating someone every time they ask for something as a good way to show that you don't want them to ask you for stuff anymore. So I packed up some cans of corn, mac and cheese, cereal, fruit, kidney beans, and snack bars and sent Matthew on his way.

Patrick tells me that I was mean, but not to an unjustifiable degree. For my part, I feel like someone has to play the bad cop, and it's easier for me than for Patrick; also, my thinking has evolved to a point where I don't equate mean with cruel, and I think that sometimes a little bit of meanness, or hardass-ness might be a better term, goes a long way. Perhaps I'm also just fed up with being taken advantage of. Not always in deliberately manipulative ways, and not just by Matthew. But it seems like too many people think they can take a mile if you say you'll give an inch, and on some things, I'm not willing to give an inch anymore. Or I want to be really clear that an inch is an inch. I hope that makes sense. Thank you, Chicago Public Schools.

If that doesn't give you food for thought, chew on this: the most common misspelling of the word "problem" amongst my students is "promble." A handful of girls, in different grades and different sections, consistently spell it this way. I have no idea why.

Building Community

Accompanied Patrick to a talk given by a gentleman named Laclau at a cafe called No Exit this evening. Laclau is an Argentinian now at an English university, and he has just written a book about populism. He made some cutting remarks about Slavoj Zizek and said an awful lot that I couldn't make heads or tails of. But one of the questions that an audience member asked was, "Is it possible to separate the content of Hugo Chavez' message, his populism, from his unappealing style?" Laclau replied that while it might be theoretically conceivable in some imaginary world, it is not possible now in Venezuela.

I took a course in my last year as an undergrad called "Building Community." I'm so used to seeing people organize around common grievances that I wondered, "Is it possible to create a sense of community that exists in a positive sense, that does not rely on opposition?" I never felt that the class addressed that question at all, but now I realize that the work I did during the class proved that yes, it is possible. I was part-time at the Community School of Music and Arts, and everyone there was tremendously committed to the very positive goal of the school: promoting and providing art education for locals of all ages. Everyone put in more hours than they were paid for, and there were many small crises of all kinds. But although people got tired, they were never angry in quite the same frustrated, fed-up way that the teachers at my school are.

I just checked my email and a funny thing has come up. Being such a small school, the scheduling is easier if each class is split in two sections. So there are two 7th grade sections, 7A and 7B, and the girls stay with the same group all day. Lately, one of the sections has started bullying the other section. "We're better than you." "Your section is full of lames." (The part that reminds me of Iraq is where the teachers say to the disgruntled "lames," "Stay cool. Whatever you do, don't retaliate, we are going to resolve this," but amongst ourselves, we're all wondering what the heck to do.)

So anyway, a section of 7th graders has decided to rally around the arbitrary fact that they belong to one section and not another, and the strong point is their opposition to the other section.

How can we harness people's desire to belong and channel it in a more positive way? School spirit? A more responsible stewardship of our school environment? Does it have to be so stupid and counter-productive?

I picked up a note today that made me really happy. Usually I hate finding these things, because they're just full of incriminating crap. "So-and-so is a b----. I can't stand her. Why do you talk to her?" The other day, I confiscated a fortune teller (a folded-paper toy that's easy to make; in elementary school, my friends and I would fill them with fortunes like, "Your favorite color is blue," or "You're going to marry Ryan"). This one included fortunes like, "There's sh-t in your panties." Boy was that fun. Anyway, today's happy note basically said: "I'm so worried. I'm failing math and I don't want to do bad in school. I hope I can make up this Not Yet but I'm really afraid that I can't do it." The recipient wrote, "Don't worry, I got UR back. You'll be OK." The original writer tied up the exchange: "Thanks for being my best friend." Aw.

1172

Patrick and I started talking about a month ago about the possibility of buying a condo out here in Chicago. So I got online just to see what was available, and next thing you know, we've done it! It's in a building that is very well cared for, and though it's small, it has a good layout. Pictures of the interior are on Patrick's blog. The home inspection just happened today, and everything went very smoothly. We met the current owner, too, and she was really nice. Invited us to visit her and her husband at their new home, a farm in Wisconsin. We'll close in June, when the husband will officially retire from his professorship at the U of C and our lease at this apartment will end.

Went home for the weekend. Took grandparents out to yum cha, which felt good, though it was hard to talk. Noisy restaurant, plus the language barrier. Had a nice chat with Candice and Eric in the afternoon, then more gorging at Goong goong Herb's new year dinner. I don't know if I'm going to keep going back to meat at these things. Anyway I got sick again (probably related, I think, to the stupid Southwest flight I got that landed an hour late, at 1AM; sleeping wrong really weakens me and my immune system), but I'm doing better now ...

The guy from Mississippi who we've been helping out has been back intermittently. His grandfather died a few weeks ago, so we gave him a little bit of cash to help get him back to Mississippi for the funeral. When he returned, we went shopping with him at the Coop, where he bought white bread and canned meat (yucky!). The cashier asked, "Are you guys roommates?" (I guess it isn't common to see a mix like us together in a grocery store.) We all hesitated for a second before Matthew shyly replied, "No, just friends." The cashier said something about not rooming together being a good way to maintain a friendship, and I have to admit the profound truth of that in this particular case, at least.

So then Matthew's wallet got stolen. He didn't lose much, just his ID card (which it was a struggle for him to get) and a few days' bus money. Still, it really shook him, and all these events have given me a new (though still so obviously limited) sense of what it can be like to live on the edge of financial solvency, not to mention the limitations on you if you are illiterate in this time and place. Matthew is pursuing a GED right now, and he says it will take 8 weeks to get it. But that hardly seems likely, given that he can barely read more than his own name and can't even spell the name of the street where he lived in Biloxi.

Other events have brought to mind other kinds of literacy. Waiting for my plane at the airport (and eavesdropping on the inane conversations taking place nearby), I realized very concretely that students coming from white, middle-class homes have a cultural leg up on most of my students. It isn't just having parents who take them to the library. Perhaps even more important, it's the way of communicating that they bring to school; they talk one at a time, and they try rather hard to be agreeable to each other. Most striking, at the moment it struck me at least, is this: it isn't that other ways of communicating are necessarily worse, just that they harmonize much less well with the cultural standard. I guess this is what all those articles I read about the dominant discourse were all about. It's less that it was unclear to me then than that it's real to me now. I still am not sure what to do with that knowledge.

If you can help it, you should avoid flying Southwest. The last three times I've flown with them, they've done something stupid. The first time, they said one thing on the phone and another when I actually got to the airport (regarding changing a reservation to an earlier flight). The second time, they put my luggage on another plane without telling me; then, when I went to report it lost, they said it would be there in another 20 minutes, but it actually ended up taking over an hour. Most recently, my flights were delayed by about an hour each way, both coming and going, which is always inconvenient not only for you, waiting in the airport for all that extra time, but also for anyone waiting for you on the other end.

I think those are all my updates for the moment. Thank you to all the Louies for passing on lei-see for me, even though I couldn't be there to celebrate with you. Thank you to the Lems and Owyangs for remembering not just me, but also Patrick! Happy Year of the Dog to everyone. Sending all my runny-nosed love from Chicago.
Nicole

Madison, WI

Patrick and I took a vacation to celebrate Lincoln's birthday. At least, I think it was Lincoln's birthday. Anyway, I got Monday off! So on Saturday, we made the three-hour drive to Madison. We saw the magnificent (yet friendly) capitol building; a couple of good used book stores; the Monona convention center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and overlooking the now-frozen Lake Monona; a delicious Afghani dinner; a cheap motel called the Aloha Inn, owned (I think) by a Korean lady; Olbrich gardens, with a tropical indoor conservatory full of beautiful plants and an outdoor Thai pavilion; and the International Festival at the new Overture Arts Center in Madison, with more good food, free performances, and some interesting art-and-craft type booths. Here are some of the highlights in pictures.



The interior of the Capitol Building; Patrick at the Monona Convention Center; Lake Monona itself, with icy edges and abandoned Christmas trees strewn in the middle (why do they do that? there are some explanations of how to recycle Christmas trees here, but none of them seem to involve dumping them in the middle of a frozen lake); the view of a garden plot through the lens of a cool kaleidoscope at Olbrich Gardens; and the Thai Pavilion through the brush at the Olbrich conservatory.

New Snow

We went for a nice walk earlier today to Promontory Point to enjoy the sunshine and the fresh snow. It's hard to communicate what it really looks and feels like, but here are some pictures anyway. The walk to the Point is noisy; the streets are busy, and the snow crunches underfoot. But when you get to the lake, the sounds of the water crashing on the rocks drown out the city, and it's peaceful. We saw lots of skinny squirrels and some goldeneyes, diving ducks with beautiful black, white, and red-brown plumage.

A lot of the snow has already melted, but you can see where it has frozen on the shady side of the trees.


For some reason, these structures supporting the man-made lake edge fascinate me. I wonder how old they are. Parts of it look much newer: you can't see any bolts at all, just smooth concrete. The City wants to re-do the whole thing like that, but I hope they don't.


Patrick is doing very well. He loves his research, and is actually disappointed that it's Saturday because it means the archives are closed! I, on the other hand, am grateful for the respite. I worry that I will fail to find the academic/professional satisfaction that Patrick is enjoying. When we browse at the book store, I am struck by my lack of knowledge and expertise in every area, and it seems impossible to find somewhere to begin. I did find an interesting article on ethnic minorities in China; it was in a book that was mostly about Pakistan. What I came away wondering, though, is how is an ethnicity defined? What makes 93% of China's population Han, and what separates the rest? According to the essay, there was no way to say "ethnic minority" in Chinese until the early 20th century. With the Communists came campaigns of assimilation ...

I feel like my interest in education is waning. I have fewer questions now than I did at the beginning, I suppose because I'm currently preoccupied with being frustrated. I am putting less care into my 8th grade class, and it's showing; my lessons are less well-organized, and though I feel this should be an engaging unit with very accessible work, things are just not coming together. On the other hand, I should say that they are; though students' listening skills are no better, they have stayed more on-task lately. It's just a particular project that I assigned too early, and they aren't quite ready for it. And then I think there are wonderful things happening with the 7th graders, but only in one section. The other section can't stop complaining long enough to have a discussion and actually learn something. We discussed this habit itself last Thursday, and I still get worked up thinking about some of the things they said. Two of the girls said that the class was boring, and we just do stuff they learned in 3rd grade--and of course, when I looked at their work afterward, it was sloppy and incomplete, far from demonstrating the mastery they claimed. It made me even more infuriated with them to hear the brave words of another student who responded to them by saying that she was struggling with the work, and she knew she wasn't the only one, and that it wasn't fair of them to keep interrupting instruction because she was trying to learn. Her remarks were inspiring, and in a way, I can't wait for Monday because I am going to kick out half the class if I have to. I will send student after student to the office until it is quiet enough for us to really think together, and maybe then we will be able to come to some of the awesome discoveries that the other class has made.

The odd thing about it is that this all comes at the same time that I feel I have had two important realizations about my work. 1) I may see very little progress, especially socially, but that doesn't mean that the efforts I am making are not having an effect. It's simply that any effect will take years to manifest itself in an observable way. 2) I am actually very lucky to have the students and parents that I do. Even if many of them don't behave as I would like them to, almost everyone really cares about their academic success, and even about what their teachers think of them. These are such great assets.

So much is strange. I've been watching the 7 Up series on DVD; in it, a selection of British children are filmed at 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, and most recently, at 42. The basic question is how much one stage of life reflects on future stages, I guess. At the end of every episode, the narrator says, "Give me a child of 7, and I will show you the man," or something like that. Anyway, I just saw 28, and one of the most striking things is how the people I worried about or disliked when they were 7 have turned out OK. They have healthy relationships, jobs ... it isn't true across the board, I suppose, but overwhelmingly, people are resilient and decent and what more can you ask for. So part of me questions whether my work really makes a difference.

I am feeling very selfish, and I would just like to find something that might or might not make any difference to The World or Society but that would make me happy to do. That would make me excited about getting out of bed in the morning, and keep me up late at night without begrudging my wakefulness. It's only the very, very lucky who find work like that, eh? Maybe teaching will become that for me once I've figured some more things out. I don't know.

Eyes and ears

While back in the Bay, I paid a visit to Uncle Ken's office and picked some glasses. (Also chatted a little with Uncle Ken, which I enjoyed; it's funny, I never went there when it was ten minutes away, but now that I have to fly to get there, I feel compelled to go. Same way with everything in the South Bay. Ate at a wonderful, wonderful restaurant on Hamilton called Osteria for the first time, even though I've known about it for three years or something. Anyway I'm glad I went. Osteria = Yum.) They came in the mail about a week ago. I like them a lot. I wear them around at school and force people to take me seriously. Actually the girls seem to like them too; I've gotten quite a few compliments.

I can't stop listening to this song by Tanya Stephens. It's on a mixtape I got at Amoeba by El Dopa. It's called "It's a Pity" and it has a bit of a reggae thing going on, which I usually am not that into, but this song is sooo catchy.

Happy days, y'all!

Healthy Sex

This is a class that is mandatory for all students at YWLCS. I think most of them only have it one day a week, and they might not have it every trimester, it's hard to keep their schedules straight. Anyway, I love having time off; I can finally catch up on my blog. I found this assignment on the floor in my classroom a while ago, and it cracked me up.

It's called "A Small Party," and the situation is, "You've been going out with someone for six months and care for this person very much. There's going to be a small party at a good friend's house and the two of you can be alone. Your partner asks you to get some protection before the party. You're not ready to have sex. Your partner says ..." What follows is a dialogue where Partner 1's part is given, and one of my girls wrote in the responses for Partner 2 ...

Partner 1: I guess you don't really care about me.
Partner 2: Y wouldnt i care 4 u, If i been with you 4 6 months dont u think I care cause we both no If I didnt care i wouldnt wasted my time

Partner 1: I feel like a fool asking you. I never thought you'd act like this.
Partner 2: If we been 2gethe all this time And you'n no how I act what do u no

Partner 1: Are you starting to see someone else?
Partner 2: No, ARE U

Partner 1: Well, I thought you'd really want to do it.
Partner 2: Yeah I do but Not Now, not here + maybe Not with U

Partner 1: What if I got the protection?
Partner 2: OK so um um um

Partner 1: This takes the fun out of going to the party.
Partner 2:

Partner 1: I guess it's not so important, right now.
Partner 2: That what i was tryin 2 tell you when you first start talkin!

Keep scrolling down to see my pretty pictures, please.

More photos

Here are the rest of the noteworthy photos from my most recent expedition West. A moving train; a roast turkey; Dad and Kaitlyn; more roast turkey (yes I did eat a slice); the ferns at the back of the house; scarabs at the De Young's Egyptian exhibit (Patrick is blurrily mirrored in the right corner); and an interior passageway at the De Young, with their ferns in the background. All of the images will blow up if you click on them. (ka-boom!)

I'm home with a cold, but that never stopped Napoleon! Well it might have, I don't really know ... anyway, onwards and upwards ...

Back to Cali

Went back for a week with Patrick. Got rained on almost every day, but we had some spots of sun, too. Spent time with family and friends. Took a lot of pictures of Jarrett's Marklin steam engine; you can see it steaming.


Here he is tinkering with the controls. It's a pretty fancy train. Lots of bells and whistles. Literally.
Also went to the DeYoung, which I liked a lot. I have a few pictures but can't decide which ones to post, and I'm kinda tired right now.


Goong-goong Herb told some amazing stories, too, about growing up in segregated California and then serving in the Navy in WWII. Didn't get to see much of my grandparents or cousins, but did spend more time with aunts and uncles than usual. I had no idea Auntie Lorna's job in Customs was so interesting!

More later.

Winter is here!

It has started snowing in earnest. I keep thinking that we'll have some rain (because that's what winter means to me!), but it's too cold. We had a very nice snow on Sunday; you could actually see the tiny little snowflake forms, just like the ones you cut out of paper in 2nd grade, as they landed on jackets and stuff.

Patrick and I took a walk in Jackson Park (the Wooded Island/Japanese garden part, from the 1893 Columbian Exposition, right behind the Museum of Science and Industry). Here are some photos.

Me in front of the gate to the Japanese Garden, sporting Dad's old ski jacket. How long have you had it, Dad? A nice hat, too, from Auntie Donna. She actually gave it to my mom ... have you ever worn it, Mom? Anyway, it's very warm, and perfect for this weather. :)

Here are a couple more from the park. It's a nice place. The sun even came out a little bit!







My ideas about my future have taken another turn. Or I guess it would be more appropriate to say that they've glanced down a side street; no turns have actually been made at all. So what if, instead of getting a PhD in education and working to educate future teachers, I started working as an editor? I've always liked editing other people's writing, and it's the sort of work where my obsession with details could be really useful! And best of all, it would be much more independent than the crazy job I have now, where everything depends on 100 twelve- and thirteen-year olds. There's always auto shop, too; I think that's a career with real potential. I like doing things with my hands, and solving spatial problems ...

I Left My Heart ...

Hello! I made it safely back to Chicago. Yesterday (Monday) was one of the hardest days I've had this year; no one, least of all me, was happy to be back at school after the break, and I wasn't even that excited to be back in Chicago (though, helpfully, temperatures have been back in the 50s, nice and warm). It was great to see Patrick again, but ... I guess I just would've wanted a little more time to be with family. But we'll both be in SF for Christmas, and that's a big comfort. Also, today was much better than yesterday, work-wise. Besides remembering something this other teacher told me about loving your students (and realizing that I do really enjoy a lot of them as people), I discovered that several teachers returned from their trips yesterday morning before school, which made me feel like I couldn't complain about having a mere afternoon to get ready.

Photo time. First, the new paint job on a house just up the hill from my parents' place, on Teresita. You can't quite make it out, but there's a silver tinsel Christmas tree in the doorway. I sure do love San Francisco.
The redone De Young Museum was also totally hot. It's covered in copper plates with holes and impressions that make each plate unique. The streetlamps are also gorgeous. I'm looking forward to going inside next time.



Here's a photo from Thanksgiving at Uncle Dennis' house. Avery peers into the camera while his brother, Garrett, displays the action figures that he makes out of twist ties. Watching the latest Harry Potter movie, I found myself wondering when I would see the name of the oldest brother, Chris, on a rolling screen of credits. His just told me that he's thinking about going into film production. Cool!

Oh yeah, also, I got my ears pierced, as Candice's comment mentions. It was really nice to see her. I miss you too, Can!

Last of all, a picture of the quilt (inspired by Auntie Marilyn's projects with Allison's school) that another teacher and I made with our 7th grade students. The 8th graders did one, too. It features a square advertising "Respect, Caring, and Honesty" (done by a teacher, of course) right next to one with a big "50 Cent" (surprisingly, also done by a teacher)(just kidding).

Japan, schools, the New York Times

An editorial appeared in yesterday's New York Times, describing No Child Left Behind and comparing American ideas about education to Japanese ones. The writer, Brent Staples, acknowledges that Japan and the US are very different countries, but his analysis is nonetheless insightful.

It brought to mind something I heard or read by Michael Kirst, who I guess you could describe as an educational economist and the guru of California school finance. Anyway he said that historically, the quality of US schools has been measured by inputs, for example: the number of teachers per student, the number of computers per student, the amount of money spent per student. More recently, with the push for accountability, schools have been measured by their outputs, namely test scores. This seems reasonable enough. But the problem with NCLB and similar legislation of the last two or three decades is that--and I believe I have said this before, so excuse the repetition--it assumes that you can improve the outputs by simply focusing on them more diligently than you have ever focused on them before. It's like when a student is struggling to grasp a concept and the teacher, instead of explaining or asking questions or interacting at all with the intellectual task that the student is facing, simply repeats, "Think about it. Use your brain!" But the kid doesn't know how to solve the problem. Yelling, "Think harder!" won't help her. Similarly, to quote Staples' editorial: "What has become clear ... is that school systems and colleges of education have no idea how to generate changes in teaching that would allow students to learn more effectively."

Staples suggests that we look at what more effective education systems abroad are doing. One aspect of the Japanese system is the assumption that teachers have a lot of learning to do themselves, and that working with other teachers is a good way to accomplish that learning. This seems kind of obvious, but when you contrast it with the typical experience of a novice teacher in the US, you realize that it must not be. At most schools here, you get hired and you start teaching. There is little or no time set aside for you to work with or observe other teachers. There is little or no support for you to attend teacher conferences. Most of the time, professional development consists of a bi-monthly workshop led by an outsider, which has about a 50/50 chance of being relevant to what you're doing.

I do think we need a greater focus on inputs, particularly teachers. This is an important moment for teacher education and school reform! I can't wait to go back to school ... I love theory. Yet I am a horrible reader of non-fiction. That will be my downfall as an academic.

I feel really lucky to have had the experiences that I have as a teacher. STEP took teacher preparation really seriously, and YWLCS takes professional development really seriously. Even so, almost nothing about teaching is coming easily to me.

We're having parent-student-teacher conferences yesterday and today. The girls were very excited that I wore lipstick for them. One of the teachers commented, "That's really nice! You finally look your age." Thanks, I guess.

Shoes, etc.

The weather has finally gotten wintry. It's perfect, according to Patrick; we've gone from 60s and 70s to 20s and 30s in just a few days, bypassing a long dreary transition. There has been a little bit of snow, and I've been wearing down jackets, scarves, and gloves.

I realized that I needed some cold-weather shoes, so I went shopping today. I made the practical choice of above-the-ankle boots made by Khombu, an official supplier of the US Olympic Ski Team, "inspired by sherpas in the Himalayas" or something like that. Great. Anyway they were cheaper than the prettier shoes, more weather-proof, totally warm, and not ugly. I would feel comfortable wearing them to work, and comfortable wearing them out for a weekend tromp in some park. However, they did nothing at all to satisfy my desire to have shoes, so I've been browsing the gigantic shoe store that is the internet in an effort not so much to find shoes I would actually buy as to find shoes that I would really, really want.

This lead me to the Fluevog website. John Fluevog makes silly shoes. They have names like "Mini: Lily Darling," "Minstrel: Vibratto," and "Lip Service: Zig." This seems suitable. But there's also a whole line called "Peacemaker," with styles such as "Dalai," "John Paul," "Mandela," and "Luther King." I find it disturbingly tasteless to have fluffy tan/beige ankle boots with a faux fur cuff and a big buckle named after MLK. "Hey, are those new shoes?" "Yeah, I got them at Fluevog. They're called Luther Kings, which is so awesome. It warms my heart to know that I have a piece of a civil rights leader warming my feet."

And how about Kellogg's Corn Flakes? We were at the co-op yesterday and they had three different sizes: the small standard box with the cartoon rooster, a slightly larger box with the Disney Cinderella, and finally a huge ass box, super family size, with sepia-toned photographs of Cesar Chavez and Celia Cruz. What is that about?? Patrick jokes that they have to market the bigger boxes to Latinos, since everyone knows that Mexicans have big families (and presumably they need more corn flakes?). The box was quite bilingual, in fact, with "Celebrate Hispanic Heritage" or something like that in both English and Spanish. Good job, Kellogg. But seriously, what is this about?? Should we embrace greater inclusion of multicultural figures in the morass of American consumerism? Decry it as sacreligious? Just laugh?

I can't wait for Chairman Mao Captain Crunch. I'm totally going to buy some of that.



C is for Communism!

Ghetto Schooling

There's a book by that title by a woman named Jean Anyon. It's pretty fierce. Anyway she has a new book out, Radical Possibilities. I was just reading a review and it sounds like one of its major theses is that urban education is kind of screwed. That the work of education reformers is going to fail until the policies that create the macroeconomic and socio-political conditions in inner cities change. The review was stimulating; it definitely has me interested in the book. Anyway you can read it (the review, not the book) here.

Hurricane saga continues

Darrell and Matthew are back!

Matthew is looking a lot better. He got a job cleaning at Bank of America! He stopped by last week while I was out, and Patrick said it was actually nice to see him; I understood what he meant when the pair called on us this evening. Darrell is staying with a lady friend, I guess, but Matthew seems like he's made some real steps toward sustainability. He's got a hot plate, so he can do at least nominal cooking; he has a relatively dependable job (he showed me a copy of his job description and a map of the areas he has to clean, floors 32-35); and he has a place to stay.

That's not to say that this visit didn't involve some of the same things that the others have. It turns out that the landlord who was letting him stay at his vacant building in exchange for some work on the building upped and sold the whole thing and moved to Alabama. The new landlord is insisting that Matthew pay rent now; he can't wait until Nov 1, when Matthew gets paid. So Matthew wanted to know where he could get some help. He went to a couple of churches; he showed me their letters and their recommendations (they referred him to Cabrini Green legal assistance). I pulled a couple of other potential resources off the internet for him, including the U of C Law School clinic and another legal foundation that does pro-bono work, including landlord/tenant disputes.

And I gave him $40 toward his rent fund. He made vague references to paying it back, but I'm not really expecting him to. I would consider it a huge bonus, icing on the cake, extra credit if he did.

I don't know how much we've given to these guys, and I don't really want to know. There are so many places I don't even want to go as far as thinking about what's going on (e.g., the possibility that most of what I know about Matthew and Darrell isn't true, and whether it is appropriate to feel proud of the progress Matthew is making, and whether there isn't something totally blind or patronizing or both in my attitudes about the situation). I would like to just let it be what it seems to be, and be happy that people can and do go out of their way to do nice things to take care of each other.

Mom's visit

Mom came to town for the weekend. (Yay!) We went to Rockefeller Chapel, the Garfield Park Conservatory, and Shedd Aquarium. I did worry about being ready for school, but I made it through today, at least.

I was really impressed with the conservatory. Free every day, with nice outreach programs for families and stuff. Here's a photo of the Fern Room, a reconstruction of Chicago in the age of dinosaurs. There were some people getting married there. Not a bad idea, I think, if you have a small wedding. Pretty. The Palm Room was great, too: seven dozen varieties of palm, including the double coconut with its eight-foot fan-shaped fronds.

Um ... Rockefeller was gorgeous. And very effective at making people in it feel tiny and awed. The glass was unusual; all of the huge leaded windows around the nave (the long part) were ornate but in muted colors, mostly a greyish glass. Then at the head of the chapel, a star bursts with flames, rosying the arch around it. The attention to detail in the masonry was amazing, too.

Not sure what else to say. Honestly, I'm kind of brain dead, and tired of school right now. I'm impressed by Jalisa, though. She and Brie are heading up the double dutch team, which I am sponsoring, and she just said some remarkable things today about the unity of a team (if someone makes a mistake, it's as though all of them made it, and there's no "You screwed up" or "It's your fault") and being responsible for their image by doing stuff like picking up their trash after practice.

I guess I can start on this book, The Search for God. (It's from one of my students; she's a Jehovah's witness, trying to convert yours truly.)

Baseball

Go White Sox!

It's pretty exciting to come to a city with such a winning team. We thought about trying to get tickets to the World Series, but that thought died quickly. Even if it hadn't, I don't think we would've been able to get tickets. When they went on sale at noon last Tuesday, another teacher at my school took his homeroom to the computer lab, promising a Borders gift card to anyone who could get in to the Ticketmaster website where the elite few are randomly selected out of the waiting pool for the special opportunity to buy tickets. And even with all those people trying for him, he didn't get any.

Unfortunately, our TV doesn't get FOX. I don't know if the rabbit ears are broken or what. So anyway we've been listening to the games on the radio, and I'm getting tired of the dumb commercials, but my question for all of you is: in the Miller Lite commercial, where various guys give their testimonials in their various languages and the emcee of the commercial responds with a "Great job" or whatever in the same language, why do they match the Cantonese testimonial with a Mandarin response??

Starved Rock

The city has been beautiful. Crisp, autumn weather is setting in. We've been continuing to see lots of birds, though fewer species. Lots of Canada geese. The little green monk parakeets are still around, too; looks like they'll be wintering here. We've been taking walks to our local park (Jackson Park, home to a Japanese garden on an artificial island), just behind the Museum of Science and Industry (the side of which is shown at left). It's amazing to have this kind of resource just a few blocks from our apartment. Lake Michigan is five blocks away, too, with a totally different feeling. I love our location.

Nonetheless, we've both been itching to get out of the city, so we took off on Saturday for Starved Rock, a state park about an hour and a half outside of Chicago. It was a gorgeous day, and there were lots and lots of dogs at the park (with their people, on leashes of course). The leaves have just started turning color, so the fall foliage wasn't spectacular, but it was quite lovely anyway. The park is on the Illinois River, so besides the trees, there was water, too. It was full of geese and pelicans.

My favorite parts were the waterfall basins. The falls themselves are dry now, but they've carved out these bowls that are beautiful to climb into. It's amazing how huge they are. The picture makes it look like a cave or a tunnel, but it's not really like either. It's ... looking at it from the front, it seems like it's a vertical wall, and it's not until you reach the back of the bowl that you realize how far the top edge hangs overhead. In winter, the falls freeze. I'm looking forward to visiting some of these places when they're all snowy.

Apparently, no one buys snow tires here. You just don't need them. That's a comforting sort of thing to know.

All for now, folks.

Winged Bull-man

Na'amah has been flying all over the world. She inspires me to take flight myself, both figuratively and literally. I'm already thinking about when I might be able to go visit her in Tel Aviv.

Most recently, she stopped in Chicago for a day and night on her way home (to her parents' in Philadelphia) from the Bay Area. It was a wonderful, wonderful visit. We walked to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, where they have a new exhibit on Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq). It was hard to look at (a bit cluttered) but there was some amazing stuff. A good mix of little things: receipts written in cuneiform (I can't believe the little triangles mean anything!), clay record tablets with matching clay envelopes, standard weights in standard shapes and sizes (cylinders, ducks), fish and woman figurines. Also some bigger things, like an ancient replica of the Code of Hammurabi, which was really cool to see; it turns out not to be a legal code per se, but more of a series of stories about cases Hammurabi heard and the decisions he made. There were lots of carved stone wall panels, too, which were so big and really neat to walk around and through, imagining what it would be like to live amongst them. And then there were the HUGE things, like this guy. Sixteen feet high, 40 tons. They found him in pieces somewhere and put him back together for the museum. Standing next to him and looking up was like being in a fantasy land. There was a bull's head that was even bigger.

We did some other stuff too, like go to yet another Chicago restaurant with tasty food and horrible service (and smokers! so alien to my San Franciscan ways). Anyway it is fantastic to see faces that I've known for more than two months. Can't wait for my mom's visit next weekend.

time for a new post

The weather here is nutty. I keep putting away the summer blankets, shoes, etc. only to have to pull them out again. Yesterday it was in the high 80s. Today the high is 61.

Anyway, just wanted make a quick update. Spent last weekend in Kenosha, WI, where all of Patrick's mom's siblings (12, including Mary) convened to celebrate Grandma Hammond's 80th birthday. It was great to talk with everyone; they were all really friendly, and interesting, and interested, and just good people in general. We played a silly game somewhere between field hockey and soccer (it's called 'field crumpets') and ate dinner. All in all, it was more relaxed than a typical Louie gathering. I guess because the youngest generation in the Hammond family is mostly in college or recently graduated. Not so many young kids (though there are a couple of babies). I was really sad to leave. It reminded me of how much I miss being so close to family.

School is going all right. Trying to figure out where the line is between emphasizing conceptual understanding and just needing students to practice so they can do things (like find the area of a rectangle) mindlessly.

All for now.