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.

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!?!

.

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.