A slight case of the winter blues and an ever-shifting sense of acceptance/dissatisfaction with family situations sent me spending all of my money leftover after buying Christmas presents on every film that struck my fancy. So, here's my holiday media countdown of favorites:
1) The Extras Christmas special--Of course, my favorite was also the only free item. Reminded me that Maggie deserved the honor I gave her when I named my new iPod after her. And thank the constellations of comedians for Ricky Gervais...and Stephen Merchant getting on his groove to the tune of his mobile phone with his workmates, which gave me just the gutlaugh I was needing when I sat down to it first thing after coming home from attempting to connect with family on Christmas day.
2) The Kiterunner-- Just found out about the big controversy surrounding the producers and the child actor who was hired to play Hassan, but luckily (or not?), I saw the film before knowledge of the scandal could tarnish my viewing of this film adaptation of a book that has made me cry like no other book before or since I first read it years ago.
3) Atonement-- Another film adaptation of a book I enjoyed quite a while ago. James McAvoy captures the fragile disillusionment of war and imprisonment as I can only imagine it must look.
4) I'm Not There--Already raved about this homage to Dylan in my Thanksgiving post... yes, I'm counting Thanksgiving as the beginning of my holiday viewings...
5) Across the Universe-- Another homage to musical greats, this time the Beatles. Clearly made by music fans who have managed to crawl inside the Beatles world and create a storied country from within.
6) Margot at the Wedding-- I found I related to both Margot AND her sister, but a bit horrified to find that I more often identified with Margot than I'd like.
7) The Savages-- These are popping up in pairs, I'm realizing-- this completes the pair of brutal humanity films along with Margot. As I told my mom when she asked me what the point of a film like this is after I had convinced her to movie-hop into viewing it, "It's to remind us that sometimes life just sucks, and that's all there is to it." I think trying to decide what to do with a loved one dealing with mental deterioration struck a little too close to home for us... which is exactly why we needed to see it.
8) Sweeny Todd-- I loved watching Johnny Depp on a silver screen as always, and the boy can sing, but this had more value due to surrounding circumstances than the film itself: toked with my little brother in a car in the mall outside the theater to enhance the viewing experience like you'd expect from any... freakin' teenager. And I don't regret it for a minute, though my parents, religion, and the law would probably ask me to rethink things...
And music? Well, my monthly e-music subscription came in today, so I bought the Hem Christmas tracks, the Kate Bush song featured on the Extras special, completed my Gillian Welch collection so that I now have everything she has out, did the same with Cass McCombs who I've been revisiting for the first time in a while since I started listening to him after seeing him in concert alongside some dreckful emo bands years ago, a new Jolie Holland aficionado named Eilen Jewell, a new JayMay album, a Richard Buckner album, and some random tracks by Mendoza Line and Okkervil River.
Can we say Merry Consumption? I prefer to call it Medicating with Media...
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Student Moments to Remember
I was thinking today that I need to start writing down some of the brilliant moments I'm having in the classroom.
First thing happened a few weeks ago. I make some cheesy joke like the ones I'm always making, probably something about me being a big English dork. Joey P. chuckles at my nerdiness, looks up at me, and says, "Ms. G., do you ever watch The Office?" I have never been so flattered in my life. I pretend to be offended and ask, "I love it, but WHY? Are you saying my humor reminds you of Michael Scott or something?" As he started to react defensively, I laughed and said, "I'm just kidding! I'm SO thrilled you asked me that. Even if I DO remind you of Michael himself, no one could ever compliment me any better than by saying I remind them in any way of that show..."
Second thing happened last night. I had to go to BTSA, or SHITSA as my English department chair tells me her daughter calls it, the new teacher induction program of redundancy that California makes new teachers attend for four hours every other week. We were focusing on cultural/gender/religious/racial bias with the 200 nameless other new district teachers in some elementary school's crummy auditorium. After reading some cheesy Chicken Soup for the Soul stories about teachers who looked beyond the labels others place on their students, they told us we needed to start opening up and sharing our own feelings. They had four corners labeled accordingly:
1) Gender/Sex/Sexual Orientation
2) Race/Ethnicity/Culture
3) Class/Socioeconmic Status/Level of Education
4) Religion/Morality
We were told we would be asked questions and have to make one of the four choices. When we arrived in the corner, we were asked to talk to others around us who made the same decision about why we made that choice. You know, forcing us to talk about the main things people usually avoid in dinner conversation... Sound like an episode of The Office yet? I immediately wanted to describe the scenario to Joey and his class the next day to muster some empathy for my pain.
First question: Which of the four areas do you like to talk about the most?
I went to Class/Socioeconomic status/Level of Education because frankly, I'm tired of talking about gender as a girl who used to be a diehard feminist; I definitely didn't want to mingle with the diehard Christian evangelists from the Orange Curtain; and I didn't really want to be the white girl to say condescendingly that she LOVES racial diversity, even if I do. Thinking about the upcoming elections, I decided class issues are the biggest concerns I feel to be facing our nation and the biggest control factor for student approaches/attitudes toward learning based on a book I read last year, the name of which escapes me right now. Of course it didn't occur to me that a room full of teachers, at our salary, would be there because they like to talk about status and how much they can earn. WTF? I mustered my strength to keep a fake smile on my face as I listened to the superficial kids who grew up in Huntington Beach talk about how hard it is for them to understand the lack of motivation for upward mobility among our student population.
Next question: Which of the four areas influenced your home life growing up most as a child and how did it help/harm you? I thought about going to gender when I thought about how my mom used to make me feel like there were just certain things she felt my brothers could be trusted to do that I couldn't, like early driving and roadtrips for high school graduation, but I decided I couldn't say my parents were very deeply sexist, especially given the role reversal of typical gender roles I see in my family and among my siblings, since Mom supports Dad and I'm the only one as an only girl with a college education and a job that keeps me afloat (albeit only barely) among myself and my two brothers.
Third question: Which of the four areas are you least willing to change about yourself and why? Didn't want to hear what the homophobes had to say in gender/sex/sexuality, so I stayed where I was. Then a woman comes up to me and tells me I'm her son's teacher. And I don't know what to say, because I don't know WHY she's in this corner-- because she loves her religion, like most probably were, or because, like me, she's tired of people trying to convert her to their religious convictions and because my humanist principles are something I hope I will never waver from upholding. I tried to avoid the conversation as long as I could, chatting about the beautiful milagro necklace she had on (milagros, as in miracles that devout Catholics wear on rosaries) from her latest trip to Mexico City, talking about how impressed I am with Max, etc.
Finally, she asked, "So, why did YOU choose this? I myself am here probably for reasons most aren't. You see, I'm a socialist, even I'd say a Communist, and although I believe in God, I just don't understand the passion that people have about joining a congregation and going regularly." HUGE sigh of relief and instant recall of my impulse to comment on Max's Che Guevarra patch on his backpack the day before, which I restrained, not wanting to appear to be the teacher who tries too hard to be cool. Also an instant supercharge of energy and understanding of why I've liked the kid from the first day I met him. Yea-- more kindred spirits...
First thing happened a few weeks ago. I make some cheesy joke like the ones I'm always making, probably something about me being a big English dork. Joey P. chuckles at my nerdiness, looks up at me, and says, "Ms. G., do you ever watch The Office?" I have never been so flattered in my life. I pretend to be offended and ask, "I love it, but WHY? Are you saying my humor reminds you of Michael Scott or something?" As he started to react defensively, I laughed and said, "I'm just kidding! I'm SO thrilled you asked me that. Even if I DO remind you of Michael himself, no one could ever compliment me any better than by saying I remind them in any way of that show..."
Second thing happened last night. I had to go to BTSA, or SHITSA as my English department chair tells me her daughter calls it, the new teacher induction program of redundancy that California makes new teachers attend for four hours every other week. We were focusing on cultural/gender/religious/racial bias with the 200 nameless other new district teachers in some elementary school's crummy auditorium. After reading some cheesy Chicken Soup for the Soul stories about teachers who looked beyond the labels others place on their students, they told us we needed to start opening up and sharing our own feelings. They had four corners labeled accordingly:
1) Gender/Sex/Sexual Orientation
2) Race/Ethnicity/Culture
3) Class/Socioeconmic Status/Level of Education
4) Religion/Morality
We were told we would be asked questions and have to make one of the four choices. When we arrived in the corner, we were asked to talk to others around us who made the same decision about why we made that choice. You know, forcing us to talk about the main things people usually avoid in dinner conversation... Sound like an episode of The Office yet? I immediately wanted to describe the scenario to Joey and his class the next day to muster some empathy for my pain.
First question: Which of the four areas do you like to talk about the most?
I went to Class/Socioeconomic status/Level of Education because frankly, I'm tired of talking about gender as a girl who used to be a diehard feminist; I definitely didn't want to mingle with the diehard Christian evangelists from the Orange Curtain; and I didn't really want to be the white girl to say condescendingly that she LOVES racial diversity, even if I do. Thinking about the upcoming elections, I decided class issues are the biggest concerns I feel to be facing our nation and the biggest control factor for student approaches/attitudes toward learning based on a book I read last year, the name of which escapes me right now. Of course it didn't occur to me that a room full of teachers, at our salary, would be there because they like to talk about status and how much they can earn. WTF? I mustered my strength to keep a fake smile on my face as I listened to the superficial kids who grew up in Huntington Beach talk about how hard it is for them to understand the lack of motivation for upward mobility among our student population.
Next question: Which of the four areas influenced your home life growing up most as a child and how did it help/harm you? I thought about going to gender when I thought about how my mom used to make me feel like there were just certain things she felt my brothers could be trusted to do that I couldn't, like early driving and roadtrips for high school graduation, but I decided I couldn't say my parents were very deeply sexist, especially given the role reversal of typical gender roles I see in my family and among my siblings, since Mom supports Dad and I'm the only one as an only girl with a college education and a job that keeps me afloat (albeit only barely) among myself and my two brothers.
Third question: Which of the four areas are you least willing to change about yourself and why? Didn't want to hear what the homophobes had to say in gender/sex/sexuality, so I stayed where I was. Then a woman comes up to me and tells me I'm her son's teacher. And I don't know what to say, because I don't know WHY she's in this corner-- because she loves her religion, like most probably were, or because, like me, she's tired of people trying to convert her to their religious convictions and because my humanist principles are something I hope I will never waver from upholding. I tried to avoid the conversation as long as I could, chatting about the beautiful milagro necklace she had on (milagros, as in miracles that devout Catholics wear on rosaries) from her latest trip to Mexico City, talking about how impressed I am with Max, etc.
Finally, she asked, "So, why did YOU choose this? I myself am here probably for reasons most aren't. You see, I'm a socialist, even I'd say a Communist, and although I believe in God, I just don't understand the passion that people have about joining a congregation and going regularly." HUGE sigh of relief and instant recall of my impulse to comment on Max's Che Guevarra patch on his backpack the day before, which I restrained, not wanting to appear to be the teacher who tries too hard to be cool. Also an instant supercharge of energy and understanding of why I've liked the kid from the first day I met him. Yea-- more kindred spirits...
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Belated Thanksgivings
After Forty Years of Marriage, She Tries A New Recipe For Hamburger Hot Dish by Leo Dangel
"How did you like it?" she asked.
"It's all right," he said.
"This is the third time I cooked it this way. Why can't you ever say if you like something?"
"Well if I didn't like it, I wouldn't eat it," he said.
"You never can say anything I cook tastes good."
"I don't know why all the time you think I have to say it's good. I eat it, don't I?"
"I don't think you have to say all the time it's good, but once in awhile you could say you like it."
"It's all right," he said.
Well, I realized I needed to count my many blessings after venting to Amy and James about my Thanksgiving frustrations with an ever-imperfect family. After all, in addition to the usual family holiday madness, we DO have some clinical insanity to deal with, and as I told James, it was nearly heartbreaking to watch Jon so heavily medicated that it was all he could do to munch slowly on his dinner, let alone hold any kind of conversation. Then there was Grandma, who not having attended church herself since she was put in rehab for overusing anti-depressants, first offended my practically atheist uncle by asking him to pray and then passed over her daughter, my mom, to the only other man, my father whom she despises, to make sure that the representative patriarch was praying for the sins of our heathen family, which could only chuckle nervously at the awkwardness. Still reeling from the variety of feelings that invoked, I reached over for a spoonful of Katherine's sweet potato pudding, deciding that, on Thanksgiving and after losing 26 pounds, it would probably be okay to cheat a little. My dad tut-tutted me, at which point I barked perhaps a bit overreactively, worried (irrationally) that my lifelong rebellion against my parents' constant pressure about my weight would revisit and somehow send me on a reversal landslide back to my original weight if he went any further. In the end, though, I've decided that with a few exceptions, Thanksgiving never is truly Thanksgiving in ANY family without a little family dysfunction, let alone an officially dysfunctional one like ours. And as I was just writing the other day, I AM proud of us all for managing to figure out how to cope with it better than we used to...
But Bob Dylan saved the day for me. After Katherine gathered her ex-husband and chicks to go to the beach house, and once my dad and Matt convinced Jon it was time for him to go back to his new home so they could hightail it home to Murrieta, my mom and I settled in on the couch in my uncle's empty house to watch No Direction Home, the most recent Dylan documentary. I had been trying to convince my mom since the day before to trek out to Irvine to see the new film inspired by Dylan's music and life, I'm Not There, so I figured it would help her see how interesting another movie about his life would be. When Joan Baez came on, her interest was officially piqued and we got out the paper to find the showtime. I couldn't help chuckling about my mom and her former pretentions to be a hippie when the film made Joan's ardent self-belief look a little silly, but I was mostly proud of us for being so cool as to give the holiday to Grand Master Dylan.
And I am grateful for more than Dylan this year. Even the holiday was an improvement on last year's ridiculous, maudlin display when I rushed through an airport with tears streaming down my face only to learn I'd missed a flight I had lied to everyone to try to catch to see someone who really didn't want to see me, which was followed by an awkwardly silent dinner with Mom as I choked back tears she didn't want to hear about and my brothers and Dad boycotted the meal altogether upstairs, locked in their rooms.
I am grateful for a job that I love, where I work with kids who GET me and need me and laugh with me. I am grateful that it also happens to be the first job that is paying enough for me to live reasonably comfortable, even despite all of the money that is funneled into paying off last year's foolhardy debts and a new car, Sophie, who I also love and appreciate dearly. I am grateful for a year of more great musical feasts thanks to monthly music subscriptions and even finally a renewed concert schedule that went on hiatus for far too long.
Most of all, though, of course, I am grateful for loved ones that make life worth living with their conversation, laughter, shared experiences, and patience.
The Orange by Wendy Cope
At lunchtime I bought a huge orange
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all my jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.
"How did you like it?" she asked.
"It's all right," he said.
"This is the third time I cooked it this way. Why can't you ever say if you like something?"
"Well if I didn't like it, I wouldn't eat it," he said.
"You never can say anything I cook tastes good."
"I don't know why all the time you think I have to say it's good. I eat it, don't I?"
"I don't think you have to say all the time it's good, but once in awhile you could say you like it."
"It's all right," he said.
Well, I realized I needed to count my many blessings after venting to Amy and James about my Thanksgiving frustrations with an ever-imperfect family. After all, in addition to the usual family holiday madness, we DO have some clinical insanity to deal with, and as I told James, it was nearly heartbreaking to watch Jon so heavily medicated that it was all he could do to munch slowly on his dinner, let alone hold any kind of conversation. Then there was Grandma, who not having attended church herself since she was put in rehab for overusing anti-depressants, first offended my practically atheist uncle by asking him to pray and then passed over her daughter, my mom, to the only other man, my father whom she despises, to make sure that the representative patriarch was praying for the sins of our heathen family, which could only chuckle nervously at the awkwardness. Still reeling from the variety of feelings that invoked, I reached over for a spoonful of Katherine's sweet potato pudding, deciding that, on Thanksgiving and after losing 26 pounds, it would probably be okay to cheat a little. My dad tut-tutted me, at which point I barked perhaps a bit overreactively, worried (irrationally) that my lifelong rebellion against my parents' constant pressure about my weight would revisit and somehow send me on a reversal landslide back to my original weight if he went any further. In the end, though, I've decided that with a few exceptions, Thanksgiving never is truly Thanksgiving in ANY family without a little family dysfunction, let alone an officially dysfunctional one like ours. And as I was just writing the other day, I AM proud of us all for managing to figure out how to cope with it better than we used to...
But Bob Dylan saved the day for me. After Katherine gathered her ex-husband and chicks to go to the beach house, and once my dad and Matt convinced Jon it was time for him to go back to his new home so they could hightail it home to Murrieta, my mom and I settled in on the couch in my uncle's empty house to watch No Direction Home, the most recent Dylan documentary. I had been trying to convince my mom since the day before to trek out to Irvine to see the new film inspired by Dylan's music and life, I'm Not There, so I figured it would help her see how interesting another movie about his life would be. When Joan Baez came on, her interest was officially piqued and we got out the paper to find the showtime. I couldn't help chuckling about my mom and her former pretentions to be a hippie when the film made Joan's ardent self-belief look a little silly, but I was mostly proud of us for being so cool as to give the holiday to Grand Master Dylan.
And I am grateful for more than Dylan this year. Even the holiday was an improvement on last year's ridiculous, maudlin display when I rushed through an airport with tears streaming down my face only to learn I'd missed a flight I had lied to everyone to try to catch to see someone who really didn't want to see me, which was followed by an awkwardly silent dinner with Mom as I choked back tears she didn't want to hear about and my brothers and Dad boycotted the meal altogether upstairs, locked in their rooms.
I am grateful for a job that I love, where I work with kids who GET me and need me and laugh with me. I am grateful that it also happens to be the first job that is paying enough for me to live reasonably comfortable, even despite all of the money that is funneled into paying off last year's foolhardy debts and a new car, Sophie, who I also love and appreciate dearly. I am grateful for a year of more great musical feasts thanks to monthly music subscriptions and even finally a renewed concert schedule that went on hiatus for far too long.
Most of all, though, of course, I am grateful for loved ones that make life worth living with their conversation, laughter, shared experiences, and patience.
The Orange by Wendy Cope
At lunchtime I bought a huge orange
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all my jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Taking Time for Myself
I was supposed to run another OCSL tournament this weekend since Sal, the president who got me my job at Godinez and position as OCSL vice president was out of town for the second tournament of the season, but I called Steve on Thursday, my co-vice president and begged for a half-day reprieve so I could go with Mom to visit Jon at his halfway home in Southeast Los Angeles.
I almost surrendered the time for myself and my family (after all, I woke up feeling more nervous than I expected about the prospect of visiting Jon) when Jeanna shoved me in the judges' room and seemed to indicate I was running it on my own. At first I started to call to cancel with Mom, but after I got the first round of ballots off, I realized that there was someone there capable of running it and decided to insist on taking the day that Steve had promised me.
I'm so glad I did. When Jon seemed unwilling to leave with us and uncommunicative, I started to worry as I watched him get understandably edgy when my mom started to tut at him, hoping to guilt him out for not spending time with us after we drove so far to be with him. I sensed he just needed some time to himself (I found out right before we left that my dad came out yesterday to take him to a car show all day long in Los Angeles), so I cut through Mom's stifling to calmly ask him without a sign of pressure in my voice if he thought he'd want to go out for dinner and/or a movie later on if my mom and I first went to kill some time together downtown Los Angeles.
I really needed to get home to grade, but in a split second, I decided my mom would enjoy time with me in town and I needed a break, too, plus I'd still get the brother time I had set out to get, without crowding him out. After getting a half-commitment from Jon, I talked my mom down from being practical and boring (she wanted to go home to get Grandma her groceries and didn't want to waste my gas, thinking Jon wouldn't ever end up wanting to spend time with us anyway). We headed to Westwood after a brief driving tour to satiate our long-held curiosity about the fashion district (somehow didn't seem worth the hassle of parking in the end). Refreshed by the morning victory weighing of -26 pounds, I stayed strong while drooling as I watched Mom eat a cookie ice cream sandwich from Diddy Reese's, compensating with a sugarless green iced tea. Then I lumped my previous reservations and swiped the debit card at Urban Outfitter's for the Charlie Brown Christmas tree I want to set up for the delight of myself and my students in my classroom before walking my mom to the Borders so she could use my teacher discount to buy a friend a Christmas gift...where I caved and finally bought Stephen Colbert's latest literary gem. I pulled out an old Fairmont Christmas present gift certificate and was surprised to find $15 still on it.
We finally made our way back to Jon around 3 and he was eager to come, apologizing and regretful when he found out what we had done without him. We consoled his self-recriminations by promising to drive him to the garment district in the coming weeks, and then headed to the El Monte outdoor shopping mall, which was a perfect example of these little neighborhoods in Southern California that sometimes feel like instant transports to different countries. We soaked up the discount shopping at La Casa Barata (which I at first translated for them as "Cheap House" before agreeing with Mom when she suggested "Discount Store" was a better translation) and other Latino swapmart-type clothing stores before heading to eat dinner, where I treated Mom and Jon since Mom and I both didn't have our cell phones and couldn't call to activate the credit card she had just received in the mail after losing her old one (yes, I blame HER for my absent-mindedness, though she is MUCH less willing to admit that she suffers from the malady).
Everything felt good, even though I have to admit I'm a little too tired today to appreciate how perfectly everything seemed to click. It's starting to dawn on me now, though still fuzzily, as I struggle to keep my eyes open after grading 10 essays while watching a bad movie with Katherine: I'm starting to learn how to draw appropriate boundaries with my work so it doesn't consume me altogether and so I can genuinely enjoy my family, which I am better appreciating in spite of, even because of, our many dysfunctions and differences. Seeing Jonny's new digs finally set my heart at rest, too, which before was relying too much on my sometimes defeatist mother's depictions: yes, the neighborhood doesn't feel as safe as the Stepford tract housing air of Murrieta and his apartment, shared with four other people, isn't as impeccably-designed as my Mom's house, but he's in an environment that has the structure he needs right now, where he can take classes and be with people who aren't going to make him feel so much like a burden or outsider. And Mom is so much more happy now that she isn't dealing with the unreasonable stress of trying to sleep through Jon's midnight rants and dismantling of the house; she doesn't snap when we confront our differences about religion and the role of love as we individually see it. Which brings me to my last source of gratitude tonight: I'm grateful for the love I can show through my teaching and coaching and through trying to help friends when they need it, but I was reminded tonight that my own life and blood needs me probably more than those other people and things...and I actually know how to help them probably better than I know how to teach or befriend, because I have known them since I breathed my first breath... I miss romantic love sometimes, but somehow tonight I'm feeling how much more important is my family's love.
I almost surrendered the time for myself and my family (after all, I woke up feeling more nervous than I expected about the prospect of visiting Jon) when Jeanna shoved me in the judges' room and seemed to indicate I was running it on my own. At first I started to call to cancel with Mom, but after I got the first round of ballots off, I realized that there was someone there capable of running it and decided to insist on taking the day that Steve had promised me.
I'm so glad I did. When Jon seemed unwilling to leave with us and uncommunicative, I started to worry as I watched him get understandably edgy when my mom started to tut at him, hoping to guilt him out for not spending time with us after we drove so far to be with him. I sensed he just needed some time to himself (I found out right before we left that my dad came out yesterday to take him to a car show all day long in Los Angeles), so I cut through Mom's stifling to calmly ask him without a sign of pressure in my voice if he thought he'd want to go out for dinner and/or a movie later on if my mom and I first went to kill some time together downtown Los Angeles.
I really needed to get home to grade, but in a split second, I decided my mom would enjoy time with me in town and I needed a break, too, plus I'd still get the brother time I had set out to get, without crowding him out. After getting a half-commitment from Jon, I talked my mom down from being practical and boring (she wanted to go home to get Grandma her groceries and didn't want to waste my gas, thinking Jon wouldn't ever end up wanting to spend time with us anyway). We headed to Westwood after a brief driving tour to satiate our long-held curiosity about the fashion district (somehow didn't seem worth the hassle of parking in the end). Refreshed by the morning victory weighing of -26 pounds, I stayed strong while drooling as I watched Mom eat a cookie ice cream sandwich from Diddy Reese's, compensating with a sugarless green iced tea. Then I lumped my previous reservations and swiped the debit card at Urban Outfitter's for the Charlie Brown Christmas tree I want to set up for the delight of myself and my students in my classroom before walking my mom to the Borders so she could use my teacher discount to buy a friend a Christmas gift...where I caved and finally bought Stephen Colbert's latest literary gem. I pulled out an old Fairmont Christmas present gift certificate and was surprised to find $15 still on it.
We finally made our way back to Jon around 3 and he was eager to come, apologizing and regretful when he found out what we had done without him. We consoled his self-recriminations by promising to drive him to the garment district in the coming weeks, and then headed to the El Monte outdoor shopping mall, which was a perfect example of these little neighborhoods in Southern California that sometimes feel like instant transports to different countries. We soaked up the discount shopping at La Casa Barata (which I at first translated for them as "Cheap House" before agreeing with Mom when she suggested "Discount Store" was a better translation) and other Latino swapmart-type clothing stores before heading to eat dinner, where I treated Mom and Jon since Mom and I both didn't have our cell phones and couldn't call to activate the credit card she had just received in the mail after losing her old one (yes, I blame HER for my absent-mindedness, though she is MUCH less willing to admit that she suffers from the malady).
Everything felt good, even though I have to admit I'm a little too tired today to appreciate how perfectly everything seemed to click. It's starting to dawn on me now, though still fuzzily, as I struggle to keep my eyes open after grading 10 essays while watching a bad movie with Katherine: I'm starting to learn how to draw appropriate boundaries with my work so it doesn't consume me altogether and so I can genuinely enjoy my family, which I am better appreciating in spite of, even because of, our many dysfunctions and differences. Seeing Jonny's new digs finally set my heart at rest, too, which before was relying too much on my sometimes defeatist mother's depictions: yes, the neighborhood doesn't feel as safe as the Stepford tract housing air of Murrieta and his apartment, shared with four other people, isn't as impeccably-designed as my Mom's house, but he's in an environment that has the structure he needs right now, where he can take classes and be with people who aren't going to make him feel so much like a burden or outsider. And Mom is so much more happy now that she isn't dealing with the unreasonable stress of trying to sleep through Jon's midnight rants and dismantling of the house; she doesn't snap when we confront our differences about religion and the role of love as we individually see it. Which brings me to my last source of gratitude tonight: I'm grateful for the love I can show through my teaching and coaching and through trying to help friends when they need it, but I was reminded tonight that my own life and blood needs me probably more than those other people and things...and I actually know how to help them probably better than I know how to teach or befriend, because I have known them since I breathed my first breath... I miss romantic love sometimes, but somehow tonight I'm feeling how much more important is my family's love.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Valley of Ashes
I've felt odd, driving through the falling ashes and wishing the smell of fires in the air had more to do with the campfires I can't help thinking fondly of than the burning homes of displaced families that they actually represent, but part of me can't help appreciating the almost supernatural effect... Somehow it seems like something that only happens in L.A., belonging in a jaded movie script looking wryly at Hollywood's moral Satanists.
Yes, as you may or may not be able to see, I haven't quite escaped the clutches of the October blues that have haunted me since Chris, who would have turned 31 last Friday, died seven years ago. Unfortunately, I've finally realized that a motivating force for my clockwork depression at this time of year includes its inconvenient timing as the first six-week grading period of every school year, but I really thought I had kicked it this year as I celebrated the twenty-pound mark of my weight loss and laughed through the stress with students who can finally appreciate my sense of humor again. I even almost successfully convinced myself to be grateful that my brand new Sophie Rabbit got hit just after I finally had enough money to actually drive around with insurance again (don't ask...) rather than the disaster that would have ensued if old Gilbert the Golf had been nailed just months before, but I couldn't keep smiling when the bastardly insurance companies refused to grant me the deductible refund I deserve for the other fellow's fault in a collision where he tore out taking an unprotected left in front of me as I was all clear to accelerate through the intersection half a block forward so that I could enter the freeway there at a proper speed.
Anyway, my bitching session has now officially ended and, with that off my chest, it's time to go back to grading... My new full-time lover... I can hear my students groaning in disgust at THAT one...but I'll keep that bad joke to myself so as to remain in comedic graces on their stage.
Yes, as you may or may not be able to see, I haven't quite escaped the clutches of the October blues that have haunted me since Chris, who would have turned 31 last Friday, died seven years ago. Unfortunately, I've finally realized that a motivating force for my clockwork depression at this time of year includes its inconvenient timing as the first six-week grading period of every school year, but I really thought I had kicked it this year as I celebrated the twenty-pound mark of my weight loss and laughed through the stress with students who can finally appreciate my sense of humor again. I even almost successfully convinced myself to be grateful that my brand new Sophie Rabbit got hit just after I finally had enough money to actually drive around with insurance again (don't ask...) rather than the disaster that would have ensued if old Gilbert the Golf had been nailed just months before, but I couldn't keep smiling when the bastardly insurance companies refused to grant me the deductible refund I deserve for the other fellow's fault in a collision where he tore out taking an unprotected left in front of me as I was all clear to accelerate through the intersection half a block forward so that I could enter the freeway there at a proper speed.
Anyway, my bitching session has now officially ended and, with that off my chest, it's time to go back to grading... My new full-time lover... I can hear my students groaning in disgust at THAT one...but I'll keep that bad joke to myself so as to remain in comedic graces on their stage.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
My latest project
I'm exhausted from what has to be on record the most stimulating week of teaching in my life. Here's a snapshot of the latest thing keeping me from updating this as I should. Since my brilliant mom helped me to arrange the visit in conjunction with our class's reading of Elie Wiesel's Night, I will be delivering these introductory remarks in front of the entire school tomorrow during two different assemblies in our school theater. People in the area are welcome to come partake of this unique opportunity: 10-12 at Godinez High School in Santa Ana.
I’m going to keep my introductory remarks brief because time is short and I don’t want to sacrifice a second of our time with Mr. Dzieza this morning. We are truly so lucky to have this opportunity—an opportunity that will most likely not be available to your children, as Mr. Dzieza pointed out to me on the phone. For that, we would like to thank Mr. Dzieza from the bottom of our hearts.
Sol Dzieza was transported from his childhood home in Poland at the age of fourteen and survived six Nazi concentration camps before his liberation at the age of nineteen. He moved from Sweden to America in 1946, where he raised two sons. Mr. Dzieza was recently awarded the George Washington Honor Medal for his help in educating young children. As he speaks with you today, he carries on that important mission. We know that the precious gift he is giving in speaking to you today will affect you in the same way it affected his grandson, who wrote the following in a personal memoir published on the US Holocaust Memorial’s website:
I had always been aware that my grandfather was different from those of my friends, his halting accent, the numbers tattooed on his arm for example. But it wasn't until I was 13, when he thought I was ready, that I truly understood his story.
I thought I knew about the Holocaust. I knew the numbers of those killed: six million Jews; 200,000 Gypsies; hundreds of thousands who were disabled, homosexual, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on.' I tried to comprehend the enormity by comparisons: three-quarters the population of New York, 260 times the population of my hometown, 266,666 times my 6th grade class. But they remained statistics. It wasn't until my grandfather's talks that these cold, neat, ledgers and columns grew faces, families, and lives.
I’m going to keep my introductory remarks brief because time is short and I don’t want to sacrifice a second of our time with Mr. Dzieza this morning. We are truly so lucky to have this opportunity—an opportunity that will most likely not be available to your children, as Mr. Dzieza pointed out to me on the phone. For that, we would like to thank Mr. Dzieza from the bottom of our hearts.
Sol Dzieza was transported from his childhood home in Poland at the age of fourteen and survived six Nazi concentration camps before his liberation at the age of nineteen. He moved from Sweden to America in 1946, where he raised two sons. Mr. Dzieza was recently awarded the George Washington Honor Medal for his help in educating young children. As he speaks with you today, he carries on that important mission. We know that the precious gift he is giving in speaking to you today will affect you in the same way it affected his grandson, who wrote the following in a personal memoir published on the US Holocaust Memorial’s website:
I had always been aware that my grandfather was different from those of my friends, his halting accent, the numbers tattooed on his arm for example. But it wasn't until I was 13, when he thought I was ready, that I truly understood his story.
I thought I knew about the Holocaust. I knew the numbers of those killed: six million Jews; 200,000 Gypsies; hundreds of thousands who were disabled, homosexual, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on.' I tried to comprehend the enormity by comparisons: three-quarters the population of New York, 260 times the population of my hometown, 266,666 times my 6th grade class. But they remained statistics. It wasn't until my grandfather's talks that these cold, neat, ledgers and columns grew faces, families, and lives.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Before and After
Well, I am clearly WAY too hooked in by the Simpsons Movie advertising, because this is now my second post this summer dedicated to it. This comes courtesy Burger King this time. You download a photo of yourself and they animate you as you might appear in Springfield. I plan on using this as my new alter ego with my poor Godinez students this coming year. In fact, you can see me already running with the gimmick at the new blog for my class, http://ghardaenglish.blogspot.com. I have also saved images of the Simpsonized Nicole in front of Springfield Elementary School, inside the Springfield Nuclear Plant, on stage at a Krusty Show, and in Marge's kitchen for use in grammar Power Points where I will need silly sentences and images as examples for teaching students parts of speech, clauses, etc.
Weirdest of all, though: this image generator seems to actually be very sophisticated. With two different photos and the same exact settings, I got two very different creatures. The green-shirted gal comes from a more recent photo of myself. You can alter outfits and hairstyles, but the basic hair color and facial structure is not subject to alteration. That's right-- apparently the animated Nicole of this year is much hotter than the animated Nicole of last year, although I think I appreciate the wardrobe of last year's Nicole Simpson (D'oh!) more. The real-life Nicole has a brand new haircut and has lost 6.5 pounds in the past two weeks, so maybe that has something to do with it. Somehow I doubt it... Get a life, man, as Bart would say.
Another important improvement in my life, besides a new job and the beginnings of a new body is a new car. That's right: Gilbert the Golf finally went to his final resting place and I traded him in for a silver Sophie Rabbit. She's a beauty... most important, she has an iPod station in the center arm rest that charges her while Claire (de Lune) the iPod plays through the CD player. I didn't get to nab a snapshot of dinged up Gilbert or his melting engine before I traded him in, but I'll take a shot of Sophie when I get a chance.
Life is looking up; karma coming back my way... Thank heavens!
Sunday, August 05, 2007
1996 Fortune Cookie
"In telling of Watergate, textbooks blame Richard Nixon, as they should. But they go no deeper. Faced with this undeniable instance of governmental wrongdoing, they manage to retain their uniformly rosy view of government...As Richard Rubenstein has pointed out, 'the problem will not go away with the departure of Richard Nixon,' because it is structural, stemming from the vastly increased power of the federal executive bureaucracy...Since the structural problem in the government has not gone away, it is likely that students will again, in their adult lives, face an out-of-control federal executive pursuing criminal foreign and domestic policies" (Lies My Teacher Told Me, 229).
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Comrade Keller
"I had once believed that we were all masters of our fate-- that we could mould our lives into any form we pleased....I had overcome deafness and blindness sufficiently to be happy, and I supposed that anyone could come out victorious if he threw himself valiantly into life's struggle. But as I went more and more about the country I learned that I had spoken with assurance on a subject I knew little about. I forgot that I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment....Now, however, I learned that the power to rise in the world is not within the reach of everyone." --Helen Keller
For the past two days at speech camp, Sal has assigned my students to a coach who is headed to grad school next year. To my delight, while teaching them the basic components of limited preparation speaking events, he has been indoctrinating my kids with equal parts Marxism and Chicano pride. I was a little unnerved when, as he was explaining how educated and well-spoken his black civil rights law professor was, he stopped, looked at me, and said, "Dude was as white as you," but I restrained the urge to claim the Brown pride of being the (albeit disowned) daughter of an Indian father in order to avoid interrupting him from preaching the truth.
At first part of me worried that his radicalism might prove to be a bit jarring for my well-behaved ninth graders and another part worried that they were wandering too far from the training they needed in the event. But then I looked over at Kim, who had asked to write an original advocacy piece about Latino rights and had been denied the request by Sal with the claim that it was "too controversial" (only because we live, and will be judged by parents living, under the Orange Curtain), who was hanging on to Daniel's every word and sharing her frustrations that her own dad seemed to be ashamed of his own race in what she views as his obvious favoring of his "light-skinned" kids over his browner ones. And then I watched as Sebastian, my statistics nut, took the initiative to cross-check Daniel's argument that segregation still exists and can be documented most obviously in school demographics by searching online to find the percentage of "Hispanics" attending his last school (his findings: 94%). At that point, Aaron explained how he had seen the same thing proving true in his observation of the changing demographics of the passengers on the Fullerton-Santa Ana bus when they crossed the border into Santa Ana for the first time yesterday (I finally decided it's too much of a liability for me to be driving them home in an uninsured car, especially since my "check engine" light went off last Friday as I was fighting the traffic back to my aunt's and I won't have any money in the bank to check it out until the end of September when our first paychecks kick in). Mextli talked about how much her friend regretted being enrolled in the local private school, Mater Dei, feeling like one of the only non-white kids there. Rocio stayed quiet during the short time I observed, but I couldn't help recalling the story she told me last week about how her parents had managed to cross the border illegally or how difficult it had been for her to ask me for lunch money during the first week of camp and how hard it was for me to realize she still doesn't have access to the money she said she would now that I don't have anything left to give when I asked her why she wasn't eating with the other kids yesterday.
To make a long story short, in those brief two minutes, I decided Daniel was giving them the very education James Loewen advocates in the book I picked up to read over the weekend, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. I figured I was pretty edgy and progressive as a literature teacher who is always trying to open up the canon of selected works for reading, but I realized that I missed the boat just last year when I complained my way through teaching the play about Helen Keller, The Miracle Worker. Turns out that after the sister struggled to learn her table manners and show her gratitude to her teacher by spelling "T-E-A-C-H-E-R" into Anne Sullivan's hand, she later reclaimed her necessary wildness to advocate as a radical socialist when she gained a "vision" (har har-- ouch!) of the role that class was playing in the incidences of blindness in the country ("Men who were poor might be blinded in industrial accidents or by inadequate medical care; poor women who became prostitutes faced the additional danger of syphilitic blindness" (21)).
I realize I'm still unwillingly a contributing member to the system of oppression that keeps all of this madness in motion, especially now that I'm a federal employee, but I'm just feeling grateful today that I've broken free of the private school bubble, at least when it comes to the kids that I finally have the credentials to learn with.
For the past two days at speech camp, Sal has assigned my students to a coach who is headed to grad school next year. To my delight, while teaching them the basic components of limited preparation speaking events, he has been indoctrinating my kids with equal parts Marxism and Chicano pride. I was a little unnerved when, as he was explaining how educated and well-spoken his black civil rights law professor was, he stopped, looked at me, and said, "Dude was as white as you," but I restrained the urge to claim the Brown pride of being the (albeit disowned) daughter of an Indian father in order to avoid interrupting him from preaching the truth.
At first part of me worried that his radicalism might prove to be a bit jarring for my well-behaved ninth graders and another part worried that they were wandering too far from the training they needed in the event. But then I looked over at Kim, who had asked to write an original advocacy piece about Latino rights and had been denied the request by Sal with the claim that it was "too controversial" (only because we live, and will be judged by parents living, under the Orange Curtain), who was hanging on to Daniel's every word and sharing her frustrations that her own dad seemed to be ashamed of his own race in what she views as his obvious favoring of his "light-skinned" kids over his browner ones. And then I watched as Sebastian, my statistics nut, took the initiative to cross-check Daniel's argument that segregation still exists and can be documented most obviously in school demographics by searching online to find the percentage of "Hispanics" attending his last school (his findings: 94%). At that point, Aaron explained how he had seen the same thing proving true in his observation of the changing demographics of the passengers on the Fullerton-Santa Ana bus when they crossed the border into Santa Ana for the first time yesterday (I finally decided it's too much of a liability for me to be driving them home in an uninsured car, especially since my "check engine" light went off last Friday as I was fighting the traffic back to my aunt's and I won't have any money in the bank to check it out until the end of September when our first paychecks kick in). Mextli talked about how much her friend regretted being enrolled in the local private school, Mater Dei, feeling like one of the only non-white kids there. Rocio stayed quiet during the short time I observed, but I couldn't help recalling the story she told me last week about how her parents had managed to cross the border illegally or how difficult it had been for her to ask me for lunch money during the first week of camp and how hard it was for me to realize she still doesn't have access to the money she said she would now that I don't have anything left to give when I asked her why she wasn't eating with the other kids yesterday.
To make a long story short, in those brief two minutes, I decided Daniel was giving them the very education James Loewen advocates in the book I picked up to read over the weekend, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. I figured I was pretty edgy and progressive as a literature teacher who is always trying to open up the canon of selected works for reading, but I realized that I missed the boat just last year when I complained my way through teaching the play about Helen Keller, The Miracle Worker. Turns out that after the sister struggled to learn her table manners and show her gratitude to her teacher by spelling "T-E-A-C-H-E-R" into Anne Sullivan's hand, she later reclaimed her necessary wildness to advocate as a radical socialist when she gained a "vision" (har har-- ouch!) of the role that class was playing in the incidences of blindness in the country ("Men who were poor might be blinded in industrial accidents or by inadequate medical care; poor women who became prostitutes faced the additional danger of syphilitic blindness" (21)).
I realize I'm still unwillingly a contributing member to the system of oppression that keeps all of this madness in motion, especially now that I'm a federal employee, but I'm just feeling grateful today that I've broken free of the private school bubble, at least when it comes to the kids that I finally have the credentials to learn with.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Timely Words
"Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others... When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered...We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land." --Robert F. Kennedy
Friday, July 20, 2007
Books not Bombs
I have had a fabulous two weeks of reading alongside working in Utah and helping Sal run the speech camp back here in California. Two books: Barack Obama's Dreams of My Father and a book co-written by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time. Both books reinforced my most core belief system: secular humanism, or the belief that it may just be fine--actually possibly more miraculous and life-affirming-- if the closest thing to divinity we ever experience in this life or the next is the power of human compassion, here on Earth.
Obama's book was written long before he launched his political career, fresh out of law school, and documents his early life. He splits the book into three phases and labels them according to the four geographic centers where he grappled with his racial identity as the son of a black father and white mother: Origins (Hawaii and Indonesia), Chicago, and Kenya. In reading about his years spent between his undergraduate work at Occidental in California and law school helping with a community development social program in Chicago, I was a little nervous that his main goal was to paint a picture of his achievement of bringing religion and liberal social efforts into one by documenting his path to religious conversion. He did manage to achieve the former by taking advantage of the organization and humanitarian elements of the churches in this struggling Chicago neighborhood to help improve the lives of its struggling working-class inhabitants, but he demonstrates marvelous restraint from wearing his religion on his sleeve, managing to avoid alienating readers with ideological rhetoric while still affirming the power of faith in a general, non-specific sense. I was struck primarily by how his own background almost fated him to be the perfect messenger for this kind of balance, as I read about the influences of his Muslim biological father from Kenya, his Buddhist step-dad from Indonesia, his first Jewish supervisor urging him to work with the Christian churches to transform their focus Chicago neighborhood, and his humanist mother from Kansas.
I think the last seems to have had the most influence on him, though. Early in the book, he writes, "My mother's confidence in needlepoint virtues depended on a faith I didn't possess, a faith that she would refuse to describe as religious, that, in fact, her experience told her was sacrilegious: a faith that rational, thoughtful people could shape their own destiny. In a land where fatalism remained a necessary tool for enduring hardship, where ultimate truths were kept separate from day-to-day realities, she was a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal Corps, position-paper liberalism." It is this influence that I hear most prominently in a passage near the end of the book, speaking to his dead father: "You, the son, might have taught your father that this new world that was beckoning all of you involved more than just railroads and indoor toilets and irrigation ditches and gramophones, lifeless instruments that could be absorbed into the old ways. You might have told him that these instruments carried with them a dangerous power, that they demanded a different way of seeing the world. That this power could be absorbed only alongside a faith born out of hardship, a faith that wasn't new, that wasn't black or white or Christian or Muslim but that pulsed in the heart of the first African village and the first Kansas homestead-- a faith in other people." In the name of...HUMANS, amen.
Obama would definitely find a cause for affirming his faith in humanity in the account of Mortenson's work building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan that I read immediately after reading the last lines of Dreams. Greg Mortenson began the project on a very small scale after stumbling into a small village at the foot of K2 when he got lost after finding himself forced to turn back before reaching the top of its peak many years before 9/11.
After he was nursed back to health, he asked the village elder to show him the school and was amazed to find unsupervised students sitting quietly on the ground, diligently studying work given to them by a teacher in a neighboring village who was only able to come and check in with them a few times a week because the pre-Musharraff government had failed to extend its promised funds to build a school and pay the dollar-a-day salary of a permanent teacher. From fulfilling his promise that day to build one school, he has continued building and funding more than twenty schools and women's vocational centers through the years that took us to war with Afghanistan, up until today's current reported resurgence of El Qaeda activity in Pakistan.
Finally, a story of an American HUMANITARIAN effort to gently show communities who are at-risk for breeding terrorists another way, giving students thirsting for an education an option other than the extremist Islamic maddrassas that were otherwise the only choice. Mortenson's story inspired a Taliban contingent in Afghanistan that had at first imprisoned him when rumors began circulating about his efforts to educate girls alongside boys in non-maddrassa schools to not only release him, but to throw him a party in the process, and quietly undercut-- through the power of the story of his work alone-- two fatwas initially issued to expel him from the regions where he was working. As he wisely advises, "If we try to resolve terrorism with military might and nothing else, then we will be no safer than we were before 9/11. If we truly want a legacy of peace for our children, we need to understand that this is a war that will ultimately be won with books, not with bombs."
I still find myself yearning to be doing something large like these men, but this week with Sal has been fantastic. Favorite snapshot of an experience diametrically opposite the one I found at Fairmont:
Me: So, Aaron, when I started calling you to remind you about speech camp, your mom said you were working. What were you working at?
Aaron: Nothing much. My mom just doesn't want me inside watching TV all day.
Sebastian: You have a TV? You're so lucky!
(No response from the car, as if this is the norm.)
Aaron (comforting): Well, we only get a few channels and the cartoon channel comes in fuzzy anyway.
Hurray for kids who don't take life for granted...
Obama's book was written long before he launched his political career, fresh out of law school, and documents his early life. He splits the book into three phases and labels them according to the four geographic centers where he grappled with his racial identity as the son of a black father and white mother: Origins (Hawaii and Indonesia), Chicago, and Kenya. In reading about his years spent between his undergraduate work at Occidental in California and law school helping with a community development social program in Chicago, I was a little nervous that his main goal was to paint a picture of his achievement of bringing religion and liberal social efforts into one by documenting his path to religious conversion. He did manage to achieve the former by taking advantage of the organization and humanitarian elements of the churches in this struggling Chicago neighborhood to help improve the lives of its struggling working-class inhabitants, but he demonstrates marvelous restraint from wearing his religion on his sleeve, managing to avoid alienating readers with ideological rhetoric while still affirming the power of faith in a general, non-specific sense. I was struck primarily by how his own background almost fated him to be the perfect messenger for this kind of balance, as I read about the influences of his Muslim biological father from Kenya, his Buddhist step-dad from Indonesia, his first Jewish supervisor urging him to work with the Christian churches to transform their focus Chicago neighborhood, and his humanist mother from Kansas.
I think the last seems to have had the most influence on him, though. Early in the book, he writes, "My mother's confidence in needlepoint virtues depended on a faith I didn't possess, a faith that she would refuse to describe as religious, that, in fact, her experience told her was sacrilegious: a faith that rational, thoughtful people could shape their own destiny. In a land where fatalism remained a necessary tool for enduring hardship, where ultimate truths were kept separate from day-to-day realities, she was a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal Corps, position-paper liberalism." It is this influence that I hear most prominently in a passage near the end of the book, speaking to his dead father: "You, the son, might have taught your father that this new world that was beckoning all of you involved more than just railroads and indoor toilets and irrigation ditches and gramophones, lifeless instruments that could be absorbed into the old ways. You might have told him that these instruments carried with them a dangerous power, that they demanded a different way of seeing the world. That this power could be absorbed only alongside a faith born out of hardship, a faith that wasn't new, that wasn't black or white or Christian or Muslim but that pulsed in the heart of the first African village and the first Kansas homestead-- a faith in other people." In the name of...HUMANS, amen.
Obama would definitely find a cause for affirming his faith in humanity in the account of Mortenson's work building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan that I read immediately after reading the last lines of Dreams. Greg Mortenson began the project on a very small scale after stumbling into a small village at the foot of K2 when he got lost after finding himself forced to turn back before reaching the top of its peak many years before 9/11.
After he was nursed back to health, he asked the village elder to show him the school and was amazed to find unsupervised students sitting quietly on the ground, diligently studying work given to them by a teacher in a neighboring village who was only able to come and check in with them a few times a week because the pre-Musharraff government had failed to extend its promised funds to build a school and pay the dollar-a-day salary of a permanent teacher. From fulfilling his promise that day to build one school, he has continued building and funding more than twenty schools and women's vocational centers through the years that took us to war with Afghanistan, up until today's current reported resurgence of El Qaeda activity in Pakistan.
Finally, a story of an American HUMANITARIAN effort to gently show communities who are at-risk for breeding terrorists another way, giving students thirsting for an education an option other than the extremist Islamic maddrassas that were otherwise the only choice. Mortenson's story inspired a Taliban contingent in Afghanistan that had at first imprisoned him when rumors began circulating about his efforts to educate girls alongside boys in non-maddrassa schools to not only release him, but to throw him a party in the process, and quietly undercut-- through the power of the story of his work alone-- two fatwas initially issued to expel him from the regions where he was working. As he wisely advises, "If we try to resolve terrorism with military might and nothing else, then we will be no safer than we were before 9/11. If we truly want a legacy of peace for our children, we need to understand that this is a war that will ultimately be won with books, not with bombs."
I still find myself yearning to be doing something large like these men, but this week with Sal has been fantastic. Favorite snapshot of an experience diametrically opposite the one I found at Fairmont:
Me: So, Aaron, when I started calling you to remind you about speech camp, your mom said you were working. What were you working at?
Aaron: Nothing much. My mom just doesn't want me inside watching TV all day.
Sebastian: You have a TV? You're so lucky!
(No response from the car, as if this is the norm.)
Aaron (comforting): Well, we only get a few channels and the cartoon channel comes in fuzzy anyway.
Hurray for kids who don't take life for granted...
Friday, July 13, 2007
Desert Healing
Well, here I am again in Utah, where I swore I'd never return. As I told Becky, the ONLY thing that brings me back to this place is my deep love for the Englands. I started working on Gene's papers after graduating from graduate school six years ago and I'm back for a week to try to get it moving with the sisters again. Then I have to fly back to help Sal run speech and debate camp, but now I'm thinking I'll come back with my last flight credit for ten days between the end of camp and the beginning of Godinez teacher inservices so I can catch the end of Sunstone and work some more on the papers.
As part of many sweet gestures of gratitude that I've been given every day that I've been out here, Becky paid for me to have a full body massage yesterday after she found out that I'd never had a massage. The idea of stripping down for a stranger to put their hands all over my body used to creep me out, but somehow I've overcome some of my body shame and I was ready when she asked me if I would be interested. It was fascinating to see the areas of my body where I have the most tightness. I seem to carry all of my tension in my neck and shoulders, which is why I get a lot of stress headaches. I figured my weight would build tension in my legs and/or back, but she didn't find anything to smooth out there. She had a hard time getting me to relax my arms when she lifted them up, saying they were in a holding pattern, which Becky had just used as a description of my LIFE when I told her I didn't know how to deal with my dad's latest drama.
Well, I have to run now. Time to start helping Becky write an introduction to what is perhaps the greatest piece of controversy among Gene's papers: the letters between himself and Bruce R. McConkie where McConkie raised the threat of a curse on Gene's family if he continued to talk about the concept of eternal progression-- that God's judgment and our progress will never be final. I've felt torn between sadness to see Gene fighting to create dialogue against so much pressure to conform, frustration that he didn't strike out so he could say more without feeling impeded, and relief that I have chosen not to put myself in that position. And then there's a small aching voice of the past that wonders if I'm just a weak coward for not trying to fight from within...
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Only in Los Angeles...
So, inspired by a friend to try to find the unique beauties of Los Angeles, I came across this in the blog of an illustrious los angelino: the Simpsons' Kwik-E-Mart has come to the west coast, complete with Buzz Cola products, Frosted Krusty O's, and a Squishee machine. I think I'm going to have to put this down as a summer must-see...
Saturday, July 07, 2007
So maybe I'm not meant for the stage, but...
every stage needs a good audience. Enjoying a pleasant summer afternoon reading in the garden to kill some time before tonight's concert, I came across this passage in Ann Patchett's Bel Canto: "Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. Don't you think? It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see" (219).What's on the summer slate for this privileged appreciator?
May 29: Arcade Fire @ the Greek Theater with Amy
June 3: Indigo Girls and Thao Nguyen @ Pechanga with Mum (kidding her that, given the audience, we looked like we were there as a couple)
June 16: Lavender Diamond @ the Troubadour with Amy
July 7: The LA Philharmonic accompanies Band of Horses, Andrew Bird, and the Decemberists @ the Hollywood Bowl with Amy
August 23: Daniel Johnston @ the Henry Fonda Theater with me, myself, and I
August 29: Wilco @ the Greek with Amy, Justin, Brandon, Robert, & company
Friday, July 06, 2007
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Dick Tracy, and my OTHER Grandma
Although the finale of my week in San Francisco was greeted with a formal "denunciation" and disownership by her son, my father, the favorite part of my vacation in the city I feel I was destined to, but never will, live was taking a day trip first through the redwood forests of Muir Woods National Park and then down a winding road through northern California vineyards to my paternal grandmother's hometown of Santa Rosa. I hadn't seen Grandma Margaret since I was in high school, probably when I was thirteen or fourteen, but we wrote pretty constantly after my mom's dad died and through the first few years of my college education. Sadly, the last communication I remember having with her was when she sent me a beautiful painting of a seaside town on the edge of an ocean filled with sailboats, on the side of one of which she had painted my name.
I have always felt a special bond to Margaret, even though she has been virtually nonexistent in my life and despite the fact--maybe, perhaps shockingly, because-- she woke up one day in the family mansion she was sharing with her husband and his family in Bombay and decided she was living a life she could no longer tolerate and decided to leave my father to the mercies of a local orphanage at the young age of two so she could return home to northern California. She is a woman who loves art and travel as much as I do. Like me, she has relatives to be proud of like her grandmother, who was among the first graduating class where women were permitted to enroll at Stanford because her father had donated the land that later became the foundations of the school's campus, but she also has less impressive members, like her father who beat her and her sisters until he finally abandoned the family and her ancestors going further back, who were the Hatfields of the famed Hatfield/ McCoy feud. My memories of her one visit to our home as an adolescent were of a woman who spoke intelligently and with strength about things that seemed more interesting than the petty concerns my mother's side of the family seems to focus on.
My latest visit was full of great stories. She had moved into a new home and we first talked about the paintings on her walls-- some hers, some her daughter's (my dad's half-sister from Margaret's second marriage), some her son-in-law's, and some her step-granddaughter's. She then went where I didn't expect her to go-- after telling me her daughter's stepdaughter had just gotten married to an Englishman she met as an art teacher in Portland, she asked me if I was dating. I was a little disappointed-- here was a woman I thought would understand my current disinterest in romance of any kind. I made a comment about how it was my current feeling that a woman needs a man about as much as a fish needs a bicycle without going into the specifics as to why I felt that way and her response was an unheeding, "Well, I suspect we'll receive another wedding invitation soon."
Then the stories started: I told her that I felt torn about whether or not I was interested in tracking down the history of the Beat generation in San Francisco as an English major and asked her if she owned the art gallery next to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's bookshop, City Lights, during any of the years when he and his crowd were there. She said, "Well, I wouldn't say we were friends so much as I was a constant pain in his side. I was constantly telling Larry he needed to keep the door into the alley [the alley which San Francisco has in subsequent times designated as Jack Kerouac Alley] between my shop and his shut, because he always had people hanging out about the shop, and without fail, a few of them would run down that alley headlong and smash their faces right into that open door. Between bleeding faces and the smell of the chickens being brought in by the Chinese restaurants around the corner in Chinatown for cleaning, I was constantly fighting to keep my entrance inviting to my own clientele."
I asked her why my granddad had decided to go back to India around the time when they had my dad and she reminded me that World War II was going on and that Indians were being targeted as potential spies for the Japanese. She told me how the FBI would go through her trashcans looking for evidence in her mail of where Dinshaw might be and she laughed at the thought of my granddad being romantic or smart enough to be a spy. She even moved to Los Angeles at one point, trying to get away from them, and then got so angry one day when she opened up the door to find another agent asking the same old questions on her doorstep. She covered her face with her hand as she chuckled, "It was really awful. He had this get-up on that looked like he was trying to be Dick Tracy and I kept trying to keep myself from laughing until he finally asked me out to dinner and I realized he had developed a bit of a crush on me after watching me and tracking me for so long."
And who would blame her? I only wish I really looked as much like her as my mother says I do...
I have always felt a special bond to Margaret, even though she has been virtually nonexistent in my life and despite the fact--maybe, perhaps shockingly, because-- she woke up one day in the family mansion she was sharing with her husband and his family in Bombay and decided she was living a life she could no longer tolerate and decided to leave my father to the mercies of a local orphanage at the young age of two so she could return home to northern California. She is a woman who loves art and travel as much as I do. Like me, she has relatives to be proud of like her grandmother, who was among the first graduating class where women were permitted to enroll at Stanford because her father had donated the land that later became the foundations of the school's campus, but she also has less impressive members, like her father who beat her and her sisters until he finally abandoned the family and her ancestors going further back, who were the Hatfields of the famed Hatfield/ McCoy feud. My memories of her one visit to our home as an adolescent were of a woman who spoke intelligently and with strength about things that seemed more interesting than the petty concerns my mother's side of the family seems to focus on.
My latest visit was full of great stories. She had moved into a new home and we first talked about the paintings on her walls-- some hers, some her daughter's (my dad's half-sister from Margaret's second marriage), some her son-in-law's, and some her step-granddaughter's. She then went where I didn't expect her to go-- after telling me her daughter's stepdaughter had just gotten married to an Englishman she met as an art teacher in Portland, she asked me if I was dating. I was a little disappointed-- here was a woman I thought would understand my current disinterest in romance of any kind. I made a comment about how it was my current feeling that a woman needs a man about as much as a fish needs a bicycle without going into the specifics as to why I felt that way and her response was an unheeding, "Well, I suspect we'll receive another wedding invitation soon."
Then the stories started: I told her that I felt torn about whether or not I was interested in tracking down the history of the Beat generation in San Francisco as an English major and asked her if she owned the art gallery next to Lawrence Ferlinghetti's bookshop, City Lights, during any of the years when he and his crowd were there. She said, "Well, I wouldn't say we were friends so much as I was a constant pain in his side. I was constantly telling Larry he needed to keep the door into the alley [the alley which San Francisco has in subsequent times designated as Jack Kerouac Alley] between my shop and his shut, because he always had people hanging out about the shop, and without fail, a few of them would run down that alley headlong and smash their faces right into that open door. Between bleeding faces and the smell of the chickens being brought in by the Chinese restaurants around the corner in Chinatown for cleaning, I was constantly fighting to keep my entrance inviting to my own clientele."
I asked her why my granddad had decided to go back to India around the time when they had my dad and she reminded me that World War II was going on and that Indians were being targeted as potential spies for the Japanese. She told me how the FBI would go through her trashcans looking for evidence in her mail of where Dinshaw might be and she laughed at the thought of my granddad being romantic or smart enough to be a spy. She even moved to Los Angeles at one point, trying to get away from them, and then got so angry one day when she opened up the door to find another agent asking the same old questions on her doorstep. She covered her face with her hand as she chuckled, "It was really awful. He had this get-up on that looked like he was trying to be Dick Tracy and I kept trying to keep myself from laughing until he finally asked me out to dinner and I realized he had developed a bit of a crush on me after watching me and tracking me for so long."
And who would blame her? I only wish I really looked as much like her as my mother says I do...
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Night Vision
I woke up this morning feeling full of life's grace. What the hell does that mean? I really don't know, but somehow I felt very much at peace. Last night I was overwhelmed, in a good way, by my first meeting with students and faculty at Godinez High School. Despite the fact that we only have about 800 students enrolled in only the ninth and tenth grades, both sides of our gym bleachers were packed with parents and students... so much so that the faculty sitting in the principal-dubbed "penalty box" had to stand up to make more room for parents who never seemed to stop filing in. My memories of feeling uneasy when my child psychology professor at Chapman told us that a contributing factor to the generalization that Latino students struggle more academically than any other ethnic group in the United States was the lack of parental involvement were at the forefront of my mind as I witnessed her theory's defeat. And when one of our school counselors started translating everything that our principal said for the sake of Spanish-speaking parents, I realized that disengaged parents may plague some schools with large Latino populations, but was happy to see that there are things we can do to make sure that doesn't have to be an accepted reality.
As Sal and I began to recruit for speech and debate after the principal finished his opening remarks, I could not believe the level of enthusiasm. Where I only had three interested students at Fairmont last year (and granted, we had much less time and opportunity to recruit, coming in last-minute and with no guidance as I did), I came home last night with the contact information for 32 interested students. Sal told me not to be disappointed when only half of the students followed through and only half of that half were competitive (his first group five years ago had only nine students), and I'm still preparing myself for the worst, but as I called to inform families of our first meeting on Thursday, I got strong commitments from 20 out of 32, and the remaining 12 include one half-committed student who promised to give me one last meeting (where I'm confident Sal and I can drive it home as the most important thing they can do at Godinez) and 11 families that I just haven't yet managed to catch anywhere but on voicemail. And yes, I'm sure that it helped to have Sal, a Spanish-speaking city councilman who coaches the largest and most successful team in Southern California at my elbow, but he left after only 14 students had signed up and 17 more filed by in the next half hour or so. But it's because I have Sal in his current evolved state that I expect a much bigger running start than he himself had a few years ago.
Anyway, I woke up this morning at an early 6:00 and felt like jumping out of bed. I texted Sal some ideas for maintaining the enthusiasm, which culminated in this evening's phone calls for a Thursday meeting before I leave town for a week in San Francisco followed by a week in Utah, and cooked a big batch of my feta eggs for myself and anyone else who wandered down-- Jacob and Fenn as they got ready for their summer landscaping jobs with Uncle Dave, Katherine as she prepared for her summer Camp DaVinci, Hannah and Bronte as they enjoyed their lazy free summer mornings.
I then realized that that only leaves me today and tomorrow to try to take the time for the Museum of Tolerance, which I had decided I wanted to revisit for the first time since high school when I realized I will be teaching Eli Wiesel's Night first thing with my new students.
The last time I went to complement my studies of the holocaust as a junior in high school, the museum was experiencing a surge of popularity as a result of a special exhibit it had installed in its tolerance portion about the Rodney King beatings and riots. It was strange to see how much it had changed. Pictures of the smoking twin towers were the first sight that greeted me and the Rodney King materials had been replaced by a "Tolerance Diner" (an unclear allusion to the sit-ins?) where you view videos on your jukebox about prejudices we harbor about policemen who are too quick to shoot dangerous victims. I was touched to tears by the Civil Rights video that was there the last time I visited, almost sobbing as pictures of the four little girls who were killed in the Birmingham churches scrolled by, juxtaposed with images of their mothers, swooning and wailing at the graves of their little ones, as if they hoped they were only sleepwalking through a nightmare. They did a nice job of timing the plunging of my heart into the depths of despair right before sending it soaring back up on wings of hope by showing images of Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking, but of course even his words of courage and encouragement are always tinged bittersweetly when you remember his ultimate fate.
At this point, it was strange, because I was taking more time than the group I entered with, so I watched a film called "In Our Time" about the continued struggle with genocide in places like Rwanda and took the tour of the holocaust portion of the museum all alone. It was so odd to experience this vicarious experience they set up at the museum-- walking through the streets of Berlin in the years leading up to the Nazi occupation, overhearing conversations about the growing threat of Hitler's regime in an outdoor cafe, choosing between the entrances marked "Able-bodied" and "Children and Others" at the gates of a concentration camp, viewing films and listening to the narratives of holocaust victims in a room shaped like the ovens-- alone. Because it seems like the thing that often strikes me most when studying the holocaust is how it is the stories of the families struggling to stay together and of people reaching out to help others that make studying it somehow bearable, though still intolerable and horrifying. I kept expecting to feel really sad to find myself facing this all alone, but there was something about the quiet and the time for uninterrupted introspection that made the entire tour almost holy, if only I still believed in a god. As I listened to a woman talk about watching in horror as Nazis threw babies from a hospital window into a train car, I felt simultaneously hopeless and yet grateful for the chance to face the harshness of life at its extreme, alone. And Eli's words came to me there, the ones that I underlined while reading them last week: "I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy."
Not that I can even begin to comprehend the truth that concentration camp victims faced (and face)-- in fact, when my friend asks me if I think my Latino students will even begin to comprehend any of the emotion Wiesel is exploring in the book they are required to read, I can only say no, but can anyone, really? And I know it sounds glib, trite, and overused for me to say this, but I guess that's why we keep studying it; so we can make sure we won't have to face it ourselves. So we can become more actively engaged in making sure no one has to face it, something we can't currently claim to have accomplished. And it's that last fact that makes me start to feel this morning's peace slip from my grasp. Ever since I watched, of all things, The Constant Gardener, I can't seem to find the comfort I once found in pursuing teaching as my life's calling. It didn't help that I watched Hotel Rwanda and The Last King of Scotland soon after and in the depths of my worst teaching experience so far. There are so many more important, and more practical, things to be done, yet I feel so unfit and unqualified to do them as a spoiled academic white person.
"There is so much to be done, there is so much that can be done. One person-- a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, a Martin Luther King Jr.-- one person of integrity can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.... Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately." --Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1986
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
My New Favorite Show
I want to have their robot babies... before I'm forced to wake up from that dream and remember that I'm dead. Does anyone else hear the influence of Radiohead's paranoid android? Or is that a duh statement?
Friday, June 15, 2007
Nick Hornby on Nick Drake
I only have a lot invested in books, but I got my whole life invested in music. I thought I couldn't go wrong with Nick Drake, especially in a room full of people who've got the blues. If you haven't heard him...man, it's like he boiled down all the melancholy in the world, all the bruises and all the fucked-up dreams you've let go, and poured the essence into a little tiny bottle and corked it up. And when he starts to play and sing, he takes the cork out, and you can smell it. You're pinned into your seat, as if it's a wall of noise, but it's not-- it's still, and quiet, and you don't want to breathe in case you frighten it away. (A Long Way Down 194)
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Hornby on Heartache
I don't know you. The only thing I know about you is, you're reading this. I don't know whether you're happy or not. I don't know whether you're young or not. I sort of hope you're young and sad. If you're old and happy, I can imagine that you'll maybe smile to yourself when you hear me going, He broke my heart. You'll remember someone who broke your heart and you'll think to yourself, Oh, yes, I can remember how that feels. But you can't, you smug old git. Oh, you might remember feeling sort of pleasantly sad. You might remember listening to music and eating chocolates in your room, or walking along the Embankment on your own, wrapped up in a winter coat and feeling lonely and brave. But can you remember how with every mouthful of food it felt like you were biting into your own stomach? Can you remember the taste of red wine as it came back up and into the toilet bowl? Can you remember dreaming every night that you were still together, that he was talking to you gently and touching you, so that every morning when you woke up you had to go through it all over again? Can you remember standing too close to the edge of an Underground platform? No? Well, fucking shut up, then. Stick your smile up your saggy old arse. (A Long Way Down 44)
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Watch And Be Amazed
When I used to nanny the kids in a family that lived up the street from us when I was in high school, the youngest kids, Eden and Hunter, would watch Blue's Clues obsessively. Every time Steve came on the screen, I would squeal, "He is SO cute. He's my boyfriend!" and the older siblings, Aenon and Emma, would groan. Well, it turns out getting busted for pot, if that was in fact what robbed me of watching him on Nickelodeon as Emma gleefully proclaimed, was the best thing that ever happened to him...and me.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Teaching Grandma Roene how "it's hard out here for a pimp"
Growing up Mormon, I wouldn't dream of watching an R-rated movie by MYSELF, let alone an R-rated movie about a pimp-turned-gangster rap star with my GRANDMA. But today, in the process of performing the proper duties of a granddaughter as my grandma's caretaker following cataract surgery, I somehow lost my mind.
When I first got home from my outpatient Granny pick-up, I confronted the prospect of spending the hours running from 9:30 until 1:20, when we would drive her to her opthamologist for her follow-up check-up, with a woman I can usually only withstand for ten minutes. I patiently endured as much as I could of an hour of the old biddies on The View yelling at each other about Paris Hilton after Barbara Walters giddily shared the news of her "exclusive" phone interview with the convict who, with the aid of a spiritual advisor during these long nine days (with only one day off) in prison, has found God and wants to sell dollhouses with her name on them for some good cause or other. After they managed to make Seth Green talking about the brilliant Robot Chicken look boring, though, I knew I needed to get out, so I asked Grandma if she wanted me to try to find the bakery her friends recommended for good scones to bring her one of her favorite English treats. Blasting my music (as much as my gentle indie music can be "blasted") down Brea Blvd., I managed to recover my good granddaughterly compassion by the time I returned about fifteen to twenty minutes later.
That's when Grandma suggested we start watching the first of her three latest rentals from Netflix, handselected by my Aunt Katherine. Looking at the choices, I burst out laughing when I discovered that my aunt had chosen Hustle & Flow. I openly admitted that it was a ridiculous selection, but also conceded that I had been wanting to see it. Still, I maintained my sanity and opted for The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. Despite a description that included an intriguing allusion to St. Francis of Assissi and its setting in the city I have selected as the destination for my fourth of July holiday, we quickly lost interest as it became apparent that it was a documentary about a crazy hippie who feeds and names a flock of the wild offspring of some escaped domestic pet parrots in San Francisco. As he rambled on about Mingus, a parrot he originally brought into his home to tend after it broke its leg that later refused to leave, my grandma asked me when the story was going to start for the second time. I tried to explain the concept of documentary plots once more, but the look on her uncomprehending face convinced me my battle was a futile one, so I finally asked her if we should just turn it off. The relief on her face as she snatched up the remote was the only answer I needed.
I struggled to make small talk, avoiding the third movie about Russian ballet as long as I could, but when Grandma started getting after me again for not going to church, my rebellion kicked in. In some deranged corner of my brain, I decided the best way to demonstrate my long-suffering kindness was to avoid pointing out that she hasn't partaken of the Sacrament since I can remember either in favor of satisfying my curiosity about Hustle & Flow. The tables had finally turned. Now it was Grandma's turn to pretend to be entertained by D Jay and his harem.
She did a pretty good job of playing it cool. She only made one comment after D Jay dropped a few F bombs: "Do you think people understand what that word even means? I looked it up once in that dictionary of ours that is so big that it requires a stand whenever you use it, and I couldn't find it. Do you know what it means?"
"Haha, I've never thought to look."
Poor Grandma, my grandma-- who always knows she can get her sour granddaughter to stop scowling at her religious diatribes and impertinent questions about one's love life by signaling her current, though probably short-lived political alliance with these words (and the question and its follow-up exclamation never varies): "What do you think about W.? I can't BELIEVE what he's done to this country!" She demonstrated as much hip tolerance as she could, but when one of the striptease dancers at D Jay's wife's joint of employment performed some kind of acrobatics with her ass that made it shudder and quake inhumanly, she quietly said she thought she better try to grab some rest before her second appointment.
I admit: for a minute, I thought about apologizing and turning it off. But truth be told, I knew I'd feel like a total poseur if I ever walked up to a checkout line with the film in my hand, so I decided I better take advantage of Katherine's brazen audacity and kept watching.
An hour later and halfway into the film, I realized it was time to wake Grandma up for her appointment. On the way home, Grandma politely asked me how the movie was. I explained how much I was enjoying it and in summarizing my perception of where it was probably headed, I predicted D Jay would be a hit. "He hasn't made it big yet, but I think he's about to."
"Well, good. We've given them just about the right amount of time to make it, so let's go home and see how he's doing."
I suggested I should take it home to finish it and mail it that evening, but not wanting me to leave yet, Grandma insisted I watch it at her house. But that's where her tolerance ended.
"What does that (that meaning the swearing she had just inhaled audibly and indignantly about) do for you, Nicole?"
"It doesn't do anything for me. Not the swearing, anyway. I'm just watching it because I'm interested in the story."
"Is there a story? I hadn't noticed."
My turn to be indignant: "That's not fair. You didn't even watch the first half of the story, Grandma. You were sleeping in the other room. You have to at least watch it before you dismiss it as having no plot."
And then the war was on. I should have just turned it off, especially since I had to stop or rewind it every time my Aunt Lisa came in and looked at me with a "I-can't-BELIEVE-you're really-watching-this-with-Roene" look which I pretended not to notice before Grandma started talking to her loudly about anything she could think of to block out the sounds she didn't want to hear. And it didn't help me feel too victorious in my cultural conquest when Lisa always seemed to walk in during the recording session scenes that are clearly supposed to inspire club-style swaying in the audience, making me keenly aware that even this nerdy white-girl English teacher wasn't cool enough to watch this movie, let alone her granny who, I had noticed earlier that morning, had scrawled the title of a newspaper article she found last year on a piece of paper and affixed to her fridge: "The Unraveling of Society: No More Manners or Etiquette!!"
When the movie was finally over and as I drove home after struggling to make small talk with Grandma before excusing myself so I could get home to work some more on the finishing paperwork for my teaching credential, I started laughing so hard I couldn't stop. I suddenly remembered something the nurse had said to my grandma after I thanked her following her explanation of post-operational procedures: "She's a nice Nicole. Not like some other girls by that name who are in the newspaper these days."
My response? "Maybe that's because it's only my middle name. My first name is Roene, too."
When I first got home from my outpatient Granny pick-up, I confronted the prospect of spending the hours running from 9:30 until 1:20, when we would drive her to her opthamologist for her follow-up check-up, with a woman I can usually only withstand for ten minutes. I patiently endured as much as I could of an hour of the old biddies on The View yelling at each other about Paris Hilton after Barbara Walters giddily shared the news of her "exclusive" phone interview with the convict who, with the aid of a spiritual advisor during these long nine days (with only one day off) in prison, has found God and wants to sell dollhouses with her name on them for some good cause or other. After they managed to make Seth Green talking about the brilliant Robot Chicken look boring, though, I knew I needed to get out, so I asked Grandma if she wanted me to try to find the bakery her friends recommended for good scones to bring her one of her favorite English treats. Blasting my music (as much as my gentle indie music can be "blasted") down Brea Blvd., I managed to recover my good granddaughterly compassion by the time I returned about fifteen to twenty minutes later.
That's when Grandma suggested we start watching the first of her three latest rentals from Netflix, handselected by my Aunt Katherine. Looking at the choices, I burst out laughing when I discovered that my aunt had chosen Hustle & Flow. I openly admitted that it was a ridiculous selection, but also conceded that I had been wanting to see it. Still, I maintained my sanity and opted for The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. Despite a description that included an intriguing allusion to St. Francis of Assissi and its setting in the city I have selected as the destination for my fourth of July holiday, we quickly lost interest as it became apparent that it was a documentary about a crazy hippie who feeds and names a flock of the wild offspring of some escaped domestic pet parrots in San Francisco. As he rambled on about Mingus, a parrot he originally brought into his home to tend after it broke its leg that later refused to leave, my grandma asked me when the story was going to start for the second time. I tried to explain the concept of documentary plots once more, but the look on her uncomprehending face convinced me my battle was a futile one, so I finally asked her if we should just turn it off. The relief on her face as she snatched up the remote was the only answer I needed.
I struggled to make small talk, avoiding the third movie about Russian ballet as long as I could, but when Grandma started getting after me again for not going to church, my rebellion kicked in. In some deranged corner of my brain, I decided the best way to demonstrate my long-suffering kindness was to avoid pointing out that she hasn't partaken of the Sacrament since I can remember either in favor of satisfying my curiosity about Hustle & Flow. The tables had finally turned. Now it was Grandma's turn to pretend to be entertained by D Jay and his harem.
She did a pretty good job of playing it cool. She only made one comment after D Jay dropped a few F bombs: "Do you think people understand what that word even means? I looked it up once in that dictionary of ours that is so big that it requires a stand whenever you use it, and I couldn't find it. Do you know what it means?"
"Haha, I've never thought to look."
Poor Grandma, my grandma-- who always knows she can get her sour granddaughter to stop scowling at her religious diatribes and impertinent questions about one's love life by signaling her current, though probably short-lived political alliance with these words (and the question and its follow-up exclamation never varies): "What do you think about W.? I can't BELIEVE what he's done to this country!" She demonstrated as much hip tolerance as she could, but when one of the striptease dancers at D Jay's wife's joint of employment performed some kind of acrobatics with her ass that made it shudder and quake inhumanly, she quietly said she thought she better try to grab some rest before her second appointment.
I admit: for a minute, I thought about apologizing and turning it off. But truth be told, I knew I'd feel like a total poseur if I ever walked up to a checkout line with the film in my hand, so I decided I better take advantage of Katherine's brazen audacity and kept watching.
An hour later and halfway into the film, I realized it was time to wake Grandma up for her appointment. On the way home, Grandma politely asked me how the movie was. I explained how much I was enjoying it and in summarizing my perception of where it was probably headed, I predicted D Jay would be a hit. "He hasn't made it big yet, but I think he's about to."
"Well, good. We've given them just about the right amount of time to make it, so let's go home and see how he's doing."
I suggested I should take it home to finish it and mail it that evening, but not wanting me to leave yet, Grandma insisted I watch it at her house. But that's where her tolerance ended.
"What does that (that meaning the swearing she had just inhaled audibly and indignantly about) do for you, Nicole?"
"It doesn't do anything for me. Not the swearing, anyway. I'm just watching it because I'm interested in the story."
"Is there a story? I hadn't noticed."
My turn to be indignant: "That's not fair. You didn't even watch the first half of the story, Grandma. You were sleeping in the other room. You have to at least watch it before you dismiss it as having no plot."
And then the war was on. I should have just turned it off, especially since I had to stop or rewind it every time my Aunt Lisa came in and looked at me with a "I-can't-BELIEVE-you're really-watching-this-with-Roene" look which I pretended not to notice before Grandma started talking to her loudly about anything she could think of to block out the sounds she didn't want to hear. And it didn't help me feel too victorious in my cultural conquest when Lisa always seemed to walk in during the recording session scenes that are clearly supposed to inspire club-style swaying in the audience, making me keenly aware that even this nerdy white-girl English teacher wasn't cool enough to watch this movie, let alone her granny who, I had noticed earlier that morning, had scrawled the title of a newspaper article she found last year on a piece of paper and affixed to her fridge: "The Unraveling of Society: No More Manners or Etiquette!!"
When the movie was finally over and as I drove home after struggling to make small talk with Grandma before excusing myself so I could get home to work some more on the finishing paperwork for my teaching credential, I started laughing so hard I couldn't stop. I suddenly remembered something the nurse had said to my grandma after I thanked her following her explanation of post-operational procedures: "She's a nice Nicole. Not like some other girls by that name who are in the newspaper these days."
My response? "Maybe that's because it's only my middle name. My first name is Roene, too."
Friday, June 08, 2007
Something I Can Get Behind
I've been feeling a bit without anchor these days. As a result, I've been looking to belief systems I thought I left behind long ago and still think I may have to keep marching forward beyond, but THIS is something I can get behind...
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
A Package from the Little Sis of Rufus and Martha
Right before leaving for a birthday weekend with the parents in Murrieta on Friday, I stepped out on the front porch to find my second birthday present (the first being a ticket to see the Arcade Fire live at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles from a friend who knows me well enough to give me the best birthday present I've ever gotten) hand-addressed by the little sister of two of my favorite musicians.
Yep, in the process of researching to answer my questions about Rufus Wainwright's latest musical developments, I found out that he was touring with yet another talented Wainwright, Miss Lucy Wainwright Roche. The last time I found a sibling connection to Rufus in Martha, I found another favorite artist, so I eagerly checked out Lucy's myspace and fell in love with the tracks she had posted there. As the weeks passed and there still wasn't any sign of the promised iTunes releases, I decided to return to her myspace, where I found an announcement that you could order her EP using paypal. So, I eagerly placed my order.
I don't know if the handwriting on the envelope really matches the handwriting on the CD or if the handwriting on the CD is Lucy herself or just a producer's, but I'm choosing to believe, and getting far too excited about it (can you see the sign of my overeager unwrapping in the gash that runs from Lucy's Brooklyn zipcode down the front?), that Lucy handwrote my name and address, gratified to find an early fan on the other coast. What an indie wannabe...
Yep, in the process of researching to answer my questions about Rufus Wainwright's latest musical developments, I found out that he was touring with yet another talented Wainwright, Miss Lucy Wainwright Roche. The last time I found a sibling connection to Rufus in Martha, I found another favorite artist, so I eagerly checked out Lucy's myspace and fell in love with the tracks she had posted there. As the weeks passed and there still wasn't any sign of the promised iTunes releases, I decided to return to her myspace, where I found an announcement that you could order her EP using paypal. So, I eagerly placed my order.
I don't know if the handwriting on the envelope really matches the handwriting on the CD or if the handwriting on the CD is Lucy herself or just a producer's, but I'm choosing to believe, and getting far too excited about it (can you see the sign of my overeager unwrapping in the gash that runs from Lucy's Brooklyn zipcode down the front?), that Lucy handwrote my name and address, gratified to find an early fan on the other coast. What an indie wannabe...
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Recall: No longer Alaska-bound...
Hi again,
Not thirty minutes after I proclaimed my news in an effort to bolster my spirits and calm my fears about my new Alaska adventure, I finally heard back from a school in Santa Ana offering me a position teaching at their school. I began pursuing this position when a Santa Ana city councilman who also coaches southern California's largest speech and debate team at Fullerton Union High School asked me to help him start a new program at this new high school in Santa Ana, wanting to change the lives of Latino youth in this community and the negative perception of Santa Ana schools in general. It sounds like a tall order, but anyone who knows Sal Tinajero personally, knows he can do it if anyone can. And I'm honored that he wants me to help him do it. (And for you Fullerton folk, don't worry. Sal isn't abandoning FUHS; we will be working as partner campuses).
When I didn't hear back from the school last Thursday, I assumed the rumors that they would need to fill the positions with teachers who had been displaced from other schools in the district were true and proceeded with my Alaska plans, hoping to find a position long-distance with Sal's help as new grade levels opened up next year (the school is starting out with only freshmen and sophomores this year, slowly phasing in more classes until the entering sophomores graduate as seniors in 2010). Godinez High School will begin its first year of operation this coming fall and I will work in a small English department comprised of five English teachers to get things started for the entering freshmen and sophomores. Working in a small department at a brand new school offers me unique opportunities to provide input in curriculum decisions. I'll also probably have more chances to use my Spanish minor here than in a Yupik village!
Can you hear me trying to convince myself that this is the better option? Needless to say, I'm still coming down from yesterday's romantic projections of my Alaska future, but the practical voices of my mother and pragmatic friends and family have convinced me that I have more of a future here...and that running away from our woes isn't really possible, not even in the wilds of Alaska, since, as a wise person once said, "Wherever you go, there you are." So, I'm sending this more than anything to prevent the pain of more incoming congratulatory remarks on an adventure that I've decided to save for summer vacations. Go ahead, say it. It's the big elephant in the room: SELL-OUT! Here are some previews of the landscape, wildlife, and adventures I will continue to find here.
Still begrudgingly,
Your California Girl
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
An announcement
Dear Friends,
As some of you know, I am moving on from my brief stint in California, where I have finally finished up coursework to attain my California teaching credential. So, where will life take me next? I have been employed by the Bering Strait School District in Alaska! I will be the only 6-12 English teacher in a school in Elim, teaching approximately 85 Yupik Indians. I'm already finding a lot of healthy distraction from current woes and worries by working with the social studies teacher there to create a cross-curricular unit on the Iditarod, which passes through my future village just days before the mushers cross the finishing line in Nome, the nearest "big city" (population 3000), seventy miles north of Elim. My future colleagues tell me there is plenty to keep me occupied in Elim, though, from salmon and crab fishing, to hiking to the hot springs ten miles away.
Anyone who has had to listen to me moan and groan about this year's dramas and heartaches knows that this is just the change I'm needing. In the meantime, here are some sneak previews of how life will look for me next year, courtesy some photos taken by the kindergarten teacher from my school.So, no, I haven't lost my mind entirely...not yet. But yes, I will need to hear from you a little more regularly to keep me from falling full-fledge into insanity! :) I will be leaving in time to arrive in Elim by the 8th of August, stopping over in Anchorage for a day or two to get outfitted in my snow gear and to try to stock up on as much food as possible before I have to start getting it shipped to "the bush." Wish me luck! I know it's not going to be the romantic tale of discovery and enchantment I'm sometimes tempted to weave, but I'm not cutting myself off to the possibility of a little magic either! I can't wait to tell you all about it.
Your Arctic Monkey,
Nicole
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Broke, but Happy, Happy, Happy
I don't have a cent to my name, but I haven't been this happy in a long time. Nothing extraordinary has happened and this feeling hasn't come suddenly-- instead I have found healing with the passage of time and a growing awareness of the things that remain in spite of recent losses. The people who love me who surround me have gently reached out and little words and gestures have accumulated to remind me that I am worth something more than I sometimes feel.
Today I helped my aunt put the finishing touches on a beautiful mural on the wall of the elementary school where I attended kindergarten, third, fourth, and fifth grade. The first year spent there was time spent at Grandma's while we found a house in Laguna Niguel; the second, third, and fourth years were years of heartache, when we moved back to Grandma's for the sake of Chris's cancer treatments. I learned to read in the third grade there; books were the first thing I found to solace my anxious heart.
I am grateful. For art, friends, laughter, a fulfilling job... so many things.
Today I helped my aunt put the finishing touches on a beautiful mural on the wall of the elementary school where I attended kindergarten, third, fourth, and fifth grade. The first year spent there was time spent at Grandma's while we found a house in Laguna Niguel; the second, third, and fourth years were years of heartache, when we moved back to Grandma's for the sake of Chris's cancer treatments. I learned to read in the third grade there; books were the first thing I found to solace my anxious heart.
I am grateful. For art, friends, laughter, a fulfilling job... so many things.
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