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

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?

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)

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)

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.

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."

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...

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...