30 August, 2010
28 August, 2010
This song is dedicated to Karen B. Hunter, Nov. 23, 1951 - Sept. 2, 2005
Rogers and Hart, "I could write a book."
If they asked me, I could write a book
about the way you walk and whisper and look.
I could write a preface on how we met
so the world would never forget.
And the simple secret of the plot
is just to tell them that I love you a lot.
Then the world discovers as my book ends
how to make two lovers a friends.
If they asked me, I could write a book
about the way you walk and whisper and look.
I could write a preface on how we met
so the world would never forget.
And the simple secret of the plot
is just to tell them that I love you a lot.
Then the world discovers as my book ends
how to make two lovers a friends.
18 August, 2010
Grynberg has a note
Dear Teacher, Friend, Relative, Larry and Bernie,
Wednesday, 18 August 2010 at 08:13
After I came home from last night's Yankees game (they won), I found I couldn't sleep a wink. This happened the night before, too, but I was sure the game would wear me out. It didn't. I got a headache listening to a bunch of wise-guys behind me trying to predict the Yankees team for next year and a bunch of reckless 30 somethings drinking beer and making inside jokes loudly and nearly pissing themselves. On the two hour ride home (the "N" is local after 10pm.) I was able to "blitz out" a little. God bless Mr. Bloomberg. Now I have so many more chances to be mugged and assaulted by homeless people who get on at stations like "City Hall." Why we are stopping in non-residential neighborhoods and going under the fetid tunnel to do it, I don't know. I thought you saved energy when you went directly from point to point, not stopped and started. Fortunately, there were lots of people on my train discussing sales loudly and keeping their children under the age of one up late on the ride home from grandma. The kinds of noises babies can make never cease to amaze me. This one sounded like an electric toothbrush running backwards. My poor mother kept me off the subways until I was 7 so that I might have normal hearing. Alas, it was all for nought.
There doesn't seem to be a week in my life in which there is not some major catastrophe about to befall me or my friends. This summer brought eviction notices (to friends), the threat of jail for missing jury duty too many times (friends), and the tenderhooks which come from caring for a cat who is sensitive to all kinds of stress and who resists by not eating. (Friend's cat. Larry and Bernie eat.) So, even when you jump away to the Church of Overpaid Athletes and surround yourself in the photos and memories of successes which make your parents, uncles -- all of your forebears -- dreamy-eyed, you can't really escape the tension. Then, of course, I forgot that I moved my medication schedule way up, so that it starts at 10pm. Completely impractical, but some of this tension contributed to this foolish decision. So, just as the game ended, the withdrawal started to kick in. The buzzing in the ears. The inability to complete a thought. The rage at my own stupidity. And for some reason, I get very thirsty.
I got a real deal on a huge bottle of water for one dollar.
But, then my friend wanted to explore for a while and my mind was turning into rabbit food, my feet beginning to swell and my back bend toward the ground. For some reason, I think people can see these symptoms, but since I'm already so short, have huge feet and bad posture, I guess it's only a matter of degrees. I had to insist we go home. Then I had to remember which train to take -- which stairs to go up or down on. There were a lot of MTA people in the station telling us what we already knew. I thought I heard the MTA person tell my friend to just go upstairs and take the four. I got confused and angry and my friend, rightly told me to back off. When we finally reached the train, our place in Yankees mythology now torn away from us, the grimness set back in. Medicine had to be got at the pharmacy. Inadequacies of the Vet bothered my friend and this brought back memories of the loss of my first godson-cat. An afternoon in which he was screaming for attention and it was hard to get it. I wasn't there because I was somewhere with Karen. If I'd've been there I could've kicked up a scene. I'm good at that. That was my job. Instead, my friend was trying to bridge the line between Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi Driver that is the Animal Medical Center and my godson cat collapsed in the process. We lost him the next morning.
I went home angry at myself, my friend, at the doctors and ugly with the feeling that I had let down my dearest friend -- and he was. My own cat Fred, I fear I over-reacted to so many times that it had much the same effect. I am much calmer with Larry and Bernie but they are brimming with health and stamina and curiosity. Where and who I will be when they are frail and desperate I don't know. I promise them the world, but I mean the Disney one. The real one is the color of breath on a late night in the subway. A faint grey, tinged with sweat and impropriety. After all, who cares what happens to the 40 or so people on the "N" after 10pm? If you run a train, slowly, through the ghost stops of the workday, clicking into the routines of the homeless, the desperate and the lonely, what kind of protection can you offer the few people coming home from a sale or a baseball game? If that baby were screaming for attention and the parents got out at Court Street, there would be hardly anyone on the street until they reached the small newsstand down Montague. If they called 911, they'd be taken to over-crowded and under-funded Brooklyn Hospital or to the smaller, but no less crowded Long Island College Hospital. Would the baby have collapsed by then?
All of this does not deflect from my role in the death of my godson-cat. No one can handle anyone's failing health alone. I should never have let his mother go alone without me. But I was on my way somewhere with Karen or was I on my way to work? Work at a school closed in directly inverse proportion to the amount of care that the staff put into it -- it was done quickly and silently with barely a trace. The school that replaced it is a land-mine, out of control and dangerous. The first day they opened a girl brought a knife. But the principal is married to someone involved in the creation of Transfer High Schools. So, despite the fact that there is shouting in the halls and souls are collapsing, it will keep going. I'm told a lot of the new schools are in this kind of disrepair. So everyday, some parent goes home on the subways, clammy with the knowledge that he/she was powerless to save his own child.
So, please forgive me. I didn't sleep last night. I would like to have done things today, but I have to try to sleep. On a night in 2007, after four nights of not sleeping too well, I made a very poor judgement call which nearly put my cats and me in jeopardy. I yelled at someone. I tried to cross through that chaotic barrier of unwillingness and resignation to certain death and say something. But, I was rude, and I was tired and I was crying. So I spent a year and three months in the DOE's Rubber Rooms deciding whether or not I was civilized enough to ever work with people again. I did this, knowing full-well that it was illegal to put a person with Aspeger's Syndrome in the Rubber Room on his/her first offense. As a disabled person, I was entitled to the least restrictive environment. But, I was hoping that the many people who were speaking up for me would make the case. At least, in the end, it got me out sooner and helped me negotiate a settlement. Because no successful person in this country has ever lost his/her temper in public. Not George Steinbrenner, not Billy Martin, not Thurmon Munson, not Lou Piniella, not Michael Bloomberg, not Bill or Hillary Clinton, not Ronald Reagan ("tear down that wall" is a polite request), not MacArthur and not Barack Obama. Never. Curt statements about human rights don't count -- they were done in the proper form. You can't have everyone over for beers. So long as you don't shout, don't cry or show emotions, you’re fine. There are no mediators in most places. And what we need most are mediators, especially if we are going to bridge political, social, emotional gaps and reach across the table between the neurotypical and non. They say Einstein probably had Asperger's Syndrome. He was given a lot of room for eccentricity and assisted in bringing his ideas to the world. If that hadn't happened, well, he'd of been the janitor in "Good Will Hunting," if he were so lucky. Probably not with that hair.
What about the founding fathers, the “Give me liberty or give me death," people, the notion of resisting oppression especially when it’s life threatening. “You gotta do what you gotta do.” You can’t run a country with everyone resisting every five minutes. Well, you could, actually, if people would just be open about what their agenda were from the start. Then you’d know either not to take your cats to that Vet or you could stage a more formal protest against decisions made for reasons. Arbitrariness invites secrets and the theories of luck and favor. Someone once told me it was a particular politician’s “time.” Jesse Jackson used to preach sermons about it being “Morning Time” – time for the country to wake up.
The reality is that time is on a 24 hour clock and it’s either time to go to work or it isn’t. There is no particular “time for a change.” There is a necessity for a change. If you tell someone at a job, “it’s time for a change” and walk away, they might just change the music or ignore you and wait for more specific instruction. If you say, “it’s necessary to make a change,” they can immediately ask of what and why? If you believe it’s “necessary,” you’ll be more convincing and more likely to succeed. No one is going to take care of that cat or baby because it’s time to do so – Mussolini ran the trains on schedule and it helped no one, plus, his example has caused most people to go the other way. Time is now, later or yesterday. And it’s in the moment. No need to call attention to it. People make “To do” lists not “To Time” lists. I’m belaboring the point. We create fake measurements of efficiency in this country by doing so in terms of time, which we then say equals money. In that case, we have no control over either. Time is just a way we refer to something out of our hands. The question is: “How well is this country taking care of its people?” That answer comes in how many are living, how they are living and how many are not living. It is reflected in the number of prescriptions for sleeping pills, tranquilizers and sales of alcohol. A generation Martini’d, tranquilized and otherwise drugged itself through the day. My generation has advanced to variations on our parent’s methods, including more intricate and varied drugs as well as Yoga, etc. It’s all not a very efficient way of trying to do one thing: get attention for a sick child, a sick cat or a loved one. We attenuate our feelings so that we can, as politely and non-offensively as possible, ask for what we think is very necessary and some people are gifted at mediating through this, some people are lucky enough to be provided with mediation. For the rest of, there are the hours of lurking in the slow moving train home, blocking out the noise and the knowledge that should anything happen to us, there’d be nothing we could do about it. And you wonder why Ipods sell so well?
Meanwhile cats and babies pass out everywhere.
I will find sleep eventually. I hope there is time later in the week for the things I have promised today. I am genuinely sorry.
Wednesday, 18 August 2010 at 08:13
After I came home from last night's Yankees game (they won), I found I couldn't sleep a wink. This happened the night before, too, but I was sure the game would wear me out. It didn't. I got a headache listening to a bunch of wise-guys behind me trying to predict the Yankees team for next year and a bunch of reckless 30 somethings drinking beer and making inside jokes loudly and nearly pissing themselves. On the two hour ride home (the "N" is local after 10pm.) I was able to "blitz out" a little. God bless Mr. Bloomberg. Now I have so many more chances to be mugged and assaulted by homeless people who get on at stations like "City Hall." Why we are stopping in non-residential neighborhoods and going under the fetid tunnel to do it, I don't know. I thought you saved energy when you went directly from point to point, not stopped and started. Fortunately, there were lots of people on my train discussing sales loudly and keeping their children under the age of one up late on the ride home from grandma. The kinds of noises babies can make never cease to amaze me. This one sounded like an electric toothbrush running backwards. My poor mother kept me off the subways until I was 7 so that I might have normal hearing. Alas, it was all for nought.
There doesn't seem to be a week in my life in which there is not some major catastrophe about to befall me or my friends. This summer brought eviction notices (to friends), the threat of jail for missing jury duty too many times (friends), and the tenderhooks which come from caring for a cat who is sensitive to all kinds of stress and who resists by not eating. (Friend's cat. Larry and Bernie eat.) So, even when you jump away to the Church of Overpaid Athletes and surround yourself in the photos and memories of successes which make your parents, uncles -- all of your forebears -- dreamy-eyed, you can't really escape the tension. Then, of course, I forgot that I moved my medication schedule way up, so that it starts at 10pm. Completely impractical, but some of this tension contributed to this foolish decision. So, just as the game ended, the withdrawal started to kick in. The buzzing in the ears. The inability to complete a thought. The rage at my own stupidity. And for some reason, I get very thirsty.
I got a real deal on a huge bottle of water for one dollar.
But, then my friend wanted to explore for a while and my mind was turning into rabbit food, my feet beginning to swell and my back bend toward the ground. For some reason, I think people can see these symptoms, but since I'm already so short, have huge feet and bad posture, I guess it's only a matter of degrees. I had to insist we go home. Then I had to remember which train to take -- which stairs to go up or down on. There were a lot of MTA people in the station telling us what we already knew. I thought I heard the MTA person tell my friend to just go upstairs and take the four. I got confused and angry and my friend, rightly told me to back off. When we finally reached the train, our place in Yankees mythology now torn away from us, the grimness set back in. Medicine had to be got at the pharmacy. Inadequacies of the Vet bothered my friend and this brought back memories of the loss of my first godson-cat. An afternoon in which he was screaming for attention and it was hard to get it. I wasn't there because I was somewhere with Karen. If I'd've been there I could've kicked up a scene. I'm good at that. That was my job. Instead, my friend was trying to bridge the line between Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi Driver that is the Animal Medical Center and my godson cat collapsed in the process. We lost him the next morning.
I went home angry at myself, my friend, at the doctors and ugly with the feeling that I had let down my dearest friend -- and he was. My own cat Fred, I fear I over-reacted to so many times that it had much the same effect. I am much calmer with Larry and Bernie but they are brimming with health and stamina and curiosity. Where and who I will be when they are frail and desperate I don't know. I promise them the world, but I mean the Disney one. The real one is the color of breath on a late night in the subway. A faint grey, tinged with sweat and impropriety. After all, who cares what happens to the 40 or so people on the "N" after 10pm? If you run a train, slowly, through the ghost stops of the workday, clicking into the routines of the homeless, the desperate and the lonely, what kind of protection can you offer the few people coming home from a sale or a baseball game? If that baby were screaming for attention and the parents got out at Court Street, there would be hardly anyone on the street until they reached the small newsstand down Montague. If they called 911, they'd be taken to over-crowded and under-funded Brooklyn Hospital or to the smaller, but no less crowded Long Island College Hospital. Would the baby have collapsed by then?
All of this does not deflect from my role in the death of my godson-cat. No one can handle anyone's failing health alone. I should never have let his mother go alone without me. But I was on my way somewhere with Karen or was I on my way to work? Work at a school closed in directly inverse proportion to the amount of care that the staff put into it -- it was done quickly and silently with barely a trace. The school that replaced it is a land-mine, out of control and dangerous. The first day they opened a girl brought a knife. But the principal is married to someone involved in the creation of Transfer High Schools. So, despite the fact that there is shouting in the halls and souls are collapsing, it will keep going. I'm told a lot of the new schools are in this kind of disrepair. So everyday, some parent goes home on the subways, clammy with the knowledge that he/she was powerless to save his own child.
So, please forgive me. I didn't sleep last night. I would like to have done things today, but I have to try to sleep. On a night in 2007, after four nights of not sleeping too well, I made a very poor judgement call which nearly put my cats and me in jeopardy. I yelled at someone. I tried to cross through that chaotic barrier of unwillingness and resignation to certain death and say something. But, I was rude, and I was tired and I was crying. So I spent a year and three months in the DOE's Rubber Rooms deciding whether or not I was civilized enough to ever work with people again. I did this, knowing full-well that it was illegal to put a person with Aspeger's Syndrome in the Rubber Room on his/her first offense. As a disabled person, I was entitled to the least restrictive environment. But, I was hoping that the many people who were speaking up for me would make the case. At least, in the end, it got me out sooner and helped me negotiate a settlement. Because no successful person in this country has ever lost his/her temper in public. Not George Steinbrenner, not Billy Martin, not Thurmon Munson, not Lou Piniella, not Michael Bloomberg, not Bill or Hillary Clinton, not Ronald Reagan ("tear down that wall" is a polite request), not MacArthur and not Barack Obama. Never. Curt statements about human rights don't count -- they were done in the proper form. You can't have everyone over for beers. So long as you don't shout, don't cry or show emotions, you’re fine. There are no mediators in most places. And what we need most are mediators, especially if we are going to bridge political, social, emotional gaps and reach across the table between the neurotypical and non. They say Einstein probably had Asperger's Syndrome. He was given a lot of room for eccentricity and assisted in bringing his ideas to the world. If that hadn't happened, well, he'd of been the janitor in "Good Will Hunting," if he were so lucky. Probably not with that hair.
What about the founding fathers, the “Give me liberty or give me death," people, the notion of resisting oppression especially when it’s life threatening. “You gotta do what you gotta do.” You can’t run a country with everyone resisting every five minutes. Well, you could, actually, if people would just be open about what their agenda were from the start. Then you’d know either not to take your cats to that Vet or you could stage a more formal protest against decisions made for reasons. Arbitrariness invites secrets and the theories of luck and favor. Someone once told me it was a particular politician’s “time.” Jesse Jackson used to preach sermons about it being “Morning Time” – time for the country to wake up.
The reality is that time is on a 24 hour clock and it’s either time to go to work or it isn’t. There is no particular “time for a change.” There is a necessity for a change. If you tell someone at a job, “it’s time for a change” and walk away, they might just change the music or ignore you and wait for more specific instruction. If you say, “it’s necessary to make a change,” they can immediately ask of what and why? If you believe it’s “necessary,” you’ll be more convincing and more likely to succeed. No one is going to take care of that cat or baby because it’s time to do so – Mussolini ran the trains on schedule and it helped no one, plus, his example has caused most people to go the other way. Time is now, later or yesterday. And it’s in the moment. No need to call attention to it. People make “To do” lists not “To Time” lists. I’m belaboring the point. We create fake measurements of efficiency in this country by doing so in terms of time, which we then say equals money. In that case, we have no control over either. Time is just a way we refer to something out of our hands. The question is: “How well is this country taking care of its people?” That answer comes in how many are living, how they are living and how many are not living. It is reflected in the number of prescriptions for sleeping pills, tranquilizers and sales of alcohol. A generation Martini’d, tranquilized and otherwise drugged itself through the day. My generation has advanced to variations on our parent’s methods, including more intricate and varied drugs as well as Yoga, etc. It’s all not a very efficient way of trying to do one thing: get attention for a sick child, a sick cat or a loved one. We attenuate our feelings so that we can, as politely and non-offensively as possible, ask for what we think is very necessary and some people are gifted at mediating through this, some people are lucky enough to be provided with mediation. For the rest of, there are the hours of lurking in the slow moving train home, blocking out the noise and the knowledge that should anything happen to us, there’d be nothing we could do about it. And you wonder why Ipods sell so well?
Meanwhile cats and babies pass out everywhere.
I will find sleep eventually. I hope there is time later in the week for the things I have promised today. I am genuinely sorry.
07 August, 2010
It's Bernie's Third Anniversary
Around this time of year, three years ago, Bernie came to live with us. I believe it was August 8, but I'm not sure so we're celebrating the whole week. As you may or may not know Bernie is our three year old mix of Siberian Forest Cat, Tabby and some other wonderful cats, found on the street by our veterinarian's assistant. Specifically, it was Henry's cardiologist's assistant who found him. So, it was as meant to be as one could say, since we had lost Henry almost a month before. We never admit, or we rarely do, that Henry has left us, since he was so impossibly wonderful that he was almost mythological even as a full-blooded, pink-eared, white and grey furred litter-mate of Larry.
Bernie, like Larry and all of his forebears, has become the hero of his own epic. Bernillius, Bernoolius, BERNSTEIN (when he's engaged in mischief), Purrnee, etc. is called "The Master of Joy" around here. Recently, he and Larry went to the vet. It was Larry's first time at Bernie's vet and he had a panic attack. So Larry jumped into Bernie's carrier. At first, I separated them, thinking that would be too close for comfort (it's the largest carrier Sherpa makes and it held Fred who neared 25 pounds so it was just big enough for two). Then Larry threw up on his own carrier and I put him back in with Bernie and he absolutely calmed down. Bernie turned to his side and cradled Larry. It wasn't the first mensch-like act of Bernie's, but the one that confirmed that our cherry-nosed wonder is also a full-blown MENSCH. He held Larry the whole ride home and Larry didn't let out a peep. When I lowered the carrier onto the living room floor and unzipped it, they took their time coming out. The two were snuggling comfortably and they peered out of the carrier and slowly emerged. Bernie had infused Larry with warmth, calm and love, and when he calmed down,he returned it. They stayed very close for a while, Bernie making sure Larry was okay even out of the carrier before they returned to their normal routine of bouncing and leaping and teasing and the occasional play-fight. He also, as the SECOND PICTURE shows, is a staunch advocate for all good things (like playing with the cat dancer and cuddling) and that is the look he gives me when he feels I am not listening.
We begin what will probably turn into a two-week celebration (to allow me to take care of some other things which have come up and give Bernie the attention he deserves). He has just had the inaugural meal -- a small plate of steamed broccoli, his favorite food.
Happy Bernie Weeks! We couldn't be doing anything without you, you little miracle, you!
(To see Bernie's first intro on this blog, go to
http://saddleshoe.blogspot.com/2007/08/meet-cousin-bernie.html)
Can you figure out which picture was Bernie THREE YEARS AGO?
01 August, 2010
Massachusets deploys National Guard overseas. Reconsidered.
(With apologies for the digressions in the initial version....)
About six years ago, I was walking down the streets of Provincetown, Mass, thinking, "I wonder if the Taliban is going to come down here and do a raid on a gay bar?" Maybe THAT's why that woman sitting next to us in the audience in which we were watching the comic Leah DeLaria had such a long skirt on?
When I wrote about the loss of Michael Gonzales (INNOCENT BYSTANDERS), I shielded myself from thinking about another kind of loss familiar to probably every New York City public school teacher: the loss of students who are in the armed forces. Just in the past year, one of my first students, by now a 41 year old father of three, signed up for his National Guard in Utah. I expect, like those men and women from Massachusets who were deployed today to Afghanistan, he will be sent off to "do construction projects and bolster our nation's security around the world," as the reporter said at the end of the feature story which popped up after the one about the "yellow lobster" which was actually what had brought me to the Yahoo News site.
It kind of reminded me of my last visit to Provincetown during which my friend Karen did have lobster and during which I did not once think about terrorists of any kind. It's funny. We were actually pushed out of New York airspace that night because then President Bush was leaving New York just after his speech to the Republican convention. If he, or anyone had really thought there were terrorists en route to or from Massachusets, we shouldn't have been able to hear Air Force One ask for permission for take off. Let's see, he wasn't leaving JFK...probably he was leaving from White Plains and anyone with a friend who had a plane and was in the air at that moment knew exactly when. But, I digress...kind of. It's a great party story. Losing my students has become too popular a blog story.
It's not just the possibility of their deaths which upsets me and my own feelings about the futility of this war, but the cycle which lead them to choose the armed forces as a career. NOT ONE had ever told me that he/she dreamed about being a soldier. Serving your country is an honor which I do not mean to denigrate. The fact is that our economy has driven some of my smartest students to do tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. They tell me they are okay and they are proud of their work. First and foremost, they wanted to be working in challenging professions. They wanted to be in positions of leadership. Trying to balance college and supporting their families wasn't the only deterrent which kept them from making alternative choices. The reality that they could turn around after all that hard academic work and find an economy poised on grinding down their bodies and spirits without even benefits was a risk they found to profoundly painful to accept. It's a fate worse than death. Literally.
For all the time we spend debating the morality of the works of literature they read, whether children can read about gay parents when they probably watch them on TV anyway, we don't spend enough time arguing about what vocational skills we are giving our students. The liberal education was intended to free the mind. When it was conceived, it presumed a life in scholarship, law or the priesthood. Of those three professions, only the last offers any security and ladder of promotion. I'm not being facetious; I mean to speak in the plainest terms possible. No matter how much reading, writing and arithmetic are essential to survival, they are not enough. No matter how beautifully conceived a research project is for an honors class, it is not enough. Getting a 5 on the AP of anything, is not enough. Very few doctors and lawyers today can break out into practices of their own. And if they do, who helps them when, in their first years, they can't afford to fix things or can't afford classes which will help them compete in the marketplace. But these are, by far, not the weakest members of our economy. Take the "A" student with an MA and PhD in Comparative Literature. Who knew that he/she would likely teach classes the way women and men in sweatshops sewed garments -- both groups would be paid for "piecework." Most scholars have to teach and get paid by the class -- 3000 a pop. So, if you could teach ten classes a term, you could earn, before taxes, about 30,000. There are some people who are lucky enough to find tenure track jobs which often start at salaries in the 20 and 30 thousand dollar range. I hear that outside of New York, you can possibly survive on that, but that's not equitable payment for someone who has spent 8 years after high school dedicated to any field.
I'm not worried JUST about those kids who fail their exams. What I'm worried about is that BOTH the kids who do well and those who don't will be joining the National Guard whether they like it or not because they won't have many options.
When my doctor asks me if the book I am reading, Simon Schama's AMERICA'S FUTURE tells if we are going to become "The United States of China," I'm a bit embarrassed. Schama is tracing our ideas of what an American is -- but is that question even in the "bottom line" anymore? Goldman Sachs isn't treasonous when it makes choices which destroy the power of our economy and our government. But, when we bargain for fair treatment as teachers --whether it be for money or respect--we are vilified in the press. We rarely get to argue whether we WANT to be the United States of China. Besides our loss of money and power, what else do we care about in that equation? How can we care, for example, about our potential job losses to new immigrants and to our growing bad credit, when we haven't even faced the fact that Americans lose these jobs because they no longer pay a fair wage and that we keep borrowing money to fix an economy which needs serious re-envisioning? What do we want our children to be? What choices are we creating now for them to consider in the future?
I'm sure some of my students clicked on the story about the Yellow lobster and then went on to the story about the National Guard. Do you think they wondered why so many young and not-so-young people had joined a part of our military which people don't usually hear about? Do you think they wondered why many of them were people of color?
But, it doesn't get so far in the minds of a ten year old and maybe not always in a that of a tenth grader, who may, instead be wondering how you fish for lobster, why are yellow lobsters rare and can we go to Red Lobster tomorrow? And the practical questions of the trade as well as the marine biology are things they should understand. When they fight us off so hard, they do so both because they sometimes find us too hard and too irrelevant. They believe we are supposed to be training them for the hard work and all the possibilities of adulthood? We are supposed to be helping them find life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Are we?
About six years ago, I was walking down the streets of Provincetown, Mass, thinking, "I wonder if the Taliban is going to come down here and do a raid on a gay bar?" Maybe THAT's why that woman sitting next to us in the audience in which we were watching the comic Leah DeLaria had such a long skirt on?
When I wrote about the loss of Michael Gonzales (INNOCENT BYSTANDERS), I shielded myself from thinking about another kind of loss familiar to probably every New York City public school teacher: the loss of students who are in the armed forces. Just in the past year, one of my first students, by now a 41 year old father of three, signed up for his National Guard in Utah. I expect, like those men and women from Massachusets who were deployed today to Afghanistan, he will be sent off to "do construction projects and bolster our nation's security around the world," as the reporter said at the end of the feature story which popped up after the one about the "yellow lobster" which was actually what had brought me to the Yahoo News site.
It kind of reminded me of my last visit to Provincetown during which my friend Karen did have lobster and during which I did not once think about terrorists of any kind. It's funny. We were actually pushed out of New York airspace that night because then President Bush was leaving New York just after his speech to the Republican convention. If he, or anyone had really thought there were terrorists en route to or from Massachusets, we shouldn't have been able to hear Air Force One ask for permission for take off. Let's see, he wasn't leaving JFK...probably he was leaving from White Plains and anyone with a friend who had a plane and was in the air at that moment knew exactly when. But, I digress...kind of. It's a great party story. Losing my students has become too popular a blog story.
It's not just the possibility of their deaths which upsets me and my own feelings about the futility of this war, but the cycle which lead them to choose the armed forces as a career. NOT ONE had ever told me that he/she dreamed about being a soldier. Serving your country is an honor which I do not mean to denigrate. The fact is that our economy has driven some of my smartest students to do tours of Afghanistan and Iraq. They tell me they are okay and they are proud of their work. First and foremost, they wanted to be working in challenging professions. They wanted to be in positions of leadership. Trying to balance college and supporting their families wasn't the only deterrent which kept them from making alternative choices. The reality that they could turn around after all that hard academic work and find an economy poised on grinding down their bodies and spirits without even benefits was a risk they found to profoundly painful to accept. It's a fate worse than death. Literally.
For all the time we spend debating the morality of the works of literature they read, whether children can read about gay parents when they probably watch them on TV anyway, we don't spend enough time arguing about what vocational skills we are giving our students. The liberal education was intended to free the mind. When it was conceived, it presumed a life in scholarship, law or the priesthood. Of those three professions, only the last offers any security and ladder of promotion. I'm not being facetious; I mean to speak in the plainest terms possible. No matter how much reading, writing and arithmetic are essential to survival, they are not enough. No matter how beautifully conceived a research project is for an honors class, it is not enough. Getting a 5 on the AP of anything, is not enough. Very few doctors and lawyers today can break out into practices of their own. And if they do, who helps them when, in their first years, they can't afford to fix things or can't afford classes which will help them compete in the marketplace. But these are, by far, not the weakest members of our economy. Take the "A" student with an MA and PhD in Comparative Literature. Who knew that he/she would likely teach classes the way women and men in sweatshops sewed garments -- both groups would be paid for "piecework." Most scholars have to teach and get paid by the class -- 3000 a pop. So, if you could teach ten classes a term, you could earn, before taxes, about 30,000. There are some people who are lucky enough to find tenure track jobs which often start at salaries in the 20 and 30 thousand dollar range. I hear that outside of New York, you can possibly survive on that, but that's not equitable payment for someone who has spent 8 years after high school dedicated to any field.
I'm not worried JUST about those kids who fail their exams. What I'm worried about is that BOTH the kids who do well and those who don't will be joining the National Guard whether they like it or not because they won't have many options.
When my doctor asks me if the book I am reading, Simon Schama's AMERICA'S FUTURE tells if we are going to become "The United States of China," I'm a bit embarrassed. Schama is tracing our ideas of what an American is -- but is that question even in the "bottom line" anymore? Goldman Sachs isn't treasonous when it makes choices which destroy the power of our economy and our government. But, when we bargain for fair treatment as teachers --whether it be for money or respect--we are vilified in the press. We rarely get to argue whether we WANT to be the United States of China. Besides our loss of money and power, what else do we care about in that equation? How can we care, for example, about our potential job losses to new immigrants and to our growing bad credit, when we haven't even faced the fact that Americans lose these jobs because they no longer pay a fair wage and that we keep borrowing money to fix an economy which needs serious re-envisioning? What do we want our children to be? What choices are we creating now for them to consider in the future?
I'm sure some of my students clicked on the story about the Yellow lobster and then went on to the story about the National Guard. Do you think they wondered why so many young and not-so-young people had joined a part of our military which people don't usually hear about? Do you think they wondered why many of them were people of color?
But, it doesn't get so far in the minds of a ten year old and maybe not always in a that of a tenth grader, who may, instead be wondering how you fish for lobster, why are yellow lobsters rare and can we go to Red Lobster tomorrow? And the practical questions of the trade as well as the marine biology are things they should understand. When they fight us off so hard, they do so both because they sometimes find us too hard and too irrelevant. They believe we are supposed to be training them for the hard work and all the possibilities of adulthood? We are supposed to be helping them find life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Are we?
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