Maria Callas sings Casta Diva

Happy New Year!

Obama

Is he really that great, or is he just magnetic?

John Edwards is a much better candidate and Wesley Clark knows more about policy and war.

Dennis Kucinich is the BEST candidate, but everyone says he can't win.
Or is the momentum what we need...

They compare him to JFK.

I like him better than Hillary.

OBAMA/KUCINICH....yeah, I'd vote for that, I guess.

Okay, I get it..Ford was the PRECURSOR to BUSH

I listened to a lot of Mike Malloy and the Democracy Now, Dec 27 program on Ford. (www.democracynow.org)

1) He allowed the massacre in East Timor to happen and then said he "didn't recall" if he authorized it...
2) He tried to get William O' Douglas IMPEACHED.
3) He lied about his deal with Al Haig to pardon Nixon.

Granted he was more civilized than Bush, but he was much more interested in world domination than I thought.

So, all the MORE REASON TO IMPEACH BUSH NOW.

Enduring through to the New Year: Continued Crisis

Since his divorce, my friend Douglas has been virtually homeless. (Douglas is not his real name.)

It started with a change in technology. Douglas used to be the editor of a magazine, before artwork became a function of computer programs. He can draw a skeleton with incredible precision and can align artwork by hand. However, he has little patience for or knowledge of computers. Some of this is the result of a stubborn insistence that the work doesn't look as beautiful. Douglas has a BFA from one of the best art schools in the country. That doesn't mean he shouldn't compromise. One problem he faced, however, was that he did not own and, on unemployment, could not afford all the advanced technology he would need to buy to really become proficient at the computer programs. I won't argue that his attitude did not help. However, I am not sure, now that I am the same age he was when this happened, that he might have found employment anyway. Employers look at 38 very differently than 28. We're like pitchers at the ends of our careers suddenly. We're too expensive to train, too experienced to put in entry-level jobs. There's no equivalent of the back of the rotation for us. I fear the worst as I hit the job market myself. No one wanted me at 36 when I was told that I had "been around the block." And I've been sick this year so I am going to get an unsatisfactory rating for attendance. In the end, I should be all right, unless I continue to get sick, depressed and anxious. But, back to Douglas.

To stave off poverty when unemployment ran out, Douglas took a job as a security guard, which paid about a third of what he had earned. This was fine while he was sharing a rent stabilized studio apartment with his wife. Once they divorced, however, (due in no small part to his depression about his employment status as well unrelated issues which made them incompatible), Douglas found himself in the world of 1000 a month studios. He drifted from couch to couch, and as he did, rents continued to rise. He moved from apartment share to apartment share, getting older and less appealing in the world of 20-30 something roommates. Worse, his diabetes began to become more brittle and he found himself hospitalized five to seven times a year. Both of his ex-wives (he's been homeless since the second divorce), have taken him in from time-to-time, but they cannot live with him permanently, nor do any of the parties wish to do so.

Now he is in an apartment share with a woman who constantly threatens to evict him. She invited him to move in when she was out of work. Now that she has a job, she'd rather live alone. She doesn't feel she owes him anything, and she wants her privacy. She has come close to just throwing him out, but he has calmed her with politeness and a promise to look for a place and leave when he can. He has a chance to leave this situation if he hands my landlord one year's rent in advance and gets a guarantor for his lease as his credit has descended dramatically over the years. He's putting together the money with loans. Then he will have a one bedroom apartment which he may be able to share so that he can actually afford the 900 a month rent. (I live out in the boondocks in a building that would be condemned in any normal city. It's rent stabilized, so at least, there are limits to how high the rent can be raised.)

Douglas has never taken public subsidies and doesn't want to do so. All he is trying to do is survive and pay rent. He has colleagues who work as security guards and live in shelters.

If he were to be evicted, it would take years for him to gain public assistance, should he survive. So, he drifts within his continued state of crisis, taking his anti-anxiety meds and hoping for the best.

More on how impeaching Bush has to do with Ford

I was about 8 or so when he was president.

For as long as I can remember, much earlier than 8, I have always wanted to fall in love with a quiet, honorable, father figure.

It is impossible, however, as I did in my first post about his death, to ignore the fact that he
1) Tried to get William O. Douglas off of the Supreme Court
2) Made a major change to the Warren commission report on JFK's death which made it seem more likely that there was only one bullet involved
3) Brought neo-cons to their first powerful places
4) In pardoning Nixon, may have covered up his role in the JFK assasination.
5) In his debate against Jimmy Carter, he said, "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford Administration."

So, maybe he was more evil than he seemed. All the more reason to stop some of the problems he may have intentionally or inadvertently caused by impeaching Bush.

I'm still grateful for his appointment of Stevens. There had to have been some decency in him at that moment. Or maybe, like Souter, Stevens seemed more conservative than he was.

He did also tell Bob Woodward that he disagreed with the Iraq war and that he thought gay people deserved equal rights. This is more fodder for what I want to believe: that he was a decent guy manipulated by indecent ones. However, I am willing to admit doubts...

I still have in my mind the image of Ford surrounded by people he doesn't "get" wanting to salvage things around him for people he also didn't understand. That's probably naivete combined with projection of my Aspergian inability to "get it."

Is it possible to be surrounded by people whose intentions are to cover up truths and deceive the American people and not know because you cannot imagine it and because they seem "sensible"? I doubt it.

So, maybe it's not in honor of Ford that we impeach Bush, but BECAUSE OF FORD. Because the two are equally deceptive and the latter is far more zealous in his attempts to subvert the needs of the people. I doubt that Ford saw himself as part of a greater good that was intended to change the face of the country and continue the imbalance of the classes. Barry Goldwater said he voted against Civil Rights legislation because he was deceived into thinking it would somehow create unfairness. Is it possible that Ford was similarly fooled? Who knows? Jimmy Carter, who was a friend of Ford's called him,"one of the most admirable public servants and human beings I have ever known." Did he get better with age? Or, is Carter as naive as I am? That's actually possible.

Either way, it's time for Bush to go. However he got here, whatever role anyone had to play, it's time for Bush to GO!

George W. Bush: What The Hell Is Going On?

Happy Holidays, y'all!

I'm a limousine liberal

It was mid-afternoon, and the leaves settled onto the street, bent upward from the draft emitted as cars drove by. Hardly anyone walks on my street anymore. It's a political conversion. We have all become limousine liberals.

Arthritis has set into both my knees, especially the one I tore when I fell off a window, trying to put up a poster at my school. We were about to be inspected by a team considering giving us money to expand. Just over a year before it was announced we would close.

My super and his wife both have debilitating cases of arthritis, and in his case, diabetes. My next door neighbor sold her car so that she could convert her living room to a bedroom for her grandchild.

The lady downstairs can't drive with her autistic son because he won't sit still. The postal carrier and his wife don't go too many places, but if they have to, they will take a cab because between the rheumatism and the wife's heart condition, subways are too risky.

So, all of us take taxis to various places. We don't have cable, new furniture or cars. We don't own anything. But, in order for us to function, we often need to take cabs. To work, to the Social Security Office, to the doctor. Sure, we can walk over a block so we don't qualify for "Access-a-Ride" -- NY's assistive public transit. My best friend can't walk OVER a block, but that doesn't count. She too, takes cabs to survive.

My last driver, an avid Rush Limbaugh fan, tried to Jew-bate me on my ride to the bank which is in a Hasidic Jewish section of my neighborhood. He said the section was "unique". I explained that it brings my grandmother's tales of Eastern Europe to life and he quickly asked, "Are you
Jewish?" Then he qualified that he had grown up with "American Jews" and basically "didn't judge anybody." He went on that he was "not an atheist liberal" -- and I told him not all liberals were atheists. He said he knew and I changed the subject back to the neighborhood. I explained that there are all different kinds of Hasidic Jews and that the different outfits you see in the neighborhood had their origins in the various towns these groups originated from. Most of these, like my grandmother's town, have long been erased. Not by atheists, but fanatics of another kind. There were probably a few liberals, agnostic, believing and otherwise, in the camps with the members of my grandmother's town.

At the end of the ride, I asked for an amount of change which would've given the driver a dollar tip. That's well over twenty percent of the ride and more than fair in this neighborhood. He claimed only to have enough change to give himself two dollars. I conceded rather than fight. It was getting late and I was anxious to get back to my apartment, my medicine and my cats.

So, I gave the Limbaugh-loving driver the extra dollar. After all, I'm a limousine liberal.

(My cats, by the way, both take cabs to the Vet, so they also are limousine liberals.)

A Story from Bethelehem, Occupied territory

In Gaza, Christmas Is a Casualty of Factional Fighting By Richard Boudreaux
The Los Angeles Times
Sunday 24 December 2006
Gaza City, Gaza Strip - To re-enact Jesus' birth this season, the 8-year-old Palestinians dressed as Mary and Joseph had to brave nearly two weeks of urban combat.
Their Bible studies center canceled one rehearsal because of gunfire around the parliament building next door.
Wasim Amash, the third-grader who played Joseph, was late for another after the fighting between the Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas halted his bus.
Lily and Marian Saba, sisters who sing in the choir behind the manger, got out of harm's way just before an ambush on a Fatah official's car near their school killed his three young sons.
"We almost canceled the Nativity play," said Steve Mashni, a Baptist missionary in the audience when it was finally staged Friday evening. "We are reluctant to celebrate while others are suffering. But the children have been practicing for months."
Christmas invariably draws attention to the plight of the Holy Land's dwindling Christian minority. In the early years of this decade, the holiday fell in the midst of a raging conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Then a massive separation barrier Israel began erecting to defend itself isolated Bethlehem, imposing a military checkpoint on the path followed by pilgrims between Jerusalem and the West Bank city believed to be Jesus' birthplace.
But to the 3,000 Christians in the Gaza Strip, the grinch in this year's Christmas narrative is not Israel, but the violent conflict inside their own Palestinian community.
"This is deeply frustrating," said Bernard Sabella, a Christian member of the Palestinian Authority parliament. "Instead of joining forces to confront our problems, the factional leaders have turned us against each other. It is the last thing we expected from them."
The conflict is about political power and policy toward Israel, not religion. Christians are divided in their loyalties, with most leaning toward Fatah, but have taken little part in the fighting. Like most other Palestinians, they profess to be appalled by it.
Hamas, a militant Islamist movement sworn to seek Israel's destruction, has dominated the Cabinet and parliament since March after winning an election that ended years of Fatah rule. Seeking to force Hamas to renounce violence and recognize the Jewish state, Israel and Western nations imposed a financial blockade on the Palestinian Authority, leaving it unable to pay full salaries to its 165,000 employees.
President Mahmoud Abbas, a Fatah leader elected in 2005, tried for months to broker a power-sharing deal that would produce a new government acceptable to the international community and supportive of the negotiations he opened with Israel on Saturday. But after Hamas resisted, Abbas called for early elections, prompting the rival armed factions to test each other in street clashes that have killed 17 people since Dec. 10.
Among the casualties is the holiday spirit of Christian children in Gaza City, scene of most of the fighting.
By the time a shaky truce took hold Wednesday, both Catholic-run schools here had called off the annual gift-giving appearances by a white-bearded Papa Noel.
Jawal, the Palestinian cellphone company, decided not to dress up its own Santa Claus, as it had done last year. Hotels and restaurants in Gaza City canceled special Christmas Eve dinner offerings. Offices called off Christmas parties.
Most Christians in Gaza belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, which celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7. Archbishop Alexios, its leader in Gaza, said there was still time to decide whether the truce was durable enough for the Orthodox Papa Noel to make his traditional door-to-door rounds of Christian homes.
"My girls keep asking, `Is Papa Noel coming?' and `Does he know what we want?"' said Samer Saba, a worried 32-year-old father.
"I'll tell you what I want," he added. "I want to see my people living in peace, like one family, so my girls can feel some joy at Christmas."
Saba and his Ukrainian wife, Alexandra, who are Orthodox Christians, plan to put a tree in the corner by the living room television set Dec. 28, decorate it a little at a time until Jan. 6, and leave the girls some modest gifts.
Like many Palestinians, Saba blames Israel's blockade for his economic squeeze. But since Israel's unilateral military withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005, Palestinian factional feuds have become a larger threat to his family's safety.
Saba's daughters are Lily, 9, and Marian, 6 - the sisters who sang in the Christmas choir after escaping gunfire near their school.
Saba, who voted for Fatah in last year's election, said he was alarmed by the rigidity of both sides. He said he believed that Hamas was irresponsible to resist Abbas' power-sharing plan and that Abbas was unrealistic to think he can hold elections over Hamas' objections.
"We need a third party to show us the way out," he said, encouraged by Egypt's cease-fire mediation last week.
Some Christian missionaries here feel threatened by Hamas' rise to power. They fear that some of the factional violence will be turned against their churches, speeding an exodus that has reduced the Christian population of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip by 10 percent, to about 45,000, since 2000.
Such anxieties rose in September when a grenade exploded near the Greek Orthodox church here following remarks by Pope Benedict XVI implicitly linking Islam with violence.
Hamas leaders took steps to reassure Christians, arranging police protection for churches for several days after the attack. Senior Hamas officials attended a special pre-Christmas Mass led here by Archbishop Michel Sabah of Jerusalem, the region's senior Catholic prelate.
"Here, Muslims and Christians suffer with each other but not from each other," said Monsignor Manuel Musallam, the Palestinian head of Gaza's Catholic community.
Musallam is using his Christmas pulpit to denounce his customary targets - Israel and the financial blockade. He speaks less openly about the Palestinian factional violence, although he did organize a student assembly last week to explore its causes.
"It is healthy to battle over such strong differences, but not with weapons," the priest said. "This problem of violence can be solved quietly. It is not imposed on us from outside. It is an accident. It will pass."
-------

In Memory of Gerald Ford: Impeach Bush

I can't think of any better way to honor the life of Gerald Ford than by impeaching George Bush.
How does this honor Gerald Ford?
Pardoning of Nixon aside, Ford was really an honest...ish...person. And he was genuinely befuddled by the political world. All I remember of him and of his wife, though, was how courageously they faced her addiction. They didn't stand for much, but they didn't try to -- in many ways, he was what George Bush pretends to be to make us think he's a fool -- he was sort of ordinary, but not intentionally evil. Sure, he gave young RICHARD CHENEY one of his first big jobs and RUMSFELD was in his cabinet, too. And, he tried to get rid of William O. Douglass from the Supreme Court. BUT HE APPOINTED JOHN PAUL STEVENS who keeps our current court sane. Basically, he meant well.

Some say that pardoning Nixon helped the nation move on. If that's true, well, then so will IMPEACHING BUSH.

In Bush, we have an actual evil, avaricious creep pretending to be sort of ordinary and harmless. Let's do the right thing. Impeach him and his drunken twins and his whole crew of hypocritical liars.

Not impeaching Bush is like pretending that he doesn't know what he's doing. He does.
For proof, look at the comic spoofs about him -- you don't see people merely falling down, but people deceiving, stealing and leading double lives. He's too much of an actual viper for slapstick to suffice.

The AP noted the following about Ford's presidency (boldface is mine):
The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: "Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned." Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to "look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation's wounds."

Farewell, Mr. Ford. You were quietly wise. I wish you hadn't pardoned Nixon, but I'll always remember you as pleasant in your honest and clumsy way.

Now, let's run Mr. Bush out of town.

Poet on the Subway, Christmas Eve

On Christmas eve, on my way home from picking up medicine I needed, I had the good fortune of giving traveling directions to a very fine poet named Matt Siegel. In return, he gave me a book of his poems. So, here's a stab at a poem about the meeting. Bear with me as I am supremely rusty. Here goes:

Poet on the Subway, Christmas Eve


Brown and white sneakers, narrow like an Abyssinian or a Siamese
The look of “I used to be afraid in high school”
But the cell phone gets service far beneath ground and his conversation begins with “HEY!” or something meant to sound very, very, well….
Very.
The face is excited, about the bridge, about the conductor
“This is the N EXPRESS train. The next stop is Pacific Street. Pacific Street.”
I make some snide remark about the conductor being motivated by overtime, but he is still at the movies, there is still popcorn and he has with him the proof, the five star stock.
The book of poems, so tightly carved and beautiful, full of felt and specific life and the details of honesty that he knows not to be afraid of anything even the strange lady who has not combed her hair in days. He doesn’t think of that because he has the comfort, the courage to listen which comes from having not been exactly from here. (He’s visiting from Houston. He was from here, some part of NY, but not Brooklyn.)
This is why Karen liked to fly so much and to travel.
The distance and what it does for language is impeccable.
Better than any sex can be. A private tryst. That’s what it feels like.
The cats know this, which why they only settle in for a time.
He is writing, always.
Which is why he can look away and then looks at the stranger and listens, already deciding to hand her a book as he leaves. He doesn’t see the mess – but the mix of me in the subway which is where I am and what I am talking about.
Naming train stops as if they were countries and telling him when he must get off.
We are on the “Express Track”. He needs the “Local Track”. What does any of that mean? And yet I say it and believe it because it is true right now and he rushes off and hands the book to me. “This is for you.”
He may be back, but for the moment he WAS HERE.

Henry chomping away!

Henry chomped into hard food for the first time since Tuesday! This is excellent because he went to eat on his own, not because I was politely shoving plates of wet food in his face. He always has access to a little hard food and usually he eats it all, plus wet food, but in his first days of recovery, he was eating an assortment of fish, chicken, herring, white fish -- in every brand from low-brow to various high end, healthy-artsy brands of cat foods. The lady at the pet food store had to ask why I was buying junk food and good food, but when I explained that one of the boys just got out of the hospital, she understood. The goal right now is to EAT. Period. (There must be a Jewish chef at the Wellness plant because they put out a Chicken and Herring flavor which my cats think is wonderful. Larry especially likes it. This proves also that my cats are also semites.)

Just because I'm going nuts doesn't mean I can't say

Nurse Larry washes Henry

Henry improving!

He spat his medicine at me for fun and took a long drink of water after. Got the medicine back in, courtesy of Henry, but he decided since he now feels STRONG ENOUGH to give me a little fight, then why not.

He is sleeping on my sweatshirt now, contemplating....contemplating...and snoring.

Henry having a tough time of it.

His potassium is low so he is really tired. We're working on it. Keep your paws crossed, etc.

Henry returns!

He spent the night at the hospital and is now back, tired, but ready to get back into his routine.

He made a lot of fans at Fifth Avenue Vet, and his doc, Dr. Jean-Sebastien Boileau got to pet him for a lot of the day.

I'll attach pics in a bit.

What's a bigger waste of money?

Sending more troops to Iraq vs. keeping a small, effective, expensive school open for the neediest kids....

Ironically, once some of my students graduate they will be sent to Iraq as our school is a big customer of the army...

What one of my students does as a job

One of my students is paid by the army to fold the flag up during army funerals. She's a nice kid, but there is something horrifying to know that an 18 year old kid is being paid to fold up the flag at some veteran's funeral.

She says the hardest part is when you say the words which mean that the flag is meant as a symbol of the dead soldiers. She says that's when people start to cry. She tries to look across them or away.

Henry's in the hospital.

He'll be okay, but keep sending him good thoughts.

ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DEATH OF BROOKLYN COMPREHENSIVE

The Department of Education hasn't listed our school in any of its press releases. So here's mine.

For over 17 years, it served as a literal beacon of light for some of New York's most disaffected youth. Now, after having established consistently strong scores on state exams, excellent graduation rates and after having created one of the safest school environments in New York City, the Dept of Education has decided to close the doors of Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School.

Established as one of the first schools for over-aged and under-credited youth, Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School has been a safe haven for disadvantaged youth 18-21 years of age. It has provided them with the opportunity to obtain a high school diploma -- not a GED --at night. These students have often attended more than one high school with limited academic achievement. Often they carry enormous adult responsibilities or have experienced profound personal loss. Take Daniel: early in his high school career, he lost one brother to an untimely death and one to prison. Without what he called, "his blueprints to life" he became despondent and the school he attended had poor control over its students, so he began to cut classes and then school altogether. With a failing average, he came to Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School looking to re-build an academic career. And he did so far beyond his expectations, becoming an honors student who is now a sophomore at Brooklyn College.


For many of the students the school served as a place for them to begin to take pride in their studies and to develop the foundation of skills they never had. Students who came from abusive households, some in foster care, some living on their own, found the small school to be their substitute family. Assisting them in this process required patience and extensive individual attention. The school offered students tutoring before and after school, small classes, a safe and quiet environment and the understanding that they would have some of the time they would need to change. After so many years of academic difficulties, the school did not expect students to become instant successes. Nor did it make that success easy. However, the school's culture took it's cue from it's motto "Ad astra per aspera" --- "To the stars despite the difficulties."

The Dept of Education, in its meeting with staff and administration, acknowledged that there was no academic reason for closing the school. They criticized the school, rather, for its attendance. Simply put, the school does good work but for too few students. As the student population which the school has served comes with a history of little or no academic achievement -- most have averages below 60 -- it is difficult to imagine how the Dept. of Education could expect instant and immediate success. Frequently, students take time to build attendance-- often a student will not pass in his/her first term or even year at the school. Many of our students have experienced personal crises which do not stop just because they have signed up at our school. It may take a term or a year for the school to work with the student to help them to build their skills and try to assist them in stabilizing their lives. And as this population is comprised entirely of students who have poor records, it is inevitable that some of them will need more than the school can give. After all, statistically these are the lowest performing students with the least chance of graduation from any academic program.

Brooklyn Comprehensive, however, had a policy of trying to work with students even if they did not immediately make significant changes. In giving them the time to try to adjust, it risked having attendance records which reflected their absences. In its very premise, the school was betting against what their previous records seemed to indicate. A majority of the students presented undiagnosed learning disabilities and/or had missed significant portions of their schooling --their need for remediation was intensified by years of neglect. Often these students were also extremely intelligent and dedicated to the effort to change their lives -- a dedication which increased as they improved. For Brooklyn Comprehensive, therefore, the students' potential was worth the risk. The efforts of the school were rewarded by a student body which achieved more and more each year. Sadly, the Department of Education is unwilling to see that taking such a risk provides opportunities for students like Daniel to get the time they need to excel beyond what any statistics might have predicted.

It's all good

Three words that I noticed my friends started to use the closer they came to 40.


"Don't think about it." That's what my mother says about my potential joblessness. She was my age in the 60's, but somehow the phrases of peace, love and kindness eluded her. She is left, rather, with those old standard's of the 1950's. "Think positive." She even loaned me a copy of Norman Vincent Peale's book when I was a kid. Up late one night, I saw the black and white film about him and remember distinctly the story of the two frogs in the cream -- one gives up and sinks, the other waves his arms and legs so hard that he turns the cream into butter into which he does not sink. Do frogs have to worry about cholesterol?

My friends have mostly adopted phrases which are much more zen like -- which seem to have an inherent explanation of the potential good and bad. I wonder how effective their or my mother's terms would be on the night I pack myself up and the cats and prepare for a life back in my mother's living room which I have not inhabited since I was 17. "Don't be so negative." My uncle has an 80's moment -- he has the uncanny ability to shift between the catchphrases of several generations. "If you don't believe in yourself, how will others believe in you." At core, he returns to a combination of the 50's, 60's and perhaps even a little of the 70's "me" generation; he is always encouraging me to "love myself." I believe both he and my mother have those books by Dr. Leo Buscaglia (Who? Think Dr. Phil meets Harvey Fierstein.)

Neither my mother nor my uncle ever truly faced joblessness. Marty established a phenomenal dentistry practice and Rozzy worked for the city for over 30 years. Nobody names their kids Martin and Rosalind anymore. Their mother, Sadie, worked for Klein's department store for over 30 years. When the store was about to close, her boss fired her so she could collect unemployment.

It's very 1950's of me, I know, to wax nostalgic like this. Any minute you might expect me to yell, like Willy Loman, "A teacher is not a piece of fruit!"

We don't get angry -- my friends and I. We're so civilized. We find a way to balance it in the universe.

I did blow up at a student the other day who told me he didn't need to go to college. I later apologized to him in front of the whole class. I know why I blew up -- all I could think of was that I had gone to college and graduate school and here I was facing elimination almost namelessly. My school had poor atttendance statistics and, regardless of my role in their creation, I was now, at worst, "part of the problem" or, at best, "collateral damage." As I began to write cover letters I imagined trying to explain why my school closed and trying not to think that instantly people would think "so you failed." All I said in my apology was that I could have handled things better. I brought in an article about Warren Buffet -- he went to college and grad school and that helped him learn even more techniques for making money than he knew before he left. The kid was convinced and, for the moment, so was I. But, I don't even have the acres of farmland Buffet had bought before he graduated from high school--or the CD's my student has from selling cars. I have a BA and an MFA and even at this moment, I could not, for the life of me tell you how I might get into such a financial position, though I can tell you many things and direct you to works of literature which people might consider, "priceless." There is a sudden, dull thud in the obvious irony of that phrase. Like the "tin tooth" Saul Bellow's Humboldt reveals that allows a little jealousy to ring out underneath the praise he gives to the writer he mentors who outdoes his own success.

That big, neurotic book. Humboldt's Gift. I read it in 9th grade. I was promising and pretentious back then. Unlike now, when I am just bitter and self-referential. Alas, Willy Loman rears his ugly head again.

The scary thing is, I don't even think my friends or I would know what our "wrong dreams" were that placed all of us in the position of being possibly fired or laid off because we are now at an age where schools and businesses begin to consider us expensive. My one friend in business is well aware that there will be no more advancement for her in her company. There are fewer and fewer directors and, eventually, she will be offered a buy-out, probably just before she is 50. She gave up a career in the arts to get an MBA. She was being practical. Ironically, she is about the same age she would have been when she would have to consider teaching rather than dancing. Sure, she would have made half the money until now. So, that's the payoff, I guess. The lucrative youth.

I suppose, had Willy Loman, survived his suicide, his wife would've told him that their house (the big irony that she tells him this at his funeral) was now paid off and they had things to look forward to -- that the pain had brought them some security.

Instead, my generation relies on the safety of knowing that life is "a journey." Most of us are too young to have paid off our mortgages even as we face re-orgs and school closings.

And as most of us are so over-educated that we know there are no absolutes, we tell ourselves, "It's all good." It has to be.

Frustration

What is hardest for me about the loss of my school is that, of course, it is far from perfect and there were many difficulties. That doesn't mean I wanted it to close -- why does nothing ever improve in the Dept of Ed -- it's either good from the start or it's banished almost on site. The DOE has never committed to my school -- they moved us around, made more and more demands on the students, cut teachers, made us feel like we were continually in limbo and then just closed us. Why didn't they just close us before our final move to one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Brooklyn? Were they hoping we would just give up on our own? Did they just mean to try to prove that this population of student is doomed to fail -- and about half of them did not. Half is not enough? Why not give the other half a program which might work for them? Why not TRY HARDER?

For me, personally, the battle has been coming to an end, but not for everyone and not for the school itself.

Someone said that the DOE is trying to erase institutional memory -- they close schools so no one remembers what was done and failed before and so no one can say that what the new fad is now was the same fad twenty years ago. The kids and the institutions in their neighborhoods remember only too well, unfortunately.

Raising attendance, lowering standards

At Brooklyn Comprehensive, we tried exceedingly hard to "meet the standards" set by the Dept of Education. We worked hard to make sure our students did well on State exams. We did so because we wanted to, and also to continue to comply with the Dept of Education.

Maybe we shouldn't have.

I'm not suggesting we should given our students less. But, would our school be open if we had been very easy, maybe more people would've come.

We could never have done this, but perhaps had we been able to, we could have saved ourselves, since ultimately volume seems to have been the name of the game.

Maybe the right question is: How did they get to such a state of neglect in the first place?

For a long time we have known that the students at Brooklyn Comprehensive need more than we can give them. Frankly, the Department of Education should give each of them a settlement out of court.

Our students
1) Have learning disabilities which were undiagnosed
2) Have attended schools which were later closed
3) Have attended schools with high crime rates
4) Have attended schools which were PURPOSEFULLY SEGREGATED. Did you know that NYC offers students in the wealthier neighborhoods surrounding South Shore (the school whose building we share which is also closing) the option of attending Madison High School (which is a safe school in a middle-class, mostly white section of Brooklyn) but only offers the students in the poorer sections of the neighborhood the option of the soon-to-be-closed South Shore High School? It’s true that technically all students have something called, “school choice” – you can attend almost any school in which there is room. First, you need to have the energy and wisdom to start looking around for good schools with room before your kid attends high school. Then, you have to hope there is room when he/she is ready. And of course, the thousands of kids who attended South Shore over the years could not ALL GO SOMEWHERE ELSE.
5) Have come to the only night high school in Brooklyn only to find themselves sometimes mugged on the way.

Many of us have thought of calling the newspapers over the years but we always feared that there would be little sympathy for our kids because they were already so old and had much less than perfect records.

Maybe the story isn’t the closing of Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School. Maybe the story is and always was how the students at Brooklyn Comprehensive found themselves so over-aged and under-credited even while they attended four years of high school and eight years of elementary and junior high school. We always used to joke and say to students, “How did you get here without knowing _____?”

I’m not trying to blame their teachers or even the schools they went to – but the entire system which worked and spent so much money making it hard for them to get access to a good education.

For all of the internal fighting and differences of opinion, no one has ever criticized the overall quality of our academics at BCNHS-- the criticism now is that we spend too much money on our students -- Why shouldn't we just spend what all there other schools have, but expect different results? Instead, we spent more and those who came got above average scores on State exams, went to college and became successful. So, we were one of the few places where these students could finally get that access. But maybe the story is WHY WERE THEY ALLOWED TO WANDER FOR SO LONG AND WHERE WILL THEY WANDER TO NOW?

What we lose when we dollar/cost average our children

When I was in elementary school, I missed, on average, 60 days a year.
When I was in high school, the number was closer to 30 or 40.
My home life was completely unstable.
School, ironically, was my only constant.
I passed all my state exams with high marks (except Math and Science where I sometimes did well, and sometimes just average).
I read constantly and was always active in my classes when I attended.
I got a full scholarship to college where I attended every day.
Despite myself, I am a relatively stable person.

I was fortunate because I went to schools whose first priority was seeing to it their students had secure futures.

My students are being dollar/cost averaged out of this.

Brooklyn Comprehensive has a register of 275 kids. Given a chance, at least half of these will eventually graduate. However, they have enormous obstacles to overcome.
1) They haven't succeeded anywhere else, and they've usually already missed a lot of school.
2) They are usually self-supporting, or at least, partially so.
3) They are extremely depressed.
4) They have no faith, initially, that they can make it.

It usually takes our students six months to a year to settle into becoming students again. Plus, they have to coordinate their jobs and child care and any other issues.

So, actively, of the 275 on register, 150 or so are on track, the others are on their way to being.

Those who are on track are getting
1) Small classes
2) Access to counseling
3) Tutoring before and after school, if they need it.
4) A school which is welcoming with no violence.

We graduate 120-150 students a year.

But, according to the DOE, it's not enough.

The real objection is two-fold
1) "Why can't these students get it together faster?" Gee, they spent 4 years failing at high school. Why couldn't the DOE get them into alternative programs faster?
2) Why should they PAY ME to teach 20 kids when someone at another school is teaching 38.
A word about class size:
When you teach 38, it's a given that, oh, 10-13 kids are going to fail. That still gives you about a two thirds passing rate which is pretty good.
BCNHS IS WHERE THE 13 GO THAT THE OTHER TEACHER WAS ALLOWED TO FAIL.
Maybe I should ask, "Why couldn't all those other teachers pass this kid and why do you expect me to work a miracle?" And now you are giving me 20 FAILING KIDS. Someone teaching 38 has, at least 5 stars, 5 hard workers, and 5 charming "c's". I get 20 F's I have to turn into D, C, B's and A's. I think it's an even work load. I had a class of 22 in which NOBODY COULD SPELL THE WORD, "CHOIR".

New York, and I'm sure the entire country is replete with private schools for the not-so-academically winning. I have a friend who works at one where each subject has its own period -- so a student who is failing a harder English can just go to the next room and take an English class closer to his/her pace. And the classes are 15 kids or less.
By deciding our school isn't cost effective, we've stopped funding one of the few educational programs which was academically effective at teaching those for whom nothing else worked.

Without BCNHS, many of these students would neither get a High School Diploma or GED. They didn't do it before BCNHS.

So, what's the price of welfare, emergency room visits, social services, etc. for 275 highly needy and unemployable young adults? Someone ought to start calculating because that's part of the NYS new budget courtesy of the DOE.

The Death of Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School

My school is closing.

For 14 years our school has been able to meet the needs of some of the most difficult students in Brooklyn. We've had excellent results.

So why are we closing?

We don't serve enough VOLUME.

So, keeping a school open which helps 150 students a year do better than anyone had ever predicted is not worth the Dept of Education's time.

Go figure.

More later. Right now, I'm just furious.

Don't worry about me. They will place all the teachers somewhere else.

But there will be NO NIGHT PROGRAM for the students to transfer to.

And this was done after moving our school to a dangerous neighborhood, forcing our students to be searched every night as they entered the school, forcing the staff to do all sorts of what we now know was MEANINGLESS paperwork.

The worst part is, the kids who succeeded with us did better than they ever expected.

College is not the answer BY ITSELF

I think my students already know this. That's why they are in such a state of inertia

I got this at Common Dreams -- http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1204-21.htm


Published on Monday, December 4, 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle
Flattening the Great Education Myth
by David Sirota

HELENA, Montana - Helena is not the kind of place that top government officials, business leaders or Washington pundits usually think of when they discuss international trade policy. That's too bad, because had they attended the community meeting in this mountain hamlet last month, they would have seen firsthand how powerless middle America is in what has become a vacuum of national leadership on globalization.
The meeting was entitled "A Flattened World Hits Home" and billed as an effort to apply the lessons of author Thomas Friedman's free-trade bible, "The World Is Flat," to the rural outpost of Montana. Friedman himself could not be there, the panel moderator told us - the town couldn't afford his $75,000-a-speech fee and first-class plane ticket. But we would just watch a video of a recent lecture the author had given.
I surveyed the scene as Friedman's happy talk about globalization and job outsourcing echoed through the wood-paneled Montana Club -- the gathering spot for the town's old guard -- where the meeting was taking place. The crowd was a mix of businesspeople, state government workers, school teachers, and in the back, high-school students.
As the New York Times columnist rattled off the wonders of technology - "Isn't Linux great?" "Wireless is the steroids of the flat world" - the group was dead silent as it listened to an enthusiastic and joyful Friedman telling the story of how, thanks to a "flat" world brought on by America's "free" trade policy, our country's workers and small businesses must now compete with slave labor and desperate conditions in places like China and Bangladesh.
Then it was time for panel discussion. How would our community deal with the "flat world" that Friedman gushed about?
"We need to increase educational opportunity," said Tyler Trevor, an aide to Montana's commissioner of higher education. "We have to create our own educational capital here."
"We don't invest in good teaching practices," said Bruce Messinger, Helena's superintendent of schools. "We have to make sure our teachers are using the best methods."
All said exactly what Friedman said at the end of his videotape: "Kids need to learn how to learn" in order to compete in the "flat world."
Sadly, the hard data tells us that, as comforting as this Great Education Myth is, we cannot school our way out of the problems accompanying a national trade policy devoid of wage, environmental and human-rights protections.
As Fortune Magazine reported last year, "The skill premium, the extra value of higher education, must have declined after three decades of growing." Citing the U.S. government's Economic Report of the President, the magazine noted that "real annual earnings of college graduates actually declined" between 2000 and 2004. The magazine also noted that new studies "show companies massively shifting high-skilled work -- research, development, engineering, even corporate finance -- from the United States to low-cost countries like India and China."
It's not that workers in these other countries are smarter, says Sheldon Steinbach of the American Council on Education. "One could be educationally competitive and easily lose out in the global economic marketplace," he told the Los Angeles Times. Why? "Because of significantly lower wages being paid elsewhere."
Pundits, such as Friedman and the Washington policymakers who follow him, see the data and understand this reality, and yet continue preaching their "free" trade fundamentalism to the delight of corporate lobbyists whose clients' profits are expanding under the status quo.
But while the Beltway elite can be blamed for this calculated trickery, community leaders similar to those at the Helena meeting have no choice but to keep faith in the Great Education Myth. Local leaders, earnestly trying to do good, must force themselves to think that if only they work harder to make their schools and colleges better, they can avoid the harsh consequences of lobbyist-written federal trade, tax and economic policies that reward job outsourcing.
It all highlights one simple truth: Unless communities demand their congressional representatives add protections to our national trade policy to make sure our workers are not forced to compete with slave labor, middle America will not benefit from the "flat" world, but rather will be flattened altogether.
David Sirota is the author of "Hostile Takeover" (Crown, 2006). He is a Democratic strategist who lives in Helena, Mont.

In the last hour

The students were writing an essay about time.

"It flows. It never stops. It has nothing to do with a watch."

The young man in the corner was not at a loss for phrases or short thoughts. But, no follow through.

A 20 year old boxer with a perfect physique, a tight royal blue t-shirt and a watch chisled with fake diamonds, initially he seemed a combination of street wisdom and terror. He kept trying to impress with phrase after phrase.

Look down at his shoes and you find...patent leather blue, orange and white. A nursery school combination of colors, matching the t-shirt and the child's view of the world which lies inside the mountain that he had built to secure himself. Give a child 20 years to hide and he will build a mountain. But, he has few words, and finds it even harder to write than speak.

"It's been like a hour and I can't even finish this."

The truth is, he can't even start it. The task is simple enough. Read two relatively sensical passages about time and find some truth they both share and explain how they share it. I'm sure this is the kind of thing that seems second nature to his counter-part in the suburbs of NY. I've taught that kid, too. He wears a baseball cap, has a drinking problem and a car too old for his age. But, he has about an eighth grade reading level. Just enough to fake his way through it.
And his sneakers are worn, strong and durable. The car has the nursery school colors because it is his girlfriend who he expects to baby him. His parents have spent just enough time with him and the language in the house is just close enough for him to just get by enough on state exams.

We go through the passage for statements he can recognize. "Relate to." Kind of. We find something about not wearing a watch. He copies it and half explains it. Closer. If he can do that three times, I can make an argument that he might be close enough.

It's "like a hour" but really only 50 minutes and we have 90 on the state exam.

Website as dollhouse

For the past few days, I have spent a great many of my free moments on my website. It's been my escape from difficult conversations, from classes which are not going so well, and from fears I have about all sorts of things.

It had occurred to me a while ago that my website functions like a dollhouse might for other people. It is an imaginary pulpit -- I know that people read it, but the audience I have in my mind is an ideal one.

I never played with doll houses much growing up. I had a small tea set and a few small items of furniture, chiefly becaused I liked them in and of themselves. They say that asperger's syndrom causes the mind to develop more quickly, and I did feel equal to the two adults in our small apartment. It was a cramped space and you would have thought that I would have sought to escape it in some imaginary play. Perhaps the irony of trying to escape in an even smaller space was too much for me.

Writing and books have always carried with them the illusion of conversation. A friend writes his essays as though they were speeches (and often gives them) and finds this format comfortable much for the same reasons I do. We both were brought up in ages where the anchorperson and the talk show became venues for debate and metaphors for our own inquiry. I guess the only thing I am missing is the "Here's Johnny!" although all the info on the side of the site certainly does much to introduce me.

Does anyone else feel this way?

What we lose in losing the patriarchy or the death of the "absent minded professor"

Karen Hunter very wisely recommended that I read J.C. Smith's book on the patriarchy, "Psychoanalytic Roots of Patriarchy: The Neurotic Foundations of Social Order". The thesis of the book is that our society is arranged around psychoses. Simply put, our systems are based on the repression of impulses--and that repression is generally unhealthy. I believe that wholeheartedly. That said, I want to acknowledge what we lose in losing the patriarchy.

A system as old as the patriarchy was bound to develop some very useful survival tools. Not the least of these was the very old fashioned relationship between a boss and secretary or a husband and wife. The traditional genders need not fill these roles for them to be useful. However, for a great many people, the distribution of labor between someone who could successfully create the intricate systems of order sometimes found in an office or a home and another person who is better at the kind of broader set of problem solving skills sometimes necessary to make large scale decisions or changes undoubtedly helped several individuals, mostly men, to survive and succeed. We all know individuals, again usually men, who are charming, but cannot put anything away properly, who can read in two languages, but who can't follow the directions on a package. For hundreds or thousands of years, these bumbling, but brilliant creatures were assisted by equally brilliant and detail oriented ones and the two built dynasties together.

All right. Dynasties are bad things. But, families have been held together by this kind of partnership for generations.

Is there a way to return to this kind of partnership without the repression which went along with it. Is it possible for two women to live this way and treat each other with equal respect, for example? Probably, except one will undoubtedly be called the "wife" or worse, the "kept woman." Meanwhile the kept person is keeping the other afloat. Some of Karen's friends hated me because they assumed she was keeping me. I refused to let her do that -- to quit my job and be the organizer of our house and her office (this meant financial stuff and largely computer stuff which I can do well) -- both because of the stigma and because I feared what would happen to me if we broke up. Of course, if I had someone assisting me at my job with what is hard for me, I might have been less stressed out or have advanced enough so that we could have afforded to hire someone to help us BOTH.

The reason this loss is so poignant to me is that I would succeed so much better if I could be in such a situation. Our society, however, is moving away from this as a whole. The boss writes her own letters and does her own filing these days and teams of equals work on projects together. You would think that "teams of equals" would be just as good for me. The trouble with teams is that they are meant to be so "equal". I can't keep myself organized on paper, but I can remember most of what I need to know and can write beautifully. Still, my lack of organization is bound to chafe at a team member's goodwill. My overall appearance, even on my best days, is only adequate, and bound to "bring the team down."

In the old system, assuming I had been born male and white (and I acknowledge how evil this prejudice was), I could be left to concentrate on problem solving, writing and negotiating. In the right movie, I might have even had an attractive secretary to help straighten my tie. My overall scholarly oafishness would have been considered charming. See Spencer Tracy or even Cary Grant with glasses.

Nowadays, I'm just a plain slob. A drain on office resources. A teacher with poor skills at room decorating skills. (Do you remember being able to criticize your teachers for how well they did or didn't decorate their rooms?)

I don't think a button will help my colleagues understand this.

I have a close friend who is a professor. His office is laden with books and smells like the inside of a good, old library. His desk usually contains mountains of papers. He takes copious notes and has tons of yellow notepads. On the surface, he look organized enough, though he has got the wardrobe down to the same set of (very attractive) jackets, two ties and grey pants. He teaches completely using questions and answers and is very dynamic -- but not much on pictures or audiovisuals. His classes are usually very active anyway. Fortunately for him, he's in his seventies, tenured and far, far from the forces which might try to force him to change. Because he is older and he is more charming than Spencer Tracy, a great many secretaries, grad students, etc. are usually willing to help with paperwork/things requiring detailed order. I am glad for him and it makes me angry when he does not have such assistance. He does great work so long as he has that help.

In a world of adjunct professors, teachers who have to be secretaries, decorators and social workers and teams of equally organized players, I am not likely to be so lucky.

So, much as I see it as wrong that the patriarchal privileges were extended only to white males (which my friend very much is), I wonder if there is anything wrong with some of the privileges themselves. Not the sexual repression. Not the gender-based roles. But, just the distribution of roles themselves.

I don't want to cry out, as another book once did that, "I want a wife!" I want a partner. Not a sexual partner, necessarily. I want to work with my colleagues to the best of my abilities and strengths and ask that they do the same -- though not that they have to do the SAME THING.

Maybe not a cure, but a care

Do you think my mom could just wear this button and come to work with me and that would make everything better?

(For a really good, concise definition of Asperger's Syndrome see Frank Klein's blog at http://home.att.net/~ascaris1/what_is.html)

There's been a great deal of debate over the issue of "curing autism." The arguments of advocacy groups like GRASP (Global and Regional Asperger's Partnership) have been that people with autism don't need to change, but to be accepted. Certainly, I can see the importance of establishing the understanding that being autistic is not a death sentence, that the autistic perspective is valuable and that parent's shouldn't -- as some parent's have -- endanger (and in at least one case, cause the death of) a child by trying so hard to "cure" autism. No one should try to change the person with autism. But, I for one, need help managing just to be me, as I am.

As a person with Asperger's Syndrome (an Autism spectrum disorder), I have wished that I could magically transform into someone who "clicked," "got it" and could express "it" clearly -- and sometimes I wish that people would just become interested in a different "it". What I need, and I suspect a great many adults with A.S. crave, is additional care. I need assistance with things which, for better or worse, I have to do -- a great many "its" that I can't conquer.

I panic at the least bit of change and I have no idea how to stop panicking. Panicking actually makes the most sense to me as, for me, the definition of A.S. is living in the "panic zone" -- being continually aware of all the variables in almost every situation. If there is a way to guide me through this, to help me know when to STOP panicking, I'd appreciate it. Basically, I go through my day in a panic, stopping along the way to live.

I don't know when not to speak my mind. I feel obliged to be honest. I feel guilty when I am dishonest. But, I am often honest at the worst times. I feel obliged to be honest despite the consequences. This is a grand mistake. I may be able to guide myself through this one myself, so long as I practice thinking about consequences. I'll still feel awful, but maybe I can weigh the advantages of getting into trouble vs. not getting into trouble.

I don't trust myself and I rarely trust others. When I am not panicked, I am usually just afraid. Unless I am eating, writing or sleeping.

I don't know if there is anyone or any system that can provide me with the care I would need to integrate confidently. But, along with acceptance, I require a great deal of tolerance, at least, if not outright assistance.

I've missed so many opportunities for advancement because of losing my temper or telling the truth.

I can barely organize my house.

I can hardly find things once I put them away.

I survive by cleverness and the seat of my pants. I could do much better with care.

(You can get this button and other clever Autism/Asperger's gear at http://www.cafepress.com/buy/autism/aspergers)

Free Fall

I don't really know what happens next.