Brooklyn Bridge View

Karen Hunter took this photo one day on her way home from work bicycling over the Brooklyn Bridge. She loved that Bridge and it had figured into her life in several ways. I've never forgotten how she looked, bounding down the street on her bicycle, past the bus, disappearing into the traffic as if she were just a part of the movement of the day itself. It scared me how quickly she did that. She beat me to Canal Street from 14 Street by train. I still don't understand how, but then again, I was taking the "N" train. It was just ONE STOP, but there was the wait and I've grown so accustomed to the latter I wouldn't even have noticed it. Still, I was totally shocked when I got out of the train, and there she was, off of her blue Montegue bike, helmet off, but ipod still in ears, giving me this really big wave, huge smile that was already slowly converting to a kiss and big hug, her whole body reeling the slow poke in. "Of course I beat you," she said.

Karen B. Hunter, Nov. 23. 1951 - Sept 2. 2005

Tie for best quote

"And I realized he has tapped into the oldest American belief of all: We don't have to accept a situation we cannot bear. We have the power to change it..." --Joe Biden about Barack Obama, although it is the
"belief" that is key here.

A First

A Hillary Clinton Quote Worth Preserving. From Last Night's Speech.

"We need a President who understands that the genius of America has always depended on the strength and vitality of the middle class."

Michelle Obama is Great

It just needed to be said. I'll get her speech later this week.

BEST QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"America is not a company. Nowhere does it say that the President shall make a profit for his friends."
-- Randi Rhodes

It was a beautiful afternoon on the waterfront

For Karen B. Hunter

The 69th Street Pier, to be precise, but the water crossed it's fingers and twined itself into what felt like WATERFRONT. The lifting of blues and greens like pie under the crust of the city. An explosion of apples turned blue, green and lilting and dissolving into rain. Touchable.

Tree rings gripped downward into green algae along the wall of the Pier. The brown and white, black, and grey birds paraded toward crusts of bread. And I felt comfortable talking about spiritual places and feelings.

My friend went off on her bicycle and I left immediately, feeling I'd been close to you and wanting to take you home.

Here it is: Text of Joe Biden's First VP Campaign Speech

As beautiful as it is roughshod, and perhaps beautiful because it is roughshod. I love the guy, though not all of his views, and apparently he is popular across the country according to polls in one article at the Huffington Post. You just have to take for what he is because that's the only way you can. He's figured out how this team is going to work. I hope Barack Obama can fit into the template he's set up. He can give his speech and then just nodd through Joe's speeches. Kind of like salesmen or preachers did in the early twentieth century. Barack and Elmer Gantry? But, seriously, he's going for it. So what that he knows John McCain better than Obama -- his job is to beat the crap out of McCain, for one and he'll do a good job of it. Anyway, here's the speech, in all it's glory.

Well, it's great to be here! On the steps of the old State House in the land of Lincoln. President Lincoln once instructed us to be sure to put your feet in the right place. Then stand firm. Today, Springfield, I know my feet are in the right place. And I am proud to stand firm for the next president of the United States of America, Barack Obama. Folks, Barack and I come from very different places, but we share a common story. An American story. He was the son of a single mom, a single mom who had to struggle to support her son and her kids. But she raised him. She raised him to believe in America. to believe that in this country there is no obstacle that could keep you from your dreams. If you are willing to work hard and fight for it. I was different. I was an Irish-Catholic kid from Scranton with a father who like many of yours in tough economic times fell on hard times, but my mom and dad raised me to believe, it's a saying Barack you heard me say before, my dad repeated it and repeated it. Said champ, it's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how quickly you get up. It's how quickly you get up. Ladies and gentlemen, that's your story. That's America's story. It's about if you get up, you can make it.
That's the America Barack Obama and I believe in. That's the American dream. And ladies and gentlemen, is there no ordinary times, and this is no ordinary election. Because the truth of the matter is, and you know it, that American dream under eight years of Bush and McCain, that American dream is slipping away. I don't have to tell you that. You feel it in your lives. You see it in your shrinking wages, and the cost of everything from groceries to health care to college to filling up your car at the gas station. It keeps going up and up and up, and the future keeps receding further and further and further away as you reach for your dreams. You know, ladies and gentlemen, it is not a mere political saying. I say with every fiber of my being I believe we cannot as a nation stand for four more years of this. We cannot afford to keep giving tax cuts after tax cuts to big corporations and the wealthiest Americans while the middle class America, middle class families are falling behind and their wages are actually shrinking. We can't afford four more years of a government that does nothing while they watch the housing market collapse. As you know, it's not just the millions of people facing foreclosure. It's the tens of millions of your neighbors who are seeing the values of their homes drop off a cliff along with their dreams.
Ladies and gentlemen, your kitchen table is like mine. You sit there at night before you put the kids -- after you put the kids to bed and you talk, you talk about what you need. You talk about how much you are worried about being able to pay the bills. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's not a worry John McCain has to worry about. It's a pretty hard experience. He'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at. Folks, again, it's not political sloganary when I say we literally can't afford four more years of this non-energy policy written by and for the oil companies, making us more and more dependent from hostile nations on our ability to run this country and literally, not figuratively, literally putting America's security at risk, we can't afford four more years of a foreign policy that has shredded our alliances and sacrificed our moral standing around the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's the bad news. But there is good news, America. We don't have to have four more years of George W. Bush. And John McCain. The next President of the United States is going to be delivered to the most significant moment in American history since Franklin Roosevelt. He will have such an incredible opportunity, incredible opportunity, not only to change the direction of America, but literally, literally to change the direction of the world. Barack Obama and I believe, we believe with every fiber in our being that our families, our communities as Americans, there's not a single solitary challenge we cannot face if we level with the American people. And I don't say that to say it; history, history has shown it. When have Americans ever, ever, ever, let their country down when they've had a leader to lead them?
--
Ladies and gentlemen, we believe that our tomorrows will be better than our yesterdays, and we believe we'll pass on to our children an even better life than the one we lived. That literally has been the American way, and it can be that way again. But there's a big, missing piece. The missing piece is leadership.
In all my time in the United States Senate, and I want you to know there's only four senators senior to me, but Barack, there's still 44 older than me. I want you to know that part. But all kidding aside, of all my years in the Senate, I have never in my life seen Washington so broken. I have never seen so many dreams denied and so many decisions deferred by politicians who are trying like the devil to escape their responsibility and accountability. But, ladies and gentlemen, the reckoning is now. And the reality, the reality is that we must answer the call or we will risk the harshest version and verdict of history. These times call for a total change in Washington's worldview. These times require more than a good soldier. They require a wise leader. A leader -- a leader who can deliver. A leader who can deliver the change we need.
I'll say straight up to you - John McCain and the press knows this, is genuinely a friend of mine. I've known John for 35 years. He served our country with extraordinary courage and I know he wants to do right by America. But the harsh truth is, ladies and gentlemen, you can't change America when you boast. And these are John's words, quote, the most important issues of our day, I've been totally in agreement and support of President Bush. Ladies and gentlemen, that's what he said. You can't change America when you supported George Bush's policies 95% of the time. You can't change America when you believe, and these are his own words, that in the Bush administration we've made great progress economically. You can't change America and make things better for our senior citizens when you signed on to Bush's scheme of privatizing social security. You can't change America and give our workers a fighting chance when after 3 million manufacturing jobs disappear, you continue to support tax breaks for companies who ship our jobs overseas. You can't change America and end this war in Iraq when you declare and, again, these are John's words, no one has supported President Bush in Iraq more than I have, end of quote. Ladies and gentlemen, you can't change America, you can't change America when you know your first four years as president will look exactly like the last eight years of George Bush's presidency.
My friends -- yes, we can. My friends, I don't have to tell you, this election year the choice is clear. One man stands ready to deliver change we desperately need. A man I'm proud to call my friend. A man who will be the next president of the United States, Barack Amer -
You know, you learn a lot of things being up close with a guy. Let me tell you about Obama. You learn a lot about a man when you campaign with him. When you debate him 12 or 13 times. When you hear him speak. When you see how he thinks. And you watch how he reacts under pressure. You learn a lot about his strength of his mind, and I think even more importantly, the quality of his heart. Ladies and gentlemen, no one knows better than I do that presidential campaigns are crucibles in which you're tested and challenged every single day. And over the past 18 months, I've watched Barack meet those challenges with judgment, intelligence, and steel in his spine. I've watched as he's inspired millions of Americans, millions of Americans to this new cause.
And during those 18 months, I must tell you, frankly, I've been disappointed in my friend, John McCain, who gave in to the right wing of his party and yielded to the very swiftboat politics that he so -- once so deplored. And folks, campaigns for presidents are a test of character and leadership. And in this campaign, one candidate, one candidate has passed that test.
Barack has the vision, and what you can't forget, you know his vision, but let me tell you something. He also has the courage, the courage to make this a better place, and let me tell you something else, this man is a clear eyed pragmatist who will get the job done. I watch with amazement as he came to the Senate. I watch with amazement. He made his mark literally from day one reaching across the aisle to pass legislation to secure the world's deadliest weapons, standing up to some of the most entrenched interests in Washington, risking the wrath of the old order to pass the most sweeping ethics reform in a generation. But I was proudest, I was proudest, when I watched him spontaneously focus the attention of the nation on the shameful neglect of America's wounded warriors at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Ladies and gentlemen, I know I'm told I talk too colloquially, but there's something about this guy. There's something about this guy. There's something about Barack Obama that allows him to bring people together like no one I have worked with and seen. There's something about Barack Obama that makes people understand if they make compromises they can make things better.
It's been amazing to watch him. But then again, that's been the story of his whole life. I end where I began. This is a man raised by a single mother who sometimes was on food stamps as she worked to put herself through school, by grandparents from the prairies of Kansas who loved him, a grandfather, a grandfather who marched in Paton's Army and then came home and went to college on the G.I. Bill, and a grandmother, a grandmother with just a high school education, started off working in a small bank in the secretarial pool and rose to be vice president of that bank. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, these remarkable people gave Barack Obama the determination and drive, and, yes, the values to turn down that big job on Wall Street, to come to Chicago's south side, where he helped workers help themselves after the steel mills had been shut down and the jobs disappeared.
Ladies and gentlemen, my wife Jill, who you'll meet soon, is drop dead gorgeous. My wife Jill, who you'll meet soon, she also has her doctorate degree, which is a problem. But all kidding aside, my Jill, my Jill, my wife Jill and I are honored to join Barack and Michelle on this journey, because that's what it is. it's a journey. We share the same values, the values that we had passed on to us by our parents and the values Jill and I are passing on to our sons Beau and Hunter and Ashley.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here for their future. I'm here for the future of your kids. I'm here for everyone I - I'm here for everyone I grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, who's been forgotten and everybody in Claymont, Delaware, in Wilmington where I lived. I'm here for the cops and the fire fighters, the teachers and the line workers, the folks who live - the folks whose lives are the measure of whether the American dream endures.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is no ordinary time. This is no ordinary election. And this may be our last chance to reclaim the America we love, to restore America's soul. Ladies and gentlemen, America gave Jill and me our chance. It gave Barack and Michelle their chance to stand on this stage today. It's literally incredible. These values, this country gave us that chance. And now it's time for all of us, as Lincoln said, to put our feet in the right place and to stand firm. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to elect Barack Obama president. It's our time. It's America's time. God bless America, and may he protect our troops.

If I'm 64

When I get old, and lose all my hair,....

Actually, my hair began to thin years ago when I was just a little kid because of sebhorreic dermatitis which got really aggravated by the 1980's craze for permanents combined with my mother's crusade to get my god-given thin and fine hair to look thick and wavy like the actresses' on television she adored from the decade prior. It took decades to get it under control, which it pretty much is now, too late for me to perfect the Farah Fawcett look for my mother, who still wishes I could. Somewhere, in some small town in Wisconsin, I bet, is a girl about 8, who ice skates and still has that hair style and whose mother just smokes and drinks all day, and is dying for my mother to just take her to the salon. It's not a tragedy, but it's a Beth Henley movie that never got made.

It's okay. Odds are, the little girl will grow up and be a delightful friend to a very nice queer boy and they'll make good roommates. Thankfully, he'll get rid of that hair, so, it will have a happy ending, at least for her. Perhaps he runs for Senator as a Republican, gets in, has an exalted career then comes out and has an even better one. Okay, now it's a Harvey Fierstein movie that he could still make.
Harvey? I would like this so much better than seeing you play my grandfather in A Catered Affair. Not that I don't like seeing you get work. It's just jolting because I've been thinking of you as my sister and my mother for years. But, you're very handsome, so don't worry about it. I'll buy it. You're one of those beings that probably NO ONE would throw out of bed. I wouldn't and you're not usually in my field of vision.

Reaching for the diet soda and reading glasses and hearing myself breathe, this is as close to the "promised end" as I think I can feel comfortable being. My teeth already are just thin postules with nerves rigged right to the center of my skull that shatter every time extremes of temperature hit them. And I could tell you where my mother's hip was most disintegrated because the same pattern has begun on mine. The generation before me either buckled down and exercised and took vitamins, or, like my mother, resigned themselves to their fate, dug into the ground deeply and drove their bodies like cars on "The Flintstones" -- grinding those rock wheels down until they were nothing and collecting their pensions. My mother worked 35 years for the New York City Department of Health at a Dental Assistant. The woman speaks fluent French, is a term shy of a BA, can outwit me at Chess half asleep, and outsmarted my father's legal team after five years of litigation basically by herself. And she handed doctors their instruments, filled in patients' charts, calmed little kids down for their appointments, kept the clinic from coming apart, commuted for about two hours each way across Brooklyn neighborhoods that ranged from the suburban-like to the urban-rap-video-audition-like day-in, day-out. All that to reach 64. Then the magic 65. My mother actually retired at 55. Her mind and her body could not endure more. I believe she was able to collect her pension at 57, but I'm not sure, but 55, was a mutual agreement between her and the Department of Health. Either way, by that time, the damage was mostly done.

I'm 40, and the exercise videos do not look inviting. A friend begged me to join a gym, even arranged for me to get into one free and I still would not go. When I leave my house, I feel no fellow-feeling from the world outside me. My city hates teachers and I move like a spy. There is no one I recognize to stop and say hello to, my friends are all in the various continuums of their lives. There is too much pressure associated with every task, too and almost all of us want privacy in doing it; we are embarassed by the compromises we must make and by the fact that we cannot help each other swiftly, easily or smartly. Sometimes what I said yesterday was flat out wrong, I didn't hear the person right. I'm not as up on things as I used to be. I don't have the "rightness" of my youth. I can't explain what that was.
It wasn't just confidence. When you're young, you hear about what people are buying because your parents are buying stuff for you. When you're old, you're not buying stuff, so you're out of the loop.

So, I conserve my stone wheels. I am not my mother's daughter. I am even looking at replacing the hip sooner, before it gets too painful -- which doctors now encourage you to do. Why wait? You know what's coming and so do they? It's not going to get better. NOTHING is going to make it better. I might as well "slouch toward Bethlehem" comfortably".

Our parents, I think, had a certainty about being 64. Paul McCartney didn't sing, "If I'm 64." My generation isn't very sure about it. Just as it's jarring to see people from my childhood now playing grandparents, there is also no plan in our generation for where we are going to go when we retire. This is the generation that is going to have to fight for its Social Security checks and imagines itself possibly living with children or in shelters. Or just can't think about it. We are barely managing to make it from year-to-year.

I have to keep my wheels comfortable because I may have to use them for as long as I am on the planet -- whatever age that is. For a good part of my free time, I did research on the best sneakers I could find to support my feet through my job. They also had to be "shoe-like" enough to be worn to school. That was my big investment of the summer.

Last night, I got into a tear-ridden conflict with someone over what computer to buy with the issue being weight over function, with the former being a major issue because the person has to carry the machine everywhere. Again, the issue of keeping the stone wheels and chassis as in-tact as we can raises its ugly head. We'd all love to go to the gym and some of us do and some of us will. The trouble for all of us is time. Our jobs get more and more labor-intensive every year. What Bloomberg and other business-driven managers do when they re-design systems is they put more work on fewer individuals and in so doing, give us all longer work days. Since schools do not generally have gyms open to faculty the way businesses have gyms, teachers can't work out in the course of a 12 hour day -- and it is completely inappropriate for teachers and students to work out together for obvious reasons. On weekends we have papers to grade, our families to see, errands to run, etc. You may find this hard to believe, but many teachers actually have to take their own children places on weekends and that then takes their own time and then they have little personal time of their own. So, teachers often become out of shape. Carrying around a 2 pound laptop vs. a 6 pound laptop can make a huge difference in a long day. Anyone who has carried around a baby, a set of books, groceries, etc. knows what this can be like.

So, I can't fathom it. 64. I just can't.

Statistics and ELL courtesy of ED in the Apple

for ED in the Apple go to http://mets2006.wordpress.com/

Why Are We Failing English Language Learners? The Children of Immigrants Deserve to Be At the Top of Department Agenda, Not Ignored.
August 18, 2008 ·

“betraying a whole generation of immigrant kids who are struggling to succeed”

The New York State Education Department, pointing out the “pluses” and “minuses,” released the High School Graduation data from the 2003 cohort (students graduating in June/August 2007). The SED reports that 25.2 % of ELL students enrolling in 2003 graduated, 29.4% dropped out, and 40% are still enrolled. The percentage of ELL students who are graduating is declining.

The percentage of ELL students graduating declined by 5% between the 2001 and 2003 cohorts.

The NYC Department of Education, in a gloating power point, report a rise in the graduation rate for ELL students.

The graduation rate among English Language Learners rose 3.1 points to 23.5 in 2007, after falling from 26.5 percent in 2005 to 20.4 percent in 2006.

The disparity in the State and the City numbers is distressing, especially since 76% of ELL students are in New York City.

The Immigrant Coalition slammed the low ELL graduation rates in an article in Gotham Gazette.

Who are English Language Learners (ELL)?

* The U.S. Department of Education defines the term limited English proficient child as an individual

(A) who is aged 3 through 21;

(B) who is enrolled or preparing to enroll in an elementary school or secondary school;

(C) (i) who was not born in the United States or whose native language is a language other than English; (ii) (I) who is a Native American or Alaska Native, or a native resident of the outlying areas; and (II) who comes from an environment where a language other than English has had a significant impact on the individual’s level of English language proficiency; or (iii) who is migratory, whose native language is a language other than English, and who comes from an environment where a language other than English is dominant; and

(D) whose difficulties in speaking, reading, writing, or understanding the English language may be sufficient to deny the individual– (i) the ability to meet the state’s proficient level of achievement on state assessments described in section 1111(b)(3); (ii) the ability to successfully achieve in classrooms where the language of instruction is English; or (iii) the opportunity to participate fully in society.

Source: Federal PL 107-110, The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Title IX, General Provisions, Part A Definitions, Section 9101(25)

Looking at the same data the City applauds themselves while the State sees serious inequities.

An acquaintance was visiting the City for the first time in over a decade; staying in, believe it or not, a bed and breakfast in Brooklyn. She strolled through a South Asian neighborhood along Coney Island Avenue to an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood along Avenue J to a Caribbean neighborhood through a Chinese neighborhood. Ethnic diversity is at the core of this wonderful City. Families from around the world, hardworking, conscientious, seeking what is best for their children; repeating the experiences of our ancestors who fled the bigotry and poverty of the old world.

What is so troubling is that we know what works. For example, the International High Schools, a network of nine public high schools serving 2700 ELL students around the City, has an outstanding record of serving the immigrant community.

Under the current organization principals are measured solely by the Progress Report grade, and, unfortunately, too many schools have no idea how to provide appropriate instruction for ELL students. No one monitors anything, and pushing aside ELL kids is not uncommon.

The 140,000 (13.4%) ELL students in the NYC school system are entitled

Some straight talk about health care from a candidate I wish I could vote for, but I can't

From the Wall Street Journal

February 25, 2008, 12:38 pm
Nader on Health Care: Single Payer is the Way to Go
Posted by Sarah Rubenstein
For all of their talk about universal health care, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton look pretty conservative on the issue, compared with yes-he’s-running-again-for-president Ralph Nader.

In announcing his 2008 bid for the White House on “Meet the Press” yesterday, Nader said: “All, all the candidates — McCain, Obama and Clinton — are against single-payer health insurance, full Medicare for all. I’m for it, as well as millions of Americans and 59% of physicians in a forthcoming poll this April.”

Nader’s campaign Web site is scant on details so far, but he’s talked plenty about the issue. In an interview with “Democracy Now!” last July, for instance, Nader said if he had it his way, health care in the U.S. would “look like full Medicare for everybody, whereby the government is the payer.”

He added, “In Western countries, the outcomes in terms of infant mortality, in terms of life expectancy, in terms of lower levels of anxiety — they don’t have to worry about losing their life savings for a tragic illness — are all better than the United States system.” His single-payer idea contrasts with Clinton’s and Obama’s plans, which wouldn’t be funded solely by the government.

Here’s Nader’s relevant press release from his 2000 run for the White House, in which he says “massive savings” from creating a single-payer, government-funded system would pay for universal coverage. “Under the current system, hundreds of billions of dollars a year go into insurance company overhead, unnecessary and fraudulent billing and administrative costs for health-care providers, and huge profits and high salaries at large HMOs and other health-care companies.”

In this video, Nader receives lots of cheers from a crowd as he talks about universal health care. In case more money is needed to fund such a program, he says, it could come from “the fat cats on Wall Street who buy millions of shares and hundreds of thousands of options every day, and trillions of dollars of transcations every week — they don’t pay any sales tax.”

Students in Need

This past week I went on an interview with an organization that targets students who don't do well on standardized tests. In the age of high stakes testing, this is especially important. Think back to your days in school and imagine, if not yourself, a kid in your class who was always making good comments or helping out with activities, or was really fantastic at building sets for the shows but somehow always got a C or a D on exams. Now take that kid and imagine he or she is in a school without regular activities to keep him or her interested and that he or she has a lot of family and/or personal responsibilities. So, he or she is barely passing school. But, you and I know that's a kid who has so much to give and who really understands the work. For some reason, the tests just don't reflect what we've seen in REAL LIFE ACTION.

Those kids are slipping through the cracks more now than ever -- the kids who just don't -- and won't ever test well. It's not that they can't be taught to do better. They can. But, they already are excellent at applying their skills and knowledge differently and its unfair to deny them the opportunity for alternative assessment just because they have an alternative learning style.

And college, as we all know is a much more "project based" learning environment. You do papers as often as you do tests and you are expected to present information with the kind of mastery that is required in leading in activity. Even the exams require more critical thinking and there is more room to prepare for them in larger chunks. I'll never forget the first time I learned that my professor kept old exams on file. I sat with my TA and went over my answers to all the old exams beforehand. I studied for exams in units -- I know that high school curricula are taught in units, but as a student, things go too fast for you to be conscious of them. They did for me, but I was absent a lot. Then again, so are these kids.

I know, believe me, that we all have bigger problems. I'm pointing these kids out so that, as we go back into the mayhem, we have something else to focus on during the pain. It's awful to say, but I am now beginning to feel like a person with a chronic condition whose best off focusing on other people's needs because nothing can be done that hasn't been with her own.

Lou at the Office

for my father, Louis Kay

Lou left the office with a folder pushed against the cardboard belt that cracked along his waistline. He wore no coat though the temperature was near freezing and his cigarette would barely light. Smoke hit his windshield as he seated himself behind the wheel and the folder splattered onto the passenger seat. "Forward," he thought. He put the cigarette out against the top of a window that is permanently open about an inch.

But first he ripped the crummy belt off, tearing it to bits so that the fake leather covering separated from the cardboard. He laughed uncontrollably. "Bullshit," he said out loud.

A rancid and boney cough finished out his laughter and he shook it out with his fingers and pressed them against his thighs and felt rapidly along his pockets. Then he hit his chest and got his car keys out. With the other hand, he whipped out a cigarette and chewed. "Yellow." The key with the yellow top was put in the ignition and the car purred. "Yallow, Yellow."

"How many damn times do I have to come by this car and find you talking to yourself, Lou? I told you, the only way to keep from being a crazy old motherfucker is to chase beautiful things--with your camera, that is," said Ying a senior Math professor from the college nearby whose taxes Lou did for about twenty years now. Ying's voice projected onto Lou's windshield, but he appeared almost invisible to Lou as he weighed maybe 70 pounds and stood no taller than 4 foot 5. But, every time he talked, Lou thought god himself came down and held a recording session inside his car. He did not turn around. For about five seconds, he shut his eyes.

" Ying. I had an old fashioned. Fold up kind, like in the movies. Amazing thing. Like you can only see in museums. Takes all day just to set it up, but the...most..wondrously ingratiating thing. Took a picture of my family, they looked like a cloud floated in and around them. My mother and father and brothers and sisters. A.J. has it. I think."

"So, get it out"

"Gone with my ex-wife and riddance, too, please. No negotiation."

" That's too bad, but Lou they make--"

"Not. Not. Just wouldn't."

"Abstract mathematics?"

"Ying, honest..."

"Just take care of yourself, Lou. You're the only one who knows how to lie with the face of St. Peter for me. You get home safely." And Ying walked away, measuring his footsteps against each other, not really knowing why he had watched Lou or said what he did, and hoping to return to some habit of the night that would take him out of this sudden, contemplative mood.

"Nonsense," spat Lou. "NONNNNNNNNNSENSE." He pounds the flat of his hands on the wheel, then presses his forehead on it for ten seconds. "Drive on. Got to drive on."

"He wishes he had SOMETHING for me to lie for." "He don't know. Fucking lifetime it takes. The whole thing. SOMETHING."
Lou lit his cigarette and the car went forward as the smokering bathed the avenue behind him.

Eight year old fashionista

My close friend of nearly 25 years told her daughter, casually, while she was on the phone with me, "pack your suitcase within reason." The child is 8.

Within reason. That would have had no meaning to me at 8. My mother would have had to have given me an amount. The concept of what was reasonable in contemporary society, or by adult standards, would have been alien to me. That there was such a thing as "reasonable concepts" about how big your suitcase should be would have floored me. I think I might have started to realize, way too early, that society was judging me much more than I knew and I would have hidden underneath the bed while I was still thin enough to do so. Good thing that we didn't really go on vacations back then, and, if we did (I can't remember when the fatal day was that we began those awful bus pilgrimages to Loch Sheldrake), my mother did all the packing. Had she left it up to me, I'd've packed three t-shirts, two pairs of jeans, a book, my baseball glove, my softball, my baseball, a couple of pairs of underwear, an entire drawer of baseball cards and my sneakers. No shorts. I hated my shorts.

But, while I was reminiscing about a younger, more American-goofy me, apparently my friend's daughter was divining outfits for breakfast, lunch and dinner to go in said luggage. Something about scarves or some other -- I don't know the word. I don't use the word. Those things that go with your clothes. I don't carry one. I don't wear one around my neck. I generally have nothing hanging from my ears and what I have on my hands are the ring I gave Karen and a ring resembling the one a director friend and mentor named Tom Neumiller wore all the time that I wear in his memory.
Accessories. I'm much better with that word when it relates to people who've assisted in crimes.

My friend's daughter spends her entire schoolday in silence. It's called "Selective Mutism". She whispers to one teacher and one highly educated paraprofessional with intense sympathy that fate was lucky to have them meet. Otherwise, nothing. She does her work. But, she's beautifully invisible. A brightly coordinated Bartleby the Scrivener. She will not talk directly to most of her fellow students. She will whisper to the paraprofessional who will pass the words along. But she is adamant. Her mother tells me that she has plans to make friends with select students. She whispers to some of them. Slowly she hopes that as she whispers to them, she will become comfortable with them and they her. And eventually, they will become friends. That's the plan. All within a reasonable amount of time.

I spent the second grade in total silence and I loved it. But I had talked in years before. (I don't remember if I talked to my friends at recess and at lunch. I just didn't participate in class. I wrote everything to the teacher in my homework and classwork. I remember the delighted look on her face when she got my work.) This was a choice to save my energies for my writing. I felt ashamed somehow by the previous years. As I get older, I find myself longing more and more for silence. There seems to be less judgement in it and more opportunities to reflect and actually say what I mean. One long-time friend actually told me that I don't really say anything when I speak, which is why she always talks over me, and another friend texts me almost exclusively because she says that I don't really listen otherwise and that I don't really focus. Maybe the writing for me is like packing that bag, I can work and work it through on my own until it is "reasonable," plucking through the words myself until they are just right. I take between 20 minutes to an hour to send off emails because I revise and revise them, from long explanations with jokes and stories I had hoped to tell the person, each time, asking myself if the person
really needs to know that piece of information, will he or she really find that amusing, relevant, important. What was once a page is usually four or five lines by the time I'm done. Some of my friends require that the email just be the subject line and one line more and that's tough, but I can do it. Who am I to demand more than this, if that their necessary limit? It's reasonable. It's just work and I'm not afraid of work and neither is my friend's 8 year old daughter.

What I'm afraid of is finding myself unprepared because there is no exit or back-up strategy if you fail -- she knows this, too. No one can translate what you didn't whisper to the one person you trusted and if you don't do your homework then you have no proof that you understood anything. You're dependent on very few people and that makes school a kind of burden. Fashion just involves you and your clothes which is quite a relief.

It's all the things you can't control that lead to mushy answers that I think are probably what make us both clam up. So many questions people ask not only have no one answer and no right answer, but absolutely no measurable or reasonable answer. A principal asked me how I prepare for my classes. The truth is, it depends on 1) if I know what I'll be teaching because sometimes I don't know. 2) What he means by prepare? I do some of it all the time. I buy books as I see them and I start preparing as I get my books. Sometimes I have no idea what I'm teaching until I walk into the building. Sometimes it becomes clear to me that everything I prepared should be thrown out. And I always re-do everything anyway. I am always re-doing. Re-touching. Adding. I collect materials all the time. I keep going and going. Nothing has stayed exactly the same. I have a mainstay of materials, but I keep adding. Mulch. It's not a simple answer. And I don't have one answer.

I can see why my friend's daughter focuses on what to wear. Clothing can be a comfort and a decision that is a matter of one's own taste. There need be no shame in it.