for Mary Pearce, her family and friends

John Donne


Hymn to God, My God, in my Sickness

Since I am coming to that holy room,

Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,I shall be made thy music;

as I comeI tune the instrument here at the door,

And what I must do then, think here before.

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown

Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie

Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown

That this is my south-west discovery,

Per fretum febris, by these straits to die,

I joy, that in these straits I see my west;

For, though their currents yield return to none,

What shall my west hurt me?

As west and eastIn all flat maps (and I am one) are one,

So death doth touch the resurrection.

Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are

The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar,

All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them,

Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.

We think that Paradise and Calvary,

Christ's cross, and Adam's tree, stood in one place;

Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;

As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,

May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.

So, in his purple wrapp'd, receive me, Lord;

By these his thorns, give me his other crown;

And as to others' souls I preach'd thy word,

Be this my text, my sermon to mine own:

"Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down." John Donne

Iron Maiden: In memory of Mary Pearce

Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.
--Proverbs 27:17, King James Bible

Whenever I describe Mary Pearce to anyone, the first thing I say is that "she has a core of iron," for, except for her daughter, Sharon, I have never met anyone more strong-willed. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being this way -- as Proverbs teaches us, we become "sharpened" by our strong friends. And Mary Pearce was an incredible friend to me, as well as a substitute parent.

What made Mary Pearce so tough, in fact, was her ability to accept people and ideas. She never gave up on anyone, even if the person was so contrary that he/she -- usually me -- made her head spin. Not that she didn't give me a very strong argument back, not that she would give in to my argument, either, no matter how loud or intense I became. But, she was always willing to understand the perspectives of others. In time, we grew to agree more on things, most recently Barack Obama. It's possible that Sharon and I are now both more conservative than Mary was -- she saw a lot of possibility in this young administration, just as she saw a lot of promise in me and some of Sharon's other crazy friends. She reserved her greatest acceptance and belief for Sharon, who, like she did when she was young, moved thousands of miles away and did what people call "God's work" -- teach. It is very easy for me to imagine Mary captivating kindergartners with trees magically made from paper, her fine intelligence and her beautiful nature. People don't realize that small children are as hard to teach as teenagers -- and I think harder because they don't know what to be afraid of, yet. Children, however, do respond to the kind of love that is both truthful and encouraging -- and Mary Pearce was one of the few people in the world who could be both.

Because she recognized the potential, the sincerity and the spirit in me and in everyone she met, Mary Pearce made all of us feel more hopeful about our futures than we did.
And she changed us -- made us wiser, better and more honest. In doing so, she will also never leave us.

Gritting it out

I'm going to hold on until I either

1) Get a permanent position I want

or

2) Am placed somewhere

I am NOT GOING TO PANIC.

The ATR job market...same time, this year

So far, incentives and hiring freezes aside, all the experienced teachers I know over 40 seem to be getting the same cold shoulders they did last year. Teachers with 25 years of experience who are bilingual and can teach music and other things out of license are being asked, "Why should I hire you?"

I know one person with experience who was hired and he is 34.

I am "Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's" hopeful about one school which I adore and to which I hope I can be of use. Two more interviews loom at two other schools in which I'd gladly work and I plan to make big, cheerful presentations, full of aspirations, some student work, and concretely designed ideas. If my heart will not be sunk by the usual fear and sense of doom which comes from some of the continued grim realities of things, I should be able to do what I aim to do. It's amazing -- I can feel an influx of warm oil over the nerves and my brain sinks like a sponge full of jello. That's what it feels like when I think too much about the odds or the horrors my colleagues and I have experienced in downright disrespectful situations. None yet for me this year, and I hope (and I blow a full balloon inside my chest when I say that word) none too soon.

But, I know the removal of music and arts programs at certain schools is part of an effort to de-stabilize them so they can be closed. This ATR pattern is not going away.

If, in the end, 85 percent of the ATR's are not hired by finding their own jobs, but are sent by the DOE to be interviewed and eventually find work that way, why not start now? Klein initially called ATR's "undesireables" -- not many of the new principals have enough experience with older teachers to lose that first impression no matter how many times Klein now calls us worthy. Why not just place us now? Does Bloomberg think that in an election year he can negotiate a contract in which the UFT gives up job security? What would the UFT do, then, effectively? The 3020a process would dissipate as people could be excessed and then let go. Could they really justify their salaries just for a medical and dental plan (the latter of which I have spent my life avoiding using thanks to my uncle being a dentist. Since he retired, my teeth have been living in fear.) Would they just negotiate another raise? Would it just be about money? Then we would definitely be abandoning the children. No amount of money can replace acceptable working conditions. By acceptable, I mean ones in which the students and you feel secure enough to invest in the school in which you can be adventurous, challenging and creative.

I LOVE THIS GUY

He has talent and he hustles....tonight he said, "I just kept running. I heard the screaming and I just kept running." He never looked back. As Joe Girardi said, "We won this game because of Mark Teixeira's hustle."

The Summer Knows

I'm not sure of the season or the year because I've mostly blocked out everything that happened before graduate school. Out of an obsession with the movie, Summer of '42 which I still probably don't completely understand, but which haunts me, I'll choose it's eponymous season. The block in my memory is an almost conscious division of "Before my mother" and "After my mother." No, she didn't die, but the person who came back from graduate school wasn't as easily influenced by her. The person who came home from graduate school was remarkably self-confident and shrewd and took a friend's mention of a theater company that she had put in the back of her mind and worked it into a really interesting theatrical piece.

Summer of 1991 was before graduate school. Like I feel this morning, I traveled continually with an ashy, clammy fullness in my stomach. Worse than fear, it's a kind of death of spirit. I'd been addicted to a lot of bad habits and drawn a lot of people into them with me. The way some kids grew up playing "Cops and Robbers" I grew up playing "It's you and me against the world," with my mother and when she wasn't there, friends filled her place. It was a bad game, and some of my friends hated it so much they turned it simply into them vs. me -- which is also what my mother disintegrated to. When you can't pull off miracles, the singular army against the fates begins to curse its one footsoldier and soothsayer. There is no hope, not even pyrrhic victories in this kind of war. It's just about despair that luck continues to elude you and, again, as the messenger/diviner, I usually got a physical or emotional beating in the process. In other words: I desperately needed to get away. And I did.

Later on some of the people whom I got away from also got away. And that was good.

But, we're none of us are any different when we combine even now. And I am, at this period of my life, less confident than ever. It's silly, really. There's the shock of loss and being alone and not having a secure position for the first time since I was 22. And then there's the inability to wrap my mind around any of what happened on Sept 2, 2005. When all the facts have been re-assessed, it still makes no sense. It made no sense at that moment in Karen's or my life. And for once, I felt like not only she didn't, but I didn't deserve it. I finally had been and was doing what I was supposed to do. Always. And I got screwed anyway. (I know, me and a million other people, but like all of them, I say to my mirror, "I was supposed to be different. I was THE RESPONSIBLE one.") It would be hard for people who knew me back in 1991 to know just how RESPONSIBLE I had become. I was for a long, long time, not late, not without my research, not without the protoccols, not without the concerns, the questions, the answers and even the manners and I was able to leap small puddles with single bounds. I was no hero, but I had applied to the "Mensch" club and was awaiting membership. I had all the sponsors. Then a plane crashed with Karen B. Hunter in it and I kind of lost track of time. When I ran out of tasks -- closing up the office, etc., is when it got worse and when I really started to spin. There was something about having things to do for Karen that kept me okay. I still have photographs to print. I'm afraid to let that go.

In the three years which have past, I've lost all the drive that made me a "Mensch" and I never got my membership, as a result.

Back in 1991, there were no drugs involved and no alcohol and there aren't any now. Just that dangerous human frailty called judgement. Shortly after she died, someone once told me I was the perfect friend for Karen because I didn't judge her. I didn't like to judge people then and I still don't. It's not heroism and it's not cowardice. It's an awareness that everything that people do IS the best that they could do in those moments, and if you want to help them, the best thing to do is help them change the moments or how they see them. The only things I can't abide are acts of malice. But those are few and far between.

I used to be one of those young teachers -- back in the Summer of 1991, certainly, who thought that some people cared, some didn't, some people tried and some didn't. I've since learned that everybody cares and everybody tries. I've seen teachers beg kids to stay with them an extra minute to get it right -- teachers who kids say all sorts of mean-spirited things about. The truth is we are all so angry with each other because we all care very much. Colleagues who might retire in ten days are absolutely livid. I've been taught more about concern and diligence from people who are fiercely tough than those who seem more amiable.

The scary thing about being an ATR is you are rootless and you feel just like you did -- or I did-- when you started teaching. There's no sense of where you will go, although you've spent the better part of a lifetime working with at-risk youth, etc. It's like, for a moment, my past was washed away, and with it, the part of me that knows how to be cautious -- the part of me that left that summer never to call some people again, and to be hours away from others. The part of me that was quite sure of who I was and wanted to be. It wasn't to have an acronym that, on funny moments, reminds me of the Russian Tea Room (RTR). That was never a great restaurant, by the way. All atmosphere and some great waiters. Nick, you out there? My mother was the blonde with the attitude who was either too stingy or too generous. If that doesn't jar your memory, this will: she sent back drinks. Who does that? I am so sorry.

Nick I hope is somewhere in Florida. But, I'm in limbo. Karen is dead. And, no, I'm STILL not taking it well.

To find my boundaries again, is the goal of summer 2009.

Sleepy Bernie

Apros pos of fear of government power

NY Daily News * June 3rd, 2009

Juan Gonzalez

They are calling it the invasion of the charter schools.
It seems to work this way:
Parents at a neighborhood public school suddenly learn Chancellor Joel Klein has decreed they must surrender scarce classroom space in their building for a new charter school.
No parent or faculty meeting to gauge whether anyone wants the new school.
No official vote of the local Community Education Council.
Some young bureaucrat from the city Education Department's Office of Portfolio Development arrives one day with a bunch of maps under his arm and promptly orders a new allocation of rooms.
Boom. Done. All part of Klein's rush to create 100,000 new charter school seats over the next few years.
Well, yesterday afternoon at Public School 123 in Harlem, a bunch of angry parents staged a noisy protest against the charter invasion.
"Ours is not a failing school," Antoinette Hargrove, president of the parents association, said. "Our test scores are going up. If ain't broke, don't fix it." Hargrove said the Education Department wants to cap the growth of PS 123 even though the agency previously approved its expansion into middle school. At the same time, Klein wants to double the size of a new charter school in the same building. That school is Harlem Success Academy II, which former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz launched in September with 180 pupils. She wants to increase enrollment to 360 this fall. Klein often notes that thousands of parents have applied to get their kids into the four schools Moskowitz runs.
He never mentions the well-financed marketing campaign Moskowitz has fashioned to drum up those applications. Nor does he mention that the Education Department has sponsored thousands of automated phone calls to parents in Harlem to get them to apply to Harlem Success schools - something it does for no other public schools.
Hargrove and her parents association at PS 123 organized their own recruitment campaign this year with no money and no assistance from Klein. They held four open houses for the community and persuaded 644 parents to apply to their new middle school.
"We followed all the guidelines they told us to and now they're capping the number of new students," parent Rodney Askins said.
Even worse, half the current fifth-graders at PS 123 have been reassigned to other schools in the neighborhood for September, Hargrove said - all to make room for the expansion of the Moskowitz charter school.
Education Department spokeswoman Melody Meyer confirmed that many of those fifth-graders have been reassigned to other schools, but she denies the transfers were involuntary.
Some parents simply cited a preference for another middle school, Meyer said.
"It is the Department of Education and not me who determines the siting and space allocation for the Harlem Success Academies," Moskowitz said in a letter to parents of PS 123.
The Harlem fight is being repeated all over town. In Co-op City in the Bronx, parents at PS 106 are battling the Education Department's attempt to ram a new charter school into the building. In Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, hundreds of parents packed a neighborhood meeting a few days ago and forced the Education Department to cancel plans for a new Hebrew Language Charter School at Intermediate School 278. In Sunset Park, residents who fought for 20 years to build a new neighborhood high school are furious that the Education Department has slated a charter school for children from Park Slope to share the facility.
If Klein wants all these new charter schools, they say, let him build new sites for them. In no suburban school system in the state would parent concerns be so flagrantly disregarded.
Sadly, Bloomberg's style of mayoral control has become more like a dictatorship with velvet gloves.

Glorious Larry

Climbing Larry

Growing Old With You

We spent a lot of time just reading together, Karen and I. One time we read this article in The Financial Times about the fact that some people like Zurich, boring as it is, because it is quiet and clean...and boring. She tried to explain to me that she was one of those people. So am I, it turns out. I'd like a more intellectual set of people around me, but it's okay if all we do is talk at cafes or at the grocery store. It is a little hard for me to be surrounded by houses, though.
The last neighborhood Karen lived in, Dumbo, was kind of a combination of industrial, hip places and Zurich-like calm.

I have a colleague who has some of Karen's features and is the same age she would've been. Today I looked over at her face and mused about how pleasant it would be to have seen Karen grow old. The creases in the face outlining the stellar mouth, the reading glasses pulling you toward the eyes. The comfort of knowing not to be that anxious, most of the time. Just reading the newspaper and giggling about stories which seem far-fetched. Settling into a routine and still finding each other beautiful in a different way. The shoulders, like sandstone, carved and weightless. Confident hands, neat as pearls, both of us finally having figured out how to keep our nails clean and short. We were always digging, if only into our own fingers and that made for messy paws.

Most of all, we would have had the pleasure of not wanting to rush. Her apartment felt like a beach house and we could have just drifted into the waves while reading the morning paper.
I could have slept on her shoulders and she on mine, breezy with the day.