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.

Disappearing

Just

a minute or a day or a week or something ago, right? Ago. What does "ago" mean? I'm sitting here, enfolded in the closing day. The dustiness of it, but without chalkiness - just the greyness, the quiet. Like "taking tea". My windows are spotty and it might be drizzling outside, but it's too humid to open them. Stray chirpings and a child's wild scream keep me from feeling completely cozy or quiet.

So many people have gone away. On vacation, into new habits, into different work schedules and into that thing that happens. The disappearing. It's not always permanent. The ritual between summer and fall when some of the friends you have made shed away the lives that brought them to you. For some, it is a very good thing. There is an arc of healing the person is beginning that you're simply not on yet, or they're moving to a new city or something. Or, you have nothing in common but some part of the part of the abysmal part of the experience of your job and that is all you talk about so you wont talk to each other until September or never if you will never work together again.

Or something happens like someone realizes something about you, you thought they either knew or hoped they would never know, or worse, hoped wasn't true anymore, or just plain didn't know about yourself. Like you caught yourself making a stupid choice, or worse, a horrific, mostrously costly choice after you'd already made it -- it was too late. Well, they caught it. They thought they could handle it, but then, and how could you blame them, they just...disappeared. What was there to say?

They didn't want to know how you were because you were horrifyingly wrong. You hadn't protected them from getting badly hurt, either. You were...vacant of everything previously interesting. The one thing about you -- your seeming intelligence -- had proved useless. You were hollow. So, what was there to know.

And so the person just doesn't answer your calls anymore. Doesn't read your emails or send you any. He or She just disappears. And if you see that person, he or she will just run away. There will be no explanation because "you know." And you do. You failed in the most basic way a friend can fail and so he or she just walks away. It's like a code. And it always seems to happen in the summer. At least, to me.

I'm so sorry. To all those who have waved or are walking away.
I know it's feeble to say that I didn't want any of it to happen, but I didn't. Your disappearing has made me much more aware of my own failings and now, as I write this, perhaps, of the fact that I should stop seeking so much comfort and joy when I have brought so little and I have made so much disappear.

Cassie-Licious

Cassie

Sweet, sweet, sweet cassie, catnip, cassie-licious, cassie, calligraphy

of clouds and cotton newly woven.

Cassie.

Right here. She is, she is.

Cassie, the miracle cat who leaped up from the snow and followed Michael home and whom Sharon snarfed away to be especially safe and warm with her and the Queequeg, of all people, whom she kind of adored from her haunts up above him on bookshelves, in closets and even right alongside his nose sometimes. One magical Christmas Mary came to visit and she and the Wigster went to Chicago for the holiday, but Cassie got to stay there after New Years where she and Mary can look out the window at the flowers and play and she can make her VERY OWN MESSES of the very special candy dishes and NOT sit on the couch and get brushed and pet and hog ALL the attention all these things that Cassie doesn't very much mind, those she is very broken about the not having the Wigster, as it turns out and she's all torn without Sharon, but she used to see both of them on holidays and she still sees Sharon. She still sees the Wigster, but she doesn't tell too many people. He always comes to visit her and they fight and talk about why they fight and how they secretly loved each other all along. She just wishes he were always there and not just in spirit -- but she'll never tell. Neither will he.

But, Cassie's a smiling girl, especially when the family is all together like today when Sharon is in Chicago. But she loves being Mary's cat and they are just right together. They always knew that. Two very particular and pretty women who know what they want before they even think it and followed their hearts and their minds which lead their feet and bodies to each other. They knew they were on the right path. They just had to believe in themselves and keep going. The right place wasn't far away. Love was everywhere, and it just kept getting better.

Oh--incidentally, I heard, that one time, Ms. Cassie was sitting up in her perch at Sharon's apartment and she was given some catnip and she was kind of rolling in it and she attained the knickname, "the catnip bird". That's a famous nickname of hers.

Down by the River

Read the lyrics. Then go on.

Neil Young - Down by The River Lyrics
Be on my side,
I'll be on your side, baby
There is no reason for you to hide
It's so hard for me staying here all alone
When you could be taking me for a ride.
Yeah, she could drag me over the rainbow, send me away
Down by the river I shot my baby
Down by the river,Dead, oh, shot her dead.
You take my hand, I'll take your hand
Together we may get away
This much madness is too much sorrow
It's impossible to make it today.
Yeah, she could drag me over the rainbow, send me away
Down by the river I shot my baby
Down by the river,Dead, oh, shot her dead.
Be on my side, I'll be on your side, baby
There is no reason for you to hide
It's so hard for me staying here all alone
When you could be taking me for a ride.
Yeah, she could drag me over the rainbow, send me away
Down by the river I shot my baby
Down by the river,Dead, oh, shot her dead.

Now, this was playing in Starbucks. I have heard the song lots of times, but I've never listened to it closely -- I just knew something agonizing happened by a river. My best friend loves Neil Young. I heard the song a lot in my early 20's. I knew -- Neil Young, sincere, ex-addict (Needle and damage done...) Later, Reaganite, god knows why. Didn't know exactly where he stood now. Son has autism.

I SHOT MY BABY?

Over and over again over my Vanilla Soy Latte. Now, I have written elsewhere about the collisions of the homeless people and the lattes and how the sensibility is more than steel-toe ironic.

Maybe it's heroine.

Maybe it's the voice of a young criminal he's imagining.

HOW THE FRIG DO WE KEEP TALKING ABOUT ANYTHING WHEN THERE'S JUST BEEN A SONG WITH SO MUCH BLOOD IN IT, EITHER WAY. Even if the next song is HAPPY TALK! You know? From "South Pacific"? Sounds like Dr. Norman Vincent Peale on Heroine:

Happy talk, keep talking happy talk
Talk about things you like to do
You got to have a dream, if you don't have a dream
How you gonna have a dream come true?
Talk about the moon floating in the sky
Looking at a lily on the lake
Talk about a bird learning how to fly
Making all the music he can make!
etc......

I WANT TO GET ON THE TABLE. "People, the gentleman on the SOUND SYSTEM has declared that either he has killed a lover, his innocence or that he used to use heroine and is in such a dynamic state of fear that HE IS RIGHT IN THAT MOMENT AGAIN. I THINK WE SHOULD JUST STOP. I REALLY THINK WE SHOULD:
Cut the b.s.
Put the coffee down.
Stop talking about jobs and parents.
And just look at each other.
And then someone should go get some washcloths and we should just.
Wash our faces.
And start talking about
Do we have what we NEED?
Do our friends?
Does everyone we talk to -- everyone -- the neighbor, the guy at the next carrell at work, the people in our family. What could we do so that they had what they NEED.
What about other people we know of -- the people we read about -- google Naomi Klein and Jeffrey Sachs when we get home and send them ten dollars toward what they do, if we can REALLY afford that. Some can, some can't. Don't do more than that. Pick a number you can do often. Without thinking. So that it's like breathing or washing your face.

I'm sorry, you can't play "Down by the River" in a Starbucks and not declare an emergency. Maybe you should. And the day that about 150 people hear "I shot my baby" and just sip their coffee is a day that we are
1) just a few months from voting for two candidates for president, neither of whom should be trusted with a litterbox
2) we are walking into an election year with no plan to save the planet or the world
3) we have grown to hate our children so much that all we think about in terms of education is cutting spending and designing tests

oops.

I shall be taking my latte in the park.

Accursing

The English is Italic, The Hebrew transliteration is bold, and the translation of the Hebrew is in plain text. I wanted to know how something becomes accursed -- from the way the Hebrew word defines it, the objects are accursed because of what happened to them -- they were used by a culture that did not obey the Old Testament god. And in taking them, the Israelites would become accursed. The objects, however, did not do anything. They were part of a culture which did. The actions of that culture made them accursed. Those actions were deemed accursed by the culture -- Joshua's -- which was victorious. No one will ever know what the People of Ai had to say for themselves about it. We have to take Joshua's word and the way it was transcribed in the most popular version of the Old Testament story. I've always found him fair, but that may purely be because he came after the ever-popular Moses, and after two grades of a man I ridiculously imagined in the shape of a Protestant from Northfield, Illinois who now runs the NRA, I was ready for someone I could picture as a conventional teenager with an open mind and new ideas. I mean, young "let my people go" Charleton was ok for fourth grade me. By sixth grade, I was ready for someone who could write Supreme Court amendments, especially as we were reading Brown v. Board of Ed in Secular Studies. Sadly, I don't remember much about him beyond occasional stories, but this was a very important one. The accursed things were certainly accursed, but by what was done, not by birth.

Something becomes accursed when it is badly used. Someone becomes accursed, if people do, in a similar fashion. In an age when we no longer have the benefits of splitting oceans and must rely on science and negotiations and poetry, perhaps we can un-accurse things by re-using them well. We don't have endless supplies of things the way we used to -- no children of gods come down and multiply fishes. We've run out of favors from all manner of gods and goddesses, or they've decided it's time for us to grow up. Isn't that why we were given the abilities to write poetry, music, theater, do science, negotiate, create minor energies, etc.? So that they could go on and travel and do other things and not expend their energies, much needed to sustain us, so we could sustain ourselves?

So let us stop accursing -- and start re-claiming. The trick is how to cleanse someone who has been so badly used, or something, etc. But, certainly there are enough of us to solve this. My cats would say, by golly, just start washing!

Translation:
http://scripturetext.com/joshua/6-18.htm

Joshua 6:18


And ye in any wise raq (rak)leanness, i.e. (figuratively) limitation; only adverbial, merely, or conjunctional, although
keep yourselves from shamar (shaw-mar')to hedge about (as with thorns), i.e. guard; generally, to protect, attend to, etc. yourselves from
the accursed thing cherem (khay'-rem)physical (as shutting in) a net (either literally or figuratively); usually a doomed object; abstr. Extermination

lest ye make yourselves accursed charam (khaw-ram')to seclude; specifically (by a ban) to devote to religious uses (especially destruction); physical and reflexive, to be blunt as to the nose
when ye take laqach (law-kakh')to take (in the widest variety of applications)

of the accursed thing cherem (khay'-rem)physical (as shutting in) a net (either literally or figuratively); usually a doomed object; abstr. Extermination

and make suwm (soom)to put (used in a great variety of applications, literal, figurative, inferentially, and elliptically)wholly, work.

the camp machaneh (makh-an-eh')an encampment (of travellers or troops); hence, an army, whether literal (of soldiers) or figurative (of dancers, angels, cattle, locusts, stars; or even the sacred courts)
of Israel

Henry

leaning on larry, leaning on henry, leaning on larry, leaning on henry, etc. henry in white...

An amazing story

Roll back seven years ago. My first bonding experience with Henry came when the radiator cap came off our heater and, being a nice Jewish girl and not knowing how to put it back on, I called the fire department as the steam filled my bedroom, then my apartment. I shut the door on the bedroom and had to chase Henry out of there. The fire dept came and left, not at all surprised by my call (my neighborhood is right next door to Hasidic Jewish Boro Park) and I saw Larry, but no Henry. Frantic, I raced around the apt and I thought he left. Finally, I noticed Larry's nose had been pointed toward the bottom of the refrigerator the entire time. I looked down to find Henry's little white butt stuck at the bottom. He got under, but couldn't get out. I reached down and gently pulled him out and from that moment and onward had a purring Henry in my arms.

Flash forward to this morning. I wake up and I see Larry, but no Bernie. I ask Larry, where's Bernie and he won't move. I'm like, "You know, Bernie? BERRRRRRNIE?" I race around the house, calling and calling and no Bernie. A little sooner than seven years ago, I realize Larry has been pointing his nose toward under the bed the entire time. I look under and there is my 19 month old tub of fur, stuck, it seems. So, I pull off the futon, and grab him by the scruff of his neck through the one part of the frame wide enough to pull him through, and with a lift, I have a cooing, purring little 14 pounder in my arms. I run him to the actual bedroom (the futon couch lives in the living room), close the door and see if his back legs work by throwing the catnip carrot and they do. As usual, Larry is already behind the door and Bernie is sniffing for him ("It's going to be okay, little buddy.") So, I let Larry in to feed them both a celebratory extra breakfast and Bernie races out the door, runs under the futon and then right out. He was perfectly capable of getting out.

They re-enacted the Henry story for me. (And found a way to get a second breakfast.) Bernie could never fit under the refrigerator, not even at eight months, so this was the closest they could come.

Larry's been sitting in Henry's chair for week's now and he hadn't for months. Bernie, too.
After they ate, the two of them curled up in the sun for a few hours.
They did well and they did me a lot of good. They really did. I'm very lucky.

We celebrate Henry this week and always

Henry Aloisius Snoopy Fergus Kay

February 4 (observed birthday) 2001 - July 16 - 2007

Larry, Bernie and me and everyone who loved him which is everyone know he's still here.

Larry still keeps looking for you. He's been reminding me every minute about this week and about Wednesday. He's always watching for you and he knows you're here and so does Bernie.

Enter

I went on an interview on Tuesday to which I was eight minutes late because my subway line was unexpectedly re-routed over a local line. It didn't occur to me that the local line was THAT much slower until I realized that I should've been in Manhattan at a time I had not yet reached the express stop two stops from my stop.

Eight minutes is not a long time. At a previous interview, the principal made me wait 45 minutes.

Still, I knew the job was gone. I felt as though I'd put myself on the breadline in one fell swoop.

Should I continue walking toward the school?

I called 411 to get the school's number -- to tell them I was walking on the way -- the number was dialed directly. No one picked up. When I got there, I learned the principal was on a long interview by phone with someone else.

I didn't stop to see what I looked like. I signed in and ran to the door. I don't know if the front bangs on my hair were fallen onto my forehead or eyebrows. I think not. I think I would've felt them, but I don't know. I ran right through traffic to make it by eight minutes.

I got out of the train, see, at the time of my interview.

Do I continue walking? This principal is known for her efficiency.

Shouldn't I just go home? Why waste everyone's time? Why give her a reason to remember my name?

I chatted with the guard as she flipped back my ID. She said the principal was nice but strict and as I went through the door, I said that I knew and eight minutes meant I was in deep trouble. I walked in and the lady on the phone waved at me and asked me to go wait in the room with the Gestetner machine where all the noise was and the people came through and when they saw me they went "Oh." This must be where she puts the dunce caps, I thought.

Then we met and I apologized and I meant it. There was nothing I could do. She seemed like it didn't matter. She also seemed like she didn't know who I was. This has happened before, but I won't know why it happened here because I was late. Anyway, she didn't know anything about me and mostly there wasn't a lot to say and I disintegrated, as I often do when people don't know me and I've already made a bad impression, into "Um" and "Oh" and "Well" and, as always, I tell the absolute truth. So, when, angrily, she asked me how long I had been working at my school (trying I could see to figure out my years of experience/age) I said, "8 years, and before that 4 years at the other school and then before that..." "I'm older than I look." She kind of nodded sort of, and the conversation just floated on our mutual loss of what to say to each other because neither of us really knew why we were there.

She tried to end encouragingly, so much so that it didn't hit me until I left how absurd what she had said was and anyway her body language was basically the equivalent of throwing me out.

Next time I can see that I'm going to be late, as I did back at that express stop, I get out of the train and re-schedule. I don't know if it would've gone that way either way, but those eight minutes mean I'll never know.

Amnesiac Interviews?

I feel as if I've been dropped into a twillight zone. I arrive dressed very well, having read as much as possible about the school whose doors I enter, having read as much as I can in the days that have elapsed between the email and the day of the interview about sometimes entirely new subjects for me, files on computer of material to reference, and notebook when I don't need the machine, packet of student essays and, as of this week, corporate haircut. I'm as polite as Garrison Keillor. Patient as his audience and, for that matter, a grandparent with a child who is learning to say "Grandpa". You don't force it, you wait, and you hope and you never more than pray for it. I sit in offices as long as asked, no matter how many noises roll past or above me. Even when no one seems to know I'm there. None of that bothers me. I'm just confused by the latest strategy of some of the principals and I am wondering if anyone has experienced it and how they handle it.

I've been called for several interviews now at which:

1) The interviewer has not seemed to know why he/she called me.

2) The interviewer has taken notes on the answers to a prescribed list of questions dispassionately, occasionally nodding to my answers and then almost physically stopping himself.

3) I've been asked almost no questions while the person thumbs through my CV trying to remember why she called me. This is before having enough time to be bored with me.

4) I've been talked with in the lobby, while the interviewer describes the position to me as if it were neurosurgery, hoping I'll walk away. When I greet it with pleasure, the person seems dumbfounded, so I suggest we proceed to the office.

My only guess is that I was originally called because I seemed interesting in some way and then someone dropped a ball. I often wonder if the "some way" was that I just turned 40 -- I'm class of 1990 so it's a good chance I'm 40 if you can do math, or if you add my years of the DOE to 22 or 23 the years people usually start teaching. Anyway, if you're looking to round out your search with a few veterans so that you make sure you don't seem to be unbalanced, I fit a certain niche. Or, if you like people with interesting and long CV's I also fit that niche. If you like people with interesting degrees, I fit that niche. But, I digress.

For whatever quick reason the person put me in a pile, they stopped there. The person did NO MORE homework. OR SEEMS not to have.

What is this about and am I the only one going through it?

If you've been to one of these amnesiac interviews, can you let me know?

Where do closed schools go?

So, it's official. Brooklyn Comprehensive is no more.

The last graduation ceremony was a little over a week ago, at which a graduate from over ten years ago praised one of our finest teachers for making him the lawyer he is today.

In kitchens, bedrooms, cars, on couches and maybe even in someone's dreams this early afternoon, someone is mentioning, "oh yeah, I heard about that," that their high school closed. I can guarantee to a student he/she isn't happy. But, they feel, as they felt before they walked through our doors, powerless and completely accustomed to disappointment. It took a long time to break them of that feeling and I'm sure not very long for it to be re-instilled by a government agency, a disturbing and unfeeling neighbor, boss, relative, spouse or side of themselves. It's inevitable. The trick was for us to teach them how to re-instill in themselves the flame of hope. I know several of my colleagues were excellent at this.

As I don't know how they feel about appearing on the great white way of the blogosphere, I'll just describe the ways they did --
--a vivacious, youthful history teacher, with the eternal sex appeal of a knowing Jewish mother
pushed the kids to say what they meant and to realize that they could understand history because it just meant paying attention to what was happening around them and why it happened and TAKING NOTES in class.
--a furiously bright and stone cold vixen of an English Teacher told them she would not believe one stereotype or let them stereotype her and that they worked from a clean hard-nosed slate together to make themselves better -- both of them. Not a question in the world she couldn't make as clear as a tree branch and she taught them to carve their essays upward from sentence to paragraph to connected paragraphs to completed essay. Kids came back after school to make their work better and better.
--a handsome musician with words asked the kinds of questions anyone could take hours answering and then taught the students to listen to language as is if it were music. They learned to read hard books by listening to them read. And they liked them

There were more, and yes, those were my friends, but I could sit here and type for days.

There were endless frustrations. Kids came to school one day and disappeared for weeks. The brighter the kid, the less consistent and the more problems. The weaker, the more consistent, but the more in need of services that we often didn't have -- but, at least, you could work with th student and improvise. You could work with memory. I have to admit that there were certain kids I longed to see more than the kids I did see, but I was lucky because I worked in a place where it was rare that I really didn't want to see someone, though sure there were a few. More people didn't want to see me, I think.

The school will only really be closed to those people -- the ones who never want to see or think of any of us anymore.

Living in the Real World

A colleague and I were talking last night and a familiar refrain came up. Now we, as teachers are "living in the real world" where we can be fired at whim like everyone else. Once upon a time, as he said, "you became a teacher, you died a teacher." I remember the resentment of my friends and relatives about this -- what right did I have to the job security I had.

I have a bold question to ask all of you -- the one person and cat who read this blog. Who comprises the economies we speak of? Are we discussing economies which are built by people and which function or are we discussing ones in which other beings exist? I don't know how an all cat economy would exist. I suspect that cats would really fight hard for tenure, but Larry and Bernie are immersed in aviary discussions at the moment, and I don't want to disturb them. Improving their woodpecker imitations, I think, is the goal of the day, so that they might get a better view of the very languid birds who sit on our fire escape between their tree nibbles. It's all about the view, as there is no conquest happening here, thanks to the human peacekeeping squad.

That's how those woodpeckers stay alive, by the way, as Bernie would undoubtedly fly right at them, left on th street. Larry, on the other hand, doesn't have any killer instinct in him now. If he had been left untouched by me -- the Larry I met years ago would certainly have taken out whatever birds remained and he and Bernie would've been a team as they are now, and as he and Henry were on the streets, and a nearly dead pair, too. I got them just in time. Bernie, too was on his last legs, feisty though he was. Cats don't live very long, left to fend on the streets. So, I suspect all those who become pets know that it's better living the way things are now, than in the "real world," artificial as it might be. Bernie looks like a pasha and Larry like a prince. They beam love at me as they breathe.

I don't know many humans who can truly survive an economy as harsh as what they call, the "real world." Most businesses have systems for firing people -- they, at least, give you a warning, a chance to improve, an "action plan" -- I've heard of this at Verizon, and I'm sure it exists in other places. I am sure there are businesses that just fire you without warning, and this is inhumane. When thousands of people are let go immediately, it hurts our economy, and it literally destroys lives. It is akin to killing those people and there should be laws against it and jail punishment for it. You cannot enter into a contract with someone where you will provide them with sustenance if they complete a service and then terminate that contract without warning. You must give people REASONABLE notice. Two weeks is not it. Who are we as human beings that we let other human beings just waste in front of us? What gives us the right to put the death sentence to people because they have failed us? So they failed us? So what? We failed them, to in that we didn't properly prepare them for what was ahead of them. And we didn't select a good fit for the position. So, let's set things up so they can leave in a humane way and so we don't make the same mistake again.

There are also some professions that require stability. One reason it was useful for a teacher to know he or she was coming back the following year was so that she or he could plan ahead for the following year. Also, the teacher could develop skills in a grade level/set of grade levels and become a part of a school. I went to a private school in which some of the teachers had been teaching a certain grade for many years and they really knew their material. At the public school I went to, also, there were some teachers famous for the electives they taught for many years and I couldn't wait to take them. I guess that's not something we want to pass on to our grandchildren.

It takes a long time to develop a course into something worth waiting for -- you can put together a course quickly. But, you won't have the connections between the lessons, the intricate details, the thorough research, the anecdotes, the incidental notes, the amazing ideas, the pictures from your visits to museums that are related -- the life experience that will fill the course and make it great -- that takes time. And frankly, you won't be that great a teacher until you've been teaching for five years or so. Sure, you'll be pretty good. Check back in with yourself in your fifth year. You'll feel the difference.

Or maybe not. Maybe this has all been an illusion. Maybe some doctors are amazing from the start and nothing changes with time. No actor grows. No child develops.

I've always felt that teachers ought to be mentored the first five years and not work alone. But, what do I know.

But, here's another thought about the real world.

There are all kinds of professions in the real world and all kinds of people. And some of the people in the real world CANNOT survive in a survival of the fittest kind of profession and teaching was supposed to be one of the places in which such people could thrive. It was supposed to be a place in which a person could develop skills which involved training others and not a lot of back-biting and social skills related to climbing a ladder of any kind. To suddenly throw veteran teachers who have years of experience DOING THE JOB WELL into a snake pit is an act of the purest evil. The kind of person who becomes a teacher is not the kind of person who works on Wall Street. It has nothing to do with intellect, it has to do with temperament. These are not people who want to fight for their jobs. They have already done this by controlling classes of difficult students for 10 to 25 years in some cases. These are people who prove themselves by doing. They come in, go to work, work hard and go unnoticed. They are not showmen. They are very proud, very honest and very frightened. They didn't have time to go to the gym. They wrote tons of courses and they graduated so many success stories that they could talk about but they don't like to brag and they won't. They never wanted to have to ask for another job again. They thought they already earned their job and they can't imagine what they did wrong and somehow they feel they must have done something, no matter how many times you tell them otherwise. And the papers keep hinting that they did something.
They don't know how to speak up for themselves and they never did. That's part of the reason they became teachers because one thing they did know how to do was speak on behalf of others who did not know how to speak up for themselves. It's a great irony of the profession.

I just can't talk about raises

I just wish I wasn't being discriminated against for my salary in the DOE, okay. I can't talk about the raise, anymore. I don't blame anyone. Please, please, please. It's hard to look for a job within the Dept. of Education of NYC and know that the very raise they gave you is now working against you. There's just something insane about it. But, I don't want anyone to hate me. I've been very lucky. Everyone has been very kind. You can just see why it can get to you, after a while, going to interviews with principals of schools who work for the DOE, knowing that they are going to have a hard time affording you, when the DOE set your salary. So, the DOE thought you were worth that money, but they won't help you find a school within which to earn it. This is true for everyone, even my friend who has something like eighteen years of remarkable service with tons of honors. All of the teachers from schools which have been closed, from the one with the orneriest record to the one with the shiniest are being told that there are no permanent places for them -- not officially, but they do not often get interviews, and when they do, they are quickly rejected for cheaper options. They will become long-term substitutes known as Assigned Teacher Reserves, who will continue to be demonized in the press, and then they will -- I WILL -- be fired. The contract expires in October 2009.

The UFT promises they will not allow this to happen. They will put up a fight.

My fear is that New York City will roll right over them.

Here's the UFT story about it
http://www.uft.org/news/teacher/top/job_barriers_atr/

The Audacity of Audacity: In Praise of Elections

I write this piece in the hopes that all of us who have come to think of as the word, "change" itself as an advertising synonym for "new and improved" will wake up and realize that the whole idea of an election is an opportunity for a mini-revolution. In countries which share this twenty-first century with us and also drive cars, have universities and accept the idea of global warming, as, at least, something worth considering, elections do offer the opportunity to elect leaders who will bring something entirely new to their governments. Even in counties where said leaders go back and forth on how much they want to take in public opinion, like Venezuela, their leaders can make strong choices about the economy, education and take them into new directions which actually bring both change and hope. For those of you not so keen on Chavez, you can even look at the Israeli government and, whatever you think of their politics, their elections do reflect changes in poltical mood and, at one time, so much hope it threatened those who were scared to see it, in the form of the late Yitchak Rabin.
Of course, we all know from our elementary school history classes how much our founders fought for the right to free elections and how long it took for everyone in this country to get their respective rights to vote. In practical terms, we still do not all have the rights to vote, and perhaps that should be the biggest election issue of all. There aren't proper voting machines in every county in this country -- perhaps the most revolutionary and practical thing the Democrats or Republicans could do would be to simply BUY ENOUGH VOTING MACHINES so that EVERYONE COULD PROPERLY VOTE. They could save money on all the ads and just get some equipment. Then do some grassroots work informing people how to use the machines and, oh, by the way informing them about the wonderful party and candidate that cared enough about the election to do this. See if the other party wants to cross the dirt roads to get there. There are people in this country who have probably never voted in their lives. Is that how we want to keep it?
People in this country don't vote for a lot of reasons. Some don't vote because they don't think it matters. Maybe they get that impression from the candidates who don't reach out to that many people. They just go on television. That's not reaching out, that's doing what's convenient. I know John Edwards reached out and didn't win. I also know the media didn't want him to win. But, these two candidates have the media on their side. They can make this happen. And in doing so they can really create change. They can create a real American election, for one.

In case you're wondering about our new standards here in NYC....

Check this out
http://avoicecriesout.com/2008/05/30/joel-kleins-brilliant-credit-recovery-program-teaches-kids-a-life-lesson/

Now, I'm a bleeding heart, but I'd go make the kid read a couple of books, do some journals, write some essays, talk to me....Fun, but simulated semester conditions.

Roger Manning, NYC - vintage video 1988

This was and still is honesty to me which is probably why I can talk less and less.

The Second Grade

The show I watched every day was Lost in Space in re-runs. I watched a parade of re-runs. Family Affair, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, The Addams Family, The Munsters, The Partridge Family, That Girl, Bewitched, I Dream of Genie, Green Acres. I had very little connection to the time in which I was in. That was okay because I hardly talked to anyone so I very rarely needed to make conversation or understand what anyone was talking about. It turned out that much of my generation was watching these programs too, as many of our recent movies have proven. In fact, the whole retro feeling that pervaded the 90's was very much the mid 60's and early 70's and had the goofyness of some of these shows. Some of what I was doing in my quiet was percolating. Thinking. Getting close to my own aesthetic.

I was also making my first trips to the Museum of Modern Art and talking to my mother about Marc Chagall and where poverty figured into his paintings.

Maybe everyone needs a period of silence. Maybe I am going back again because I have to re-discover my aesthetic. My ability to use my own is being run over by an administration that feels my job is expendible, the school at which I worked was not worth sustaining, and that I now much make the argument to principals for why I am valuable. Again and again. That's always very hard to me as I can see why many people are useful. I see myself as one of many choices and not the best of the lot. I am working because I am the right person for the kind of school at which I have worked for the past eight years. And now it is closing.

Danger, Will Robinson!

On a nice day when I should be cleaning the windows

and maybe I will, yet.

I was tempted to write a short story this morning about a woman who mostly communicates with an imagined community. She spends most of the day focused on what to say, how to say it and in anticipation of the responses of people with names that sound like they were meant for CB Radios-- "Bingo1," "FrenchFryeater25," "DRoberts9898" etc. That's what email addresses look like to me. Of course, it was very much autobiography. That is what I've become. I'm haunted by the possibility of reaching some mythical character behind the pseudonym. Often these folks were once, or are still people I see in flesh and blood. However, the internet communication is a thing in itself. It's like whispering in someone's ear or passing a note. It's several steps backwards for me, in a way. In the second grade, I didn't talk to anyone outside of my neighborhood. I just wrote. My writing was very good for my age. All of my verbal energy was focused on it. All of my shyness was indulged, which may or may not have been a good thing for a six year old. Both of my teachers --one for Hebrew studies and one for Secular -- learned to look for my written work and they always wrote back and we had a terrific correspondence. I was very lucky they were so attentive.

The folks out trucking in internet land are a mix of compulsions. Some stay away for days, some check every few minutes, some just don't know what to say even when they read your emails, so they just talk to you when they see you, whenever that might be. Some get back to you right away and engage in tennis volleys with you of email after email until you both tire. You feel like you've told them a lot and that they've told you a lot, and you have. Sometimes I've written as beautifully as I ever could about the most important things to me or to them. And then I don't see them, though they live just forty minutes away or so. The intimacy of the email becomes an excuse never to get together. It affords me a reason to remain shy and isolated like in the second grade.

I wasn't unhappy in the second grade. Actually, I was fairly thin, for me. I had steady routines -- programs I watched on TV, things I regularly talked about with my grandmother when I got home, a time I did my homework and I even limited what I ate. I'd spent a lot of time before this roaming around Israel trying out different places to live with my mother, both of us agreeing that none quite fit. So maybe I was desperate to lock in what I thought did fit and leave it there. There was no conscious decision, however. First grade had felt very noisy and muddled. Too much of everything and too public. So my personality became part of the ether for a year. In third grade it popped right out with a vengeance. I had a wonderfully warm teacher who just made silence seem stifling and made me want to be part of everything.

I'm back in the ether again. It's not painful or anything. I've lost the connection with what makes me want to be part of the everything outside -- and everything outside is shrinking. My school is closing. Randi Rhodes is on Nova M Radio and Air America seems strange to me now, though I still listen sometimes. I hardly see my friends as they are in all different directions. I have long conversations with cab drivers and the lady who takes my orders at the pet food store because they are the people I regularly have contact with. I've become chatty at the grocery store, too. We're all still anonymous with each other, but we share stories of our days just to let the tension out and it feels better. You don't get that on email or from a blog. Emails and blogs are about craft and information. There's hardly any emotion to them, except in the stories I write, I think.

I hope, like in the second grade, I begin to write like a demon.

Return of The Bread Man

For the three of you and cat who follow this blog regularly, I have decided to bring back another story about "The Bread Man". I'll link to the first one at the end of this one, for those of you who have never met him before. My grandmother convinced me that this guy really lived, so I am going to take her word for it.

It was a cold day in April, windy from a rain that had fallen an hour ago. The Bread Man had closed the bakery early. Nobody shopped when it was raining. The mothers of the town bought their food supplies with an eye toward plenty and it would take a disaster (as it later did) to drive the families of the town to starvation. Certainly, they would not starve in one day. So there was never any need to shop in the rain.

Sophie had left school early, escaping through the window before geometry. She hated her teacher and her father had arranged for a math tutor at home, so she didn't worry about missing class. She bent down to clean off her scuff knees and also to pull out her journal. To the aggravation of nearly everyone, Sophie had a habit of stopping mid-walk to stare and then write slowly in her journal. Either that, or to take out a book of English poetry. She had just finished the poem, "Leaves of Grass" and she loved to copy down lines from the poem, especially the lists of kinds of people who existed in Walt Whitman's "America". Butchers, shopkeepers, boys who bagged groceries. In the tiny town she lived in, one thing was usually done by one person. Bread was baked by The Bread Man. There was no Bread Boy learning at his knee. It wasn't the proper time for it.

The air was beginning to dry as the light of the day settled down toward a bright grey. Sophie was turning the corner at which she knew he would be sitting. Always at this time of the day, if it rained, The Bread Man would be sitting on the corner eating a loaf of bread and a salami. One in each hand. He never made a sandwhich, except in his mouth, which he said was, "the best kind". Sophie sat next to him and took out her Walt Whitman, her high cotton socks catching a bit on the cleanly paved street. The Bread Man looked at her and said, "Are there any bakers in that poem, Sophie?" Sophie thought a minute and said, "If there aren't any, it sure feels like there are. He's got practically the whole country in it. He loves absolutely everybody." The Bread Man thought a bit and said, "That's why you like the poem?" Sophie's hair lifted a bit in the wind and she bolted forward, "No. Absolutely not. The truth is, I like the fact that he says that America is singing. I think that everybody sings in his own way and I've never met anyone who thought the same way. Even you sing." The Bread Man's eyes opened wide, "You've heard me?" "No, no, no," said Sophie. "It's in the way you move and walk around. It's very much like Lord Byron or Tennyson." "Byron?" said The Bread Man. "Byron wasn't such a nice man. He tried to make a show of himself, but he wasn't so nice. He talked too much about things. I make beautiful things." Sophie's eyes watered, "I didn't mean anything insulting by it. You just carry yourself like you are a big Romantic person. Like the singers at the opera when the story is about love or danger. It's very pleasant to watch you. You have a rhythm like the Polish folk songs do." At that, The Bread Man smiled. "People think I don't know anything. That's why I only talk to you. In fact, I always have a song in my head when I work. But, it is nothing big and phoney like those big poems of Byron. I do like the Polish folk songs. The woman who gave me my job used to sing them every day. Do you remember her?" Sophine looked down because she did not. "You were a baby when she left here. She left here for America, you know. Like you, she had a marvelous singing voice. Every time she sang, I felt like I turned into a big pearl." Sophie started to laugh. "It's true. I felt big and shiny and smooth. And like I would float into a cloud." Sophie's face filled with sun and softness. "You make me feel that way when you sing, too. And someday you'll go off to Hollywood and be a big star."

They sat together for a while, Sophie reading and The Bread Man finishing his food. Then, taking a deep breath, Sophie turned to The Bread Man and looked as straight into his eyes as she had ever looked at anyone. "Will you come with me when I go? You can protect me and you can make my meals. You would make me laugh, most of all." The Bread Man was very moved and his face turned the pink of a new rose and he wiped all of the crumbs off his hands and face. "Everyone in this town will go with you, and I will be first in line, Sophie. We will be in your heart. But, a person like me cannot go with you. My job is here. I am the only Bread Man here. In a big city, there are a million bread men, each singing louder than the next one. You cannot sit on an empty street and talk to a friend, either."

Before she could stop herself, her lungs heaved with tears and her body shook hard. "Then I don't want to go," she insisted again, and again. She knew that her parents had invested time, energy money and their hearts on the idea that she would leave her town. One sister and one brother had done so and they wrote about amazing things. Her brother Al fixed watches for a famous jeweler in New York City and studied law. Her sister Deborah planted trees and built houses in the middle of the desert in Palestine. But, Sophie loved her street and she loved things just as they were. Except when she started to sing. When she sang she saw nothing but the clouds and the trees and crowds and crowds of people as if she had turned into her Parakeet, Chipper, who loved to stand and sing at the top of her balcony.

They sat together that afternoon in silence. Just as he left, The Bread Man pulled a roll from his pocket and handed it to her. "You're not going so fast, little girl and you need to eat regardless." She took the roll and before she could ask he said "Yes, yes, I put raisins and honey in it and no, I won't tell your mother." She smiled as he walked away. Then, like him, she took a big bite out of the roll and concentrated closely on the sweetness and the falling of the night.

For the first Bread Man story go to
http://saddleshoe.blogspot.com/2006/10/bread-man.html

What is considered not-hireable

Here's an excerpt from a post on Education Notes.

....I'm a Music teacher.Masters plus 30 credits.20 years longevity in NYC school system.Biggest Chorus for about a decade in Manhattan middle schools.Full S ratings throughout career.Great letters of satisfaction, commendation, awe, and thanks through entire career.Full of energy, full of skills -- pianist, opera singer, know many languages, accomplished music historian, directed theater, playwright....Before teaching, was for years a Senior Staff Editor of the largest and most prestigious music encyclopedia in the world - 24 vols. Was responsible for some of the largest bibliographical articles in it, international reputation in music bibliography.Problem: Am 61 years old with relatively big salaryRepeat. Would you hire me? If so when?You're not the only one who wouldn't.Applied to 10 schools through the Open Market. Though clearly one of the most experienced, educated music teachers in the system, did not get called for a single interview....

The author also notes that he knows lots of Grad students without degrees who DID get interviewed and hired...

Read the full posting on Ednotes online http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2008/05/tim-daley-do-you-want-to-hire-me.html

What I think about while my city is thinking about firing teachers

The first time I heard the tenor Carlo Bergonzi was 1978. I was ten years old, and like now, thought I had the right to express a respected opinion about everything. Unlike now, when I know what a schmuck I am for thinking that (and how bad it is that this knowledge doesn't stop me), I had absolutely no idea how dumb I could really be.

In the honest part of me, which is in my silence and in my writing, I always knew that there's no reason at all to have any kind of judgemental opinion about a performance because any interpretation could be valid. Of course, I wasn't paying for the opera tickets that night. My mother was and she was furious and seeing death. Carlo Bergonzi was way past his prime and in the latter part of his career. Anyone could see and hear that, even people as new to opera as we were then. He had obviously been a great star because he got applause when he came on stage and because, no matter how forced he sounded, there was a steady stream of respectful applause. But, I knew that the train ride home was going to be murder. My mother was going to have absolutely nothing good to say, everything was going to be painted in bones and maggots and the number of hours it took her to earn the money for those tickets was going to be emblazoned on my forehead. Meanwhile, what did the two of us really know about the performance we were so condemning? We'd listened to a recording of the opera a couple of times and were in our first year of attending live performances.

In many respects, my mother was absolutely right. Carlo Bergonzi was not the best tenor in the world ever, and that The Metropolitan Opera was serving him up in a lead role for top dollar seemed shameful. Inasmuch as one believes that just being able to pay for the price of the ticket and cramming some listening in before the show made either of us an expert on what great or very good singing was, she was very right. If that were true and she was right then The Metropolitan Opera House and the Department of Education should let anyone with bus fare and a certificate from a three hour course decide how they do their business.

But, as I know now, she was absolutely wrong. And I knew it then, too. Without the pressure of my mother's sense of injustice to the American blue collar worker and her feeling that every attack was personal (and increasingly, that there was a team specifically assigned to torment her) --left to just breathe, I actually enjoyed hearing him. He still had a beautiful sound to his voice and he was artful. That he was a tremendously artful tenor is much clearer to me now and I have also heard recordings of him from 1960. But, really: who is to say that his performance was not world class and that it was not, worth far more than bringing out a younger, more robust but ordinary tenor. Listening to what I can remember of it now, and later recordings of his that I have also heard, there is a great deal of passion, art -- the latter of world class quality. And I can say that I heard Carlo Bergonzi live. The way I can say that I saw Lauren Bacall in "Waiting in the Wings." Yes, she missed lines and it was a boring play. She still had terrific charisma, a fabulous face and to see her and Rosemary Harris go at it was still wonderfully charming and sexy. I got the tickets to that one, so no, my mother didn't bleed iron. She scoured my skin in several repetitions of that half-Yiddish/half English "Ech..." which translates in my late grandmother's words into "I was not enthused." All I could think of was, "Why the F-- are you complaining? I got the tickets and you got to see, in at least Rosemary Harris, one of the best actresses to ever grace the stage and a pop culture icon in Lauren Bacall. And those women had incredible stage presences before they even opened their mouths."

Deep, deep down, my mother knows all this. In later performances at the Met, when we found ourselves without a choice but to see Bergonzi once again, my mother pointed out several moments of beauty. And, given the baritones of the period, we had already found ourselves indulging in the decent acting, half-baked imitation of Leonard Warren that was Sherrill Milnes. For those of you who don't know opera, think Robert Goulet. Or think Usher. He was handsome, he was a pretty decent actor with a lovely sounding voice and the brains to steal brilliant choices from the greater singers who came before him. To show just what I knew about opera then, I was a big fan of his. I still have umbilical chord ties to his recordings and keep a few arias of his on my Mp3 player. No, he's not magnificent as a button I have of him pronounces. He was smarter than he was good and he put together strong performances until 1981 when he became ill and probably should have retired. And yes, I was part of the respectful applause in the years that followed. Listening to Milnes had lead me to Leonard Warren -- think someone on the level of Domingo in baritones or Barbara Streisand or Celia Cruz or Sarah Vaughn, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Jay-Z or Nas. He was excellent enough to have taught me how to listen for more excellence. I had seen and heard all of Warren's phrasings before (because Milnes was, by his own admission in interviews, an excellent thief), so what might have been the initially jarring woody darkness of his voice, was easy for me to attend to, take in and enjoy beyond words. It was like having having seen the movie before reading the book. I could visualize and had a context for something otherwise difficult and alien to me which was better than anything I had ever seen.

I imagine that you heard the "bell" in that last sentence. You recognized the moment where the moral of the story is about to come in. It had the tone of your parents, which they stole from their parents or someone else's parents, or, in my case, a friend whose didactic skills and instincts are impeccable.

No one is impeccable. My friend is as close to the platonic form of the word as a human can be.

If I hadn't tried to imagine what it would be to be "impeccable" I wouldn't be able to recognize it in my friend. If I hadn't had so many friends and teachers who also aimed to be beyond reproach, I'd've never been able to see it in his every motion and to recognize how far above he is everyone else I've ever known.

So, this is what I think about as my city looks to fire teachers who have either been accused of everything from being late to being lecherous but have been convicted for nothing at all or who had the double misfortune, like I've had, of being at a school that is being closed and being 40 or over and making a salary that most principals find prohibitive -- they can get two young teachers for the price of me. And that given the angst that comes with not having enough money in your budget to hire all the teachers and guidance counselors you need, and the general feeling that you don't know what economy you're bringing your students into, I can almost see how my commanding the salary I do, which, by the way is much LESS than that of a close friend who sells phone services, seems daunting. Even if I am AS GOOD as Leonard Warren or Jay-Z, why is it necessary to have someone so good? Does a school necessarily need a fantastic teacher when it can have two serviceable ones? That's a real question, actually, and I'd also bet that thought is very much a part of the climate in which principals make their decisions. After all, they are coming to schools and finding their budgets continually slashed. The atmosphere is not one which encourages one to think about giving the best to your students. It's one where you think about being able to give, at all. In other words, if the Mayor and Governor and everyone involved in the Department of Education's budget doesn't want to fight hard enough to get public school kids in this city MORE THAN THE MINIMUM, what's a principal to do? In the principals' minds, anyway, even if they think about spending their pennies in my direction they'll pause thinking I'm more likely to be like Carlo Bergonzi in 1978 -- not in my prime, though very much a great artist. Or, I might be Sherrill Milnes -- a take-off of other great artists who was very durable, but then broke down.

First of all, anyone who has been in a NYC classroom knows that students do not supply the respectful applause of an opera audience. After 14 years, I had to be at least as good as a durable Sherrill Milnes. I had to be able to command students' attention and get decent test results. Or they would do worse than throw tomatoes at me. Plus, I have mostly good reviews, and most of my fellow colleagues who have lasted as long, have even better ones. Those who have some bad reviews also have excellent ones. Do you know how many sorely bad performances Luciano Pavarotti gave? Besides the times he was caught lip synching? I sat through, at least, five of them. Five out of thousands which were excellent, ten of which I heard. What is the balance of the careers of all of us ATR's -- Assigned Teacher Reserves? That's the important statistic? We have actual track records you can point to -- what are they? Do those teachers who have two U ratings have them in succession and are they both from the same principal -- and were there none from any other? And again, is it two U's against 13 S's. And are there letters of praise in the file?

We are in this position because we are teachers unlucky enough to be made full-time substitutes instantly when our schools closed or because their positions were cut, or because, perhaps, we had the misfortune of having a student accuse them of something they didn't do? Most, if not all of the teachers in the Rubber Rooms who are either NOT FOUND GUILTY or who were found to have done something worth punishing with something as small as a letter in their files, will return to work as ATR's. This is even true of individuals who have had their charges dismissed. It's just easier to pull the person out of their position rather than return him or her to a place where he or she was unwanted enough for someone to have told a lie about them or for them to have been a mild misunderstanding --say, a teacher thought he/she was doing something the principal agreed with and actually the principal NOW SAYS he/she did not.

So, the vast majority of ATR's are in that position through no fault of their own. I didn't say that ALL of them were. But, I'd take a bet that the percentage would be 80 or 90 percent, if only because so many are teachers whose schools just happened to close. The schools' closing does not indicate anything about their abilities. In the corporate world, if a project fails, you don't fire the individuals who carried it out -- or not just them. You fire the director or vice president who was in charge. Many principals have been fired for other reasons, but a great many of the principals of schools which are closing will go on to lead other schools. That doesn't trouble me because I know that you cannot place the blame for an entire school's failure on the back of any one person. I also know that many excellent performances in the arts and in schools have gone unappreciated. My school wasn't closed for poor results. We had especially poor attendance after we were moved to a dangerous neighborhood. Some years, we had poor attendance because the students who were coming to us had a history of poor attendance. They got better. That didn't count. When they graduated, we had to start again, sometimes with similarly bad attending groups. And they got better and it also didn't count.

In 1978, most of the audience applauded for Carlo Bergonzi. He gave a world class performance that showed artistry, knowledge of tradition and an ability to use his resources to their best use. It was far better than the early performances of the young, and later to be very interesting, Neil Shicoff. I learned a lot from it, and I always learn something when I listen to his recordings wherever they are in his career.

On that night, however, I sat enraged the way many people do now when they think about teachers making more money than they think they should, for whatever reason. I learned fairly quickly to think with my whole brain, not just the part of it that was responding to immediate anxieties, and to listen much more carefully. In my platonic ideal of a classroom, my students learn to listen, read and write as carefully as possible with all the knowledge which is required for them to take on the hardest and best literature in the deepest way.

Maybe that's not worth the price of admission to the vast majority in this city. Maybe they would rather my students met minimum competencies very well. Certainly, it is easier to count smaller accomplishments than larger ones.

So, now I know why so many of my students do poorly at math. They live in a city where a large percentage of people are counting in very small, digestible quantities.

I hope that most of them have better taste in music.

The Daily News and the Rubber Room

On May 4 and May 5, The New York Daily News printed two articles about NYC's Rubber Room. In brief, a "Rubber Room" is a holding pen in which teachers, paraprofessionals, school aides, secretaries -- almost all school related personnel -- who are accused of violations wait to be tried. They can wait there for months into years. Because the city claims they are dangerous to kids, the individuals accused aren't given anything to do. The punishment is a la Sartre's play No Exit in which individuals are trapped with nothing to do but be in close confines with other trapped people.

You can look up the articles. It's not that I don't want to give you the links, it's that I am so disgusted and so tired of hearing about this issue in the way that the Daily News presented it, that I don't want to look for the addresses again. They're not hard to find. Go to http://www.nydailynews.com/, type in "Rubber Room" and they come up.

They were yet, two MORE articles that talked about how much money this system cost. And, of course, the paper claims to have gotten volumes of emails which basically called for the teachers to be drawn and quartered.

What everyone forgets is, no one in that room is proven guilty. If you've been proven guilty, you've either received a fine, suspension or termination. If you've been proven innocent, you will be placed back in your school.

Suppose we applied this to our general legal system -- would we shoot all detainees? I realize that some of our prisons, like Abu Ghraib, make it seem that way. But, I thought the consensus in this country was not to destroy the Constitution entirely.

In my very, very nebbishy consternation, I wrote a letter to the author of both articles. Depending on what she does, I'll print it here in a few days.

At this moment, however, I wish to remind all who read this that
1) No teacher chooses to be accused of anything
2) An accusation does not equal guilt
and, a very sad
3) Many of the accusers -- students, parents and principals -- have motives for their actions which have little to do with what has actually occurred. I met a teacher who was accused by a parent of possibly giving an answer to a test to another student in that paren't class. Nobody corroborated the parent's story. The teacher spent the year in that confinement cell waiting for it to be determined that she could be released. What do you suppose the accusing parent got out of it? His/her son didn't have this tough teacher for the rest of the year. Now, there's an ugly way to keep your grades up.

Think back: imagine you were given the chance to get a teacher you hated pulled from the classroom in one, fell swoop. No more awful assignments. No more boredom. No more criticism. It's tempting, isn't it? Maybe you wouldn't do it, but you know someone who might. The way you might not destroy the teacher's desk, car or room, but students have done. And now they can take it one step further. They NEVER have to see that teacher again, if they plan it right....

Furthermore, it is a fact that our current DOE actively creates disincentives for keeping senior staff. Before this administration, the DOE supplemented school budgets so that they could retain older, more experienced and YES more costly teachers. Don't teachers have a right to be paid for their experience? Regardless of what you think on that question, with this administration the DOE no longer does this. So, you can get two younger teachers for the price of one older teacher. I don't know, Walmart is one of the most popular stores in this country. What do you think the principal's are shopping for in teachers these days, as a result? As you would expect, the average new teacher doesn't last three years -- just the way the average bottom priced item at Walmart doesn't.


Be well, everyone.

Let's just say I like the smile on this kid

14 Reasons Hillary Clinton Should Quit

http://thepage.time.com/halperins-take-painful-things-hillary-clinton-knows-%E2%80%94-or-should-know/