One of my assignments at my job is to scan student identification cards when they come into our school. This is not as easy a job as you might think -- you have to be mindful of students who are suspended, you have to confirm the identification of students without identification and then manually enter them into the computer system. While you're doing this, you also have to make sure students are behaving, removing hats and any gang related flags or beads from their persons. All this has to happen while hundreds of students are coming into the building and trying to go to class. Plus, you want to be polite about it all as tempers flare easily. Our students go through metal detectors and have to virtually strip to do so (there's metal in everything these days, especially sneakers and shoes). Kids pile up in clumps while someone is checked and checked again for mysterious sources of concern which often turn out to be forgotten bobby pins.
We have a good team of people doing this work. Everyone has a serious, but kind demeanor so there isn't usually any difficulty. Except for the occasional student who refuses to remove a highly expensive hat or one who irrationally responds to a request to be re-scanned (and it is irrational -- it's never someone who really is hiding something) the mornings go quietly and smoothly.
My students, unlike me, have gotten used to coming through webs and webs of fingers. The fingers who hand them late passes, temporary ID's, hand them back their belongings after scanning, point them to the auditorium when it is too late to be admitted to class, point out which stairwells they should be using (our school building houses four schools, all of whom are supposed to use separate stairwells to decrease traffic). They shake and pound fists with friendly hands of guards, other deans, counselors and their friends. It surprises me when students will later in the day say, "Don't touch me!" to me or other deans and teachers as they are so welcoming to the veritable groping of the morning. Maybe they've had enough after that. More often, though, those are students who want to unnerve you and to deny your power to affect their future with our without a tap on the shoulder.
For me, however, the cathedral of hands that defines the morning ritual is far too much. The hands that grip me on the shoulder, stop me from typing in a name of someone before I look to see if they have a new ID, point out reinventions of the procedures I had just become accustomed to, demonstrate the proper way to remove paper from the printer, point out keys on the keyboard to names I cannot hear because of the noise and even those who rub my back after having slapped my hands to stop them from typing -- this collection of what feel like diabolical digits is sometimes enough to trigger agony in me. It's not that I don't want to be stopped from making mistakes or that I don't like to be touched. I ache to be touched most of the time as there are few people in the world whom I trust enough to hug me. However, therein lies the paradox; I don't trust most people enough to stand within less than a foot of them so being consumed by the over-reachings of all manner of staff frightens me. I am used to the distance and temperament which people give moderators of debates -- my classroom and even my manner are rooted in the Socratic method. So, I sat with my head in a basket of my own fingers on Friday in the pauses between rushes of students. There was the comfort of my own hands and the chance to warm my face with my own breath. And to hide the onslaught of tears which overwhelmed me later in the day. On top of the changes in routine, I was asked to be stricter with students who don't have identification cards. When I was so and I asked for assistance from a colleague, I got a flat out "ask somebody else." No matter what the reason, and I am sure it was quite legitimate, that broke me. I felt mauled and alone.
Everything that my colleagues are doing is correct and right and good and they mean absolutely no harm to me. If anything, they are coddling me. Even when they refuse me it is because they are too busy and they know that someone else WILL do what I ask.
How do I explain that it is frightening, all this hand-work, gentle slapping of the wrist to push my hands to stop moving on the keyboard, pointing here and there to faster ways to enter information which contradict what I was told yesterday? It is all meant to be helpful, but it is the opposite to me. It makes me trust myself and them even less.
Fundamentally, I understand that there isn't time to do more than grunt, point, and nod. When hundreds of kids are at the door, sentence structure goes out the window.
It just makes me feel raw and vulnerable to be so much a creature pawing through the winds when I have spent a lifetime in the igloo of the classroom. The spoken word has been what has given me the illusion of safety my whole life. Spending my mornings without those shields only reminds me further of how insecure my job and my life really are.
08 November, 2008
05 November, 2008
01 November, 2008
31 October, 2008
Escapist Post
Not being a fan of Halloween, I have my own kind of "ghost holiday". Rather than indulge in a holiday in which children are told to put on masks, knock on doors and threaten people in exchange for the cheapest wrapped candy imaginable, I've decided that the only spooky fantasy I'll engage in is...adolescent confession.
Recently, I've been adding to my music collection singers and songs which I have had in my head for as long as I can remember. Everything from "It's Not Easy Being Green" to "Pretty Women" from Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. The latter is connected to my escapist admission here. I have been forever in love with Len Cariou. Fine actor, singer and solid hunk even now, he is one of few men whose talent, crisp looks and presence overtake even lesbian me. So, here's my adolescent admission, my escape for the night back into the world in which I still believe in and am overwhelmed by charm, gender aside.
There are really just a few famous men for whom I fall in that hand-on-the-back-of the-head way. I've been lucky to know men and women in my life who have that power over me, too, like Karen Hunter, but I won't embarass others by naming them. It's an odd feeling, watching Len Cariou or Sir Anthony Hopkins or video of the late Jerry Orbach. They have this enormous credibility to me and they are so overwhelmingly large to me, as if they could spread their arms and catch me. I know it's a father fixation as much as anything, but it hardly matters when I see them perform. They're magical because they are so completely and greaselessly confident. Maybe it's their talent and energy-- they're features, voices and frames look as broad as the bottom of a tidal wave and as full of vitality.
So, there. That's my Halloween escape. No pressuring anyone for colored confectioners sugar aged to hardness and wrapped in what my students' call, "Pimp colored" paper. Just memory of lovely presences.
Couldn't we have a holiday in which we taught kids to treasure the people who fill them with awe? They could draw pictures of Spiderman or mom or their coach or their favorite movie star. And just share the shimmer. That's far sweeter.
Recently, I've been adding to my music collection singers and songs which I have had in my head for as long as I can remember. Everything from "It's Not Easy Being Green" to "Pretty Women" from Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. The latter is connected to my escapist admission here. I have been forever in love with Len Cariou. Fine actor, singer and solid hunk even now, he is one of few men whose talent, crisp looks and presence overtake even lesbian me. So, here's my adolescent admission, my escape for the night back into the world in which I still believe in and am overwhelmed by charm, gender aside.
There are really just a few famous men for whom I fall in that hand-on-the-back-of the-head way. I've been lucky to know men and women in my life who have that power over me, too, like Karen Hunter, but I won't embarass others by naming them. It's an odd feeling, watching Len Cariou or Sir Anthony Hopkins or video of the late Jerry Orbach. They have this enormous credibility to me and they are so overwhelmingly large to me, as if they could spread their arms and catch me. I know it's a father fixation as much as anything, but it hardly matters when I see them perform. They're magical because they are so completely and greaselessly confident. Maybe it's their talent and energy-- they're features, voices and frames look as broad as the bottom of a tidal wave and as full of vitality.
So, there. That's my Halloween escape. No pressuring anyone for colored confectioners sugar aged to hardness and wrapped in what my students' call, "Pimp colored" paper. Just memory of lovely presences.
Couldn't we have a holiday in which we taught kids to treasure the people who fill them with awe? They could draw pictures of Spiderman or mom or their coach or their favorite movie star. And just share the shimmer. That's far sweeter.
30 October, 2008
Bernie, my opera loving cat
I was listening to a PremiereOpera Podcast (premiereopera.org) and in the middle of Richard Tucker's last "Cielo e Mar," Bernie just stopped chasing his toy and walked toward me and stood still with eyes full of softness.
He's sitting on the window listening to "Thine Alone" now. He keeps giving me these intense looks -- he can't focus on what's outside. He just keeps being moved to radio his feelings out. Last time he heard this, he just stood on the window and blinked at me.
Henry used to purr during opera broadcasts. I wasn't permitted to talk for the first hour -- he'd bat me lightly. Then, he'd fall asleep.
Larry likes the music, but prefers sports broadcasts -- those rivet him. The super bowl was a real highlight, and baseball games on the radio hold him for innings. He does like the music, and he likes it better than Hip Hop, which he has trouble with, but he LOVES sports.
Bernie just went to sit down, ignoring the opportunity to knock over his now empty food dish, as he usually does to indicate breakfast time is near.
THAT'S SOMETHING.
Larry attempted to engage Bernie in a run to the window and Bernie bat him lightly the way Henry would me. I've always thought there was a little Henry in Bernie.
Clearly, Bernie wants to focus on THE MUSIC.
My cat has better priorities than the agency for which I work.
P.S. Later, I noticed BOTH cats sitting still for Franco Corelli.
He's sitting on the window listening to "Thine Alone" now. He keeps giving me these intense looks -- he can't focus on what's outside. He just keeps being moved to radio his feelings out. Last time he heard this, he just stood on the window and blinked at me.
Henry used to purr during opera broadcasts. I wasn't permitted to talk for the first hour -- he'd bat me lightly. Then, he'd fall asleep.
Larry likes the music, but prefers sports broadcasts -- those rivet him. The super bowl was a real highlight, and baseball games on the radio hold him for innings. He does like the music, and he likes it better than Hip Hop, which he has trouble with, but he LOVES sports.
Bernie just went to sit down, ignoring the opportunity to knock over his now empty food dish, as he usually does to indicate breakfast time is near.
THAT'S SOMETHING.
Larry attempted to engage Bernie in a run to the window and Bernie bat him lightly the way Henry would me. I've always thought there was a little Henry in Bernie.
Clearly, Bernie wants to focus on THE MUSIC.
My cat has better priorities than the agency for which I work.
P.S. Later, I noticed BOTH cats sitting still for Franco Corelli.
25 October, 2008
I didn't come to school because I COULDN'T
Recently, there's been talk in the NYC papers about absenteeism. As always, the first people to be placed at fault are the teachers. It's easy to assume that children don't come to school because their classes are uninteresting. The keyword here is "easy". Think about the subject more closely for a minute: we're talking about children. Five, Seven, Ten even Thirteen year olds. These are not individuals old enough to make the decision about whether they go to school. That decision is in the hands of their parents. I should know.
All through elementary school, I missed 60 days of school a year -- on average. There was no kid in the building who wanted to be there more than I did -- a classic child with Asperger's Syndrome, I felt infinitely more comfortable talking with adults, enjoyed studying subjects in obsessive depth and was not terribly interested in the social world of children. School was my haven -- there I could talk with adults about a range of subjects, whether through the venue of class discussion or during recess or my lunch period. It was also one of the only places I received true praise in my entire life: I wrote with authority and with a precocious vocabulary and was rewarded with esteem from my entire Hebrew School. Though I was awkward, heavy and a physical mess, my intelligence was widely acknowledged and my reputation preceeded me at every juncture and in every grade. Even the principals --secular and Hebrew, gave me special attention. When I got into trouble, as I did often, they had long talks with me about what I had done. Sometimes they saw my point of view. When one teacher persecuted me for my untidyness and we therefore developed a combative relationship, the Hebrew principal stopped admonishing me, but simply instructed me to sit in his office for what seemed like a reasonable period of time and then return to class. He knew the woman didn't like me and was cruel to me and he wasn't going to add to that punishment.
My school was the only place in the world where I was thoroughly understood.
Yet, I could not go there much of the year because my mother kept me home. I wasn't ill. Sometimes she was ill. Sometimes she wanted to take off and go to the theater. Sometimes she thought I had stayed up too late studying and needed to sleep. Did she understand that I couldn't start studying until she went to sleep because she wouldn't stop talking to me about her day and her problems. OR, she couldn't stop fighting with me and my grandmother about
1) Why she had been born in the first place
2) Where the people whom she believed came into our apartment when we were asleep or unaware had put her keys, cigarettes, money, favorite pin, etc.
3) Why I didn't have a right to be on the phone for long conversations
4) Just general sexual/physical frustration
5) What she perceived to be, sometimes rightly, my grandmother's judgement of her tastes
There were other reasons, too, but you get the idea. My mother is mentally ill and she involved the entire household in her disease.
Nonetheless, I called people and got the homework assignments and did them. Paradoxically, she even took me to the library to help me complete my school reports. She wanted me to do well in school. That you have to go to school to do so never occurred to her.
And, I did well, even though I didn't go. Whenever I took a test, be it on the given day or the day I returned to school, I did exceptionally well. My reading comprehension was at college level by the sixth grade. I wrote powerfully, however disorganizedly. Moreover, I wrote with passion and always with evidence for my opinions. More than one teacher suggested I go to law school.
Fortunately for me, I did not attend a public school. At a public school, no one would have paid any attention to my reading levels or my academic success. Just being absent would have caused me to be held back. My elementary school wanted to once because of fear of scrutiny by the school system, but gave me provisional rights to go on to the next grade after my mother called and asked how they could keep a child with an 87 average back a grade. Surely there were kids with lower averages being advanced? They saw her point -- they would have seen it anyway. No one at my school thought for a moment that the solution to my problems rested in being retained in a grade.
They knew the solution to my problems was far more complicated. Having watched my mother's mental illness progress over the years, they knew too well that she was out of control. Although as part of my scholarship she was supposed to help out at the school's fundraising bingo nights, they did not press her into service. People preferred when she didn't show up, I suspect. I came to school unwashed and redolent, though wrapped in nice clothes. My bookbag carried roaches as did my coat. My scalp was covered with sebhorreic dermatitis so bad it took me until about a year ago to get it under control. As I got older, I became difficult and angry and acted out irrationally and desperately. My classmates knew I wanted attention and they forgave me all sorts of imbecilic actions. The few who knew my mother or had seen the apartment in which I lived had told the others how bad things were. I retained my academic credibility and had a few close friends. And despite it all, I got into Stuyvesant High School where I maintained my usual B+ average -- the best I could do under the circumstances.
At Stuyvesant, I had a lot of support from my teachers, counselors, the SPARK program -- the family that was my school. Once again, I was exceedingly lucky to be understood.
It wasn't until I got to Barnard College that I enjoyed the pleasure of not being absent from school unless I was furiously ill.
Most students in NYC are not as lucky as I was. But, I'll tell you one thing we have in common: we are not absent because our classrooms are not welcoming. We are absent because the world outside our schools is chaotic. The overage and under-credited students whom I taught at Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School all pointed to difficulties in their lives which precipitated and aggravated their failure at school. Yes, many of them also pointed to the school's lack of concern for their well-being. No one said that they left school because it was boring. They didn't make it to school because of obstacles out of their control. They may have fought less and less to stay in school because they felt no one cared. No one took the time to find out the whole of their situations.
Most public schools don't have the number of counselors that I had at Stuyvesant and none are as small as the Hebrew school I attended in grades K-8.
When a kid is absent, it's a signal that something is wrong at home. Perhaps the child is legitimately ill. But, persistent absence doesn't happen without neglect and abuse. That's a hard reality to face because it means that those kids who are chronically absent need much more than just an entertaining lesson. They need social workers, counselors and dramatic intervention.
I'd bet that, given the proper care and a safe and secure home environment, most of those absent students could manage through an occasionally boring day. I'd've given my front teeth for a day in which my biggest problem was that I was bored.
All through elementary school, I missed 60 days of school a year -- on average. There was no kid in the building who wanted to be there more than I did -- a classic child with Asperger's Syndrome, I felt infinitely more comfortable talking with adults, enjoyed studying subjects in obsessive depth and was not terribly interested in the social world of children. School was my haven -- there I could talk with adults about a range of subjects, whether through the venue of class discussion or during recess or my lunch period. It was also one of the only places I received true praise in my entire life: I wrote with authority and with a precocious vocabulary and was rewarded with esteem from my entire Hebrew School. Though I was awkward, heavy and a physical mess, my intelligence was widely acknowledged and my reputation preceeded me at every juncture and in every grade. Even the principals --secular and Hebrew, gave me special attention. When I got into trouble, as I did often, they had long talks with me about what I had done. Sometimes they saw my point of view. When one teacher persecuted me for my untidyness and we therefore developed a combative relationship, the Hebrew principal stopped admonishing me, but simply instructed me to sit in his office for what seemed like a reasonable period of time and then return to class. He knew the woman didn't like me and was cruel to me and he wasn't going to add to that punishment.
My school was the only place in the world where I was thoroughly understood.
Yet, I could not go there much of the year because my mother kept me home. I wasn't ill. Sometimes she was ill. Sometimes she wanted to take off and go to the theater. Sometimes she thought I had stayed up too late studying and needed to sleep. Did she understand that I couldn't start studying until she went to sleep because she wouldn't stop talking to me about her day and her problems. OR, she couldn't stop fighting with me and my grandmother about
1) Why she had been born in the first place
2) Where the people whom she believed came into our apartment when we were asleep or unaware had put her keys, cigarettes, money, favorite pin, etc.
3) Why I didn't have a right to be on the phone for long conversations
4) Just general sexual/physical frustration
5) What she perceived to be, sometimes rightly, my grandmother's judgement of her tastes
There were other reasons, too, but you get the idea. My mother is mentally ill and she involved the entire household in her disease.
Nonetheless, I called people and got the homework assignments and did them. Paradoxically, she even took me to the library to help me complete my school reports. She wanted me to do well in school. That you have to go to school to do so never occurred to her.
And, I did well, even though I didn't go. Whenever I took a test, be it on the given day or the day I returned to school, I did exceptionally well. My reading comprehension was at college level by the sixth grade. I wrote powerfully, however disorganizedly. Moreover, I wrote with passion and always with evidence for my opinions. More than one teacher suggested I go to law school.
Fortunately for me, I did not attend a public school. At a public school, no one would have paid any attention to my reading levels or my academic success. Just being absent would have caused me to be held back. My elementary school wanted to once because of fear of scrutiny by the school system, but gave me provisional rights to go on to the next grade after my mother called and asked how they could keep a child with an 87 average back a grade. Surely there were kids with lower averages being advanced? They saw her point -- they would have seen it anyway. No one at my school thought for a moment that the solution to my problems rested in being retained in a grade.
They knew the solution to my problems was far more complicated. Having watched my mother's mental illness progress over the years, they knew too well that she was out of control. Although as part of my scholarship she was supposed to help out at the school's fundraising bingo nights, they did not press her into service. People preferred when she didn't show up, I suspect. I came to school unwashed and redolent, though wrapped in nice clothes. My bookbag carried roaches as did my coat. My scalp was covered with sebhorreic dermatitis so bad it took me until about a year ago to get it under control. As I got older, I became difficult and angry and acted out irrationally and desperately. My classmates knew I wanted attention and they forgave me all sorts of imbecilic actions. The few who knew my mother or had seen the apartment in which I lived had told the others how bad things were. I retained my academic credibility and had a few close friends. And despite it all, I got into Stuyvesant High School where I maintained my usual B+ average -- the best I could do under the circumstances.
At Stuyvesant, I had a lot of support from my teachers, counselors, the SPARK program -- the family that was my school. Once again, I was exceedingly lucky to be understood.
It wasn't until I got to Barnard College that I enjoyed the pleasure of not being absent from school unless I was furiously ill.
Most students in NYC are not as lucky as I was. But, I'll tell you one thing we have in common: we are not absent because our classrooms are not welcoming. We are absent because the world outside our schools is chaotic. The overage and under-credited students whom I taught at Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School all pointed to difficulties in their lives which precipitated and aggravated their failure at school. Yes, many of them also pointed to the school's lack of concern for their well-being. No one said that they left school because it was boring. They didn't make it to school because of obstacles out of their control. They may have fought less and less to stay in school because they felt no one cared. No one took the time to find out the whole of their situations.
Most public schools don't have the number of counselors that I had at Stuyvesant and none are as small as the Hebrew school I attended in grades K-8.
When a kid is absent, it's a signal that something is wrong at home. Perhaps the child is legitimately ill. But, persistent absence doesn't happen without neglect and abuse. That's a hard reality to face because it means that those kids who are chronically absent need much more than just an entertaining lesson. They need social workers, counselors and dramatic intervention.
I'd bet that, given the proper care and a safe and secure home environment, most of those absent students could manage through an occasionally boring day. I'd've given my front teeth for a day in which my biggest problem was that I was bored.
No Democracy in NYC
From The Village Voice
Michael Bloomberg's Velvet Coup
Is Mayor Mugabe an outrageous comparison?
By Tom Robbins
published: October 22, 2008
Mugabe? OK, it's an outrageous comparison. Forgive me. Mike Bloomberg would never shut down newspapers or use brutal thugs against dissenters in order to hold onto power. He doesn't have to. He buys them.
Mugabe is for the likes of Charles Barron, the radical councilman who embarrassed the city a few years ago by hosting the Zimbabwean tyrant at City Hall. Funny thing, there was Barron at last week's council hearings demanding to be heard on the mayor's bill to gut term limits—a reform confirmed in two separate voter referendums—in order to give himself four more years in office. There was Barron offering the simplest route to continued democracy: Do nothing.
"Why do we have to change anything?" he asked after Mario Cuomo's lead-off testimony supporting Bloomberg's bid. "The people have spoken twice already. Why not just leave things as they are?"
Barron's simple questions were matched only by The New York Times's fearless editorial page. Alone of the city's dailies, the Times refused to bend its principles. By changing the rules at this late date, the Times warned, the mayor "will tarnish his legacy and further weaken the systems of checks and balances that are essential to . . . democracy."
Uh, wait. Sorry, wrong day. That was the Times in August lecturing President Álvaro Uribe of Columbia "lest he become just another strongman" by grabbing a third term in violation of his country's constitution.
Let's see. Here it is. How could I miss it? It's got that tough, right-to-the-point headline: "The Mayor's Dangerous Idea." The mayor "wants to extend his current term of office," the editorial forthrightly states. "This is a terrible idea. . . . The very concept goes against the most basic of American convictions, that we live in a nation governed by rule of law." Bless the good old Times. Others may cut and run in the face of tyranny. It forever stands tall.
Wait! How did that sneak in here? That was the Old Gray Lady taking Rudy Giuliani to the ethical cleaners back in September 2001—that month of true fear and fiscal panic—when he sought a mere three more months to remain in office.
I know it's here somewhere. Oh, right, that one: "It makes a lot of people uncomfortable to legislatively rewrite a law that voters have twice approved at the ballot box. . . . It makes us uncomfortable too. . . . But we have concluded now that changing the law legislatively does not make us nearly as uncomfortable as keeping it." Hmmm. Well, never mind.
Welcome to Bloomville, where up is down and down up, where it's Charles Barron hoisting democracy's flag, while the Times connives with the Post and the News to provide cover for the coup. Where tycoons of business and real estate call the shots while the once-mighty unions fall meekly into line or merely whisper their opposition for fear of offending the once and future mayatollah. Where a cabal of thieves calling themselves council members leap aboard Bloomberg's ship as eagerly as Somalian pirates lurking for booty in the Indian Ocean.
Yes, Bloomville. We may as well give him naming rights, too. He's bought and paid for everything else. We are inside Jimmy Stewart's unwonderful world where muddled old Bedford Falls has come under one-man rule and morphed into an antiseptic version of anything-goes Pottersville.
Could Columbia's Uribe—or any dreaded Latin American strongman—have done any better at mustering proxies to defend his putsch? Consider the elder Cuomo: The ex-governor was as charming as ever, offering a rambling denunciation of term limits and a sterling endorsement of a continued Bloomberg mayoralty. "He is spectacularly well-suited to the task," said Cuomo.
Once the champion of the poor and the forgotten, Cuomo now carries the business card of the city's elite, a group passionately committed to keeping one of its very own in City Hall. Cuomo is of counsel to Willkie Farr & Gallagher, the law firm that serves as the Washington lobbyist for Bloomberg L.P., the mayor's $22 billion corporation. The firm is also defending the company in a discrimination lawsuit brought by 58 female Bloomberg employees. Last summer, it handled the $4.4 billion buyout of Bloomberg's longtime partner, Merrill Lynch.
The ties stem from close friendship: Top Willkie partner Richard DeScherer handles the Bloomberg family foundation and is an executor of the mayor's estate. He serves on Bloomberg L.P.'s executive committee and, oh yes, on the city's sports foundation. How better to help a friend than to send forth the firm's most famous envoy to do battle for one more mayoral term?
The taint of Bloomberg's multibillion-dollar reach—as mayor, businessman, and philanthropist—fell on many of the true believers who testified in favor of the mayor's end run around the 15-year-old term-limits law.
Here was Geoffrey Canada, celebrated Harlem anti-poverty fighter, whose reasoning for giving the council and Bloomberg an added term conveniently mirrored the mayor's own: "The city is facing its worst crisis in memory," he said. Was that the great Geoff Canada talking? Or was it the director of an organization that depends on $18 million in city contracts and the mayor's "anonymous" private donations?
Echoing Canada was George McDonald, president of the Doe Fund. The homeless-assistance group also benefits from the mayor's private giving and holds $25 million in city contracts. McDonald didn't wait for the hearings. On Columbus Day, he dispatched a crew of Doe Funders to the parade to cheer the mayor with signs proclaiming "Now More Than Ever." Newsday's Dan Janison watched these antics. "Must have been an impromptu decision to volunteer for this on a holiday," he noted.
Outside the council chambers, McDonald began sputtering when Henry Stern, former parks commissioner and foe of the mayor's bill, asked him if his city contracts had influenced his thinking. "You're saying I'm corrupt!" McDonald shouted. "We get $10 million from the city, and we do good work!"
Actually, fear was the most corrupting factor in City Hall last week: fear of angering a mayor who may well rule until 2013. Fear paralyzed the city's most powerful unions—the only possible political counterweight. The teachers' union quietly passed a resolution calling for term limits to be submitted for a new referendum—the thrust of a bill proposed by leading council dissenters Bill de Blasio and Tish James. The union never even issued a press release on it. The battlefield was left to the Working Families Party, of which the teachers are influential members. The WFP mounted a valiant campaign with a tiny budget. It had $50,000 for a TV ad buy opposing the mayor. Last year, the teachers' union spent $2.1 million on its Albany lobbying alone.
Labor's loudest voices at the hearings were in mayoral lockstep. Leaders of the building trades talked about how good Bloomberg has been for construction jobs. The uniformed municipal union leaders repeated in tandem the mayor's mantra that regular elections are the real term limits. Unmentioned were recent generous contracts or the ones now pending. AWOL from the scene was the biggest municipal workers' group, District Council 37. The union's city contract is currently being negotiated.
Only plucky Arthur Cheliotes, leader of Local 1180's city administrative workers, stepped forward to defend labor's honor. Cheliotes looked lonely as he waited hours to speak. "The mayor has cleverly gamed the system by not letting term limits get on the ballot this November," he said when he finally testified.
By the way, did you know that dissident labor leaders keep getting killed in Uribe's Columbia?
Michael Bloomberg's Velvet Coup
Is Mayor Mugabe an outrageous comparison?
By Tom Robbins
published: October 22, 2008
Mugabe? OK, it's an outrageous comparison. Forgive me. Mike Bloomberg would never shut down newspapers or use brutal thugs against dissenters in order to hold onto power. He doesn't have to. He buys them.
Mugabe is for the likes of Charles Barron, the radical councilman who embarrassed the city a few years ago by hosting the Zimbabwean tyrant at City Hall. Funny thing, there was Barron at last week's council hearings demanding to be heard on the mayor's bill to gut term limits—a reform confirmed in two separate voter referendums—in order to give himself four more years in office. There was Barron offering the simplest route to continued democracy: Do nothing.
"Why do we have to change anything?" he asked after Mario Cuomo's lead-off testimony supporting Bloomberg's bid. "The people have spoken twice already. Why not just leave things as they are?"
Barron's simple questions were matched only by The New York Times's fearless editorial page. Alone of the city's dailies, the Times refused to bend its principles. By changing the rules at this late date, the Times warned, the mayor "will tarnish his legacy and further weaken the systems of checks and balances that are essential to . . . democracy."
Uh, wait. Sorry, wrong day. That was the Times in August lecturing President Álvaro Uribe of Columbia "lest he become just another strongman" by grabbing a third term in violation of his country's constitution.
Let's see. Here it is. How could I miss it? It's got that tough, right-to-the-point headline: "The Mayor's Dangerous Idea." The mayor "wants to extend his current term of office," the editorial forthrightly states. "This is a terrible idea. . . . The very concept goes against the most basic of American convictions, that we live in a nation governed by rule of law." Bless the good old Times. Others may cut and run in the face of tyranny. It forever stands tall.
Wait! How did that sneak in here? That was the Old Gray Lady taking Rudy Giuliani to the ethical cleaners back in September 2001—that month of true fear and fiscal panic—when he sought a mere three more months to remain in office.
I know it's here somewhere. Oh, right, that one: "It makes a lot of people uncomfortable to legislatively rewrite a law that voters have twice approved at the ballot box. . . . It makes us uncomfortable too. . . . But we have concluded now that changing the law legislatively does not make us nearly as uncomfortable as keeping it." Hmmm. Well, never mind.
Welcome to Bloomville, where up is down and down up, where it's Charles Barron hoisting democracy's flag, while the Times connives with the Post and the News to provide cover for the coup. Where tycoons of business and real estate call the shots while the once-mighty unions fall meekly into line or merely whisper their opposition for fear of offending the once and future mayatollah. Where a cabal of thieves calling themselves council members leap aboard Bloomberg's ship as eagerly as Somalian pirates lurking for booty in the Indian Ocean.
Yes, Bloomville. We may as well give him naming rights, too. He's bought and paid for everything else. We are inside Jimmy Stewart's unwonderful world where muddled old Bedford Falls has come under one-man rule and morphed into an antiseptic version of anything-goes Pottersville.
Could Columbia's Uribe—or any dreaded Latin American strongman—have done any better at mustering proxies to defend his putsch? Consider the elder Cuomo: The ex-governor was as charming as ever, offering a rambling denunciation of term limits and a sterling endorsement of a continued Bloomberg mayoralty. "He is spectacularly well-suited to the task," said Cuomo.
Once the champion of the poor and the forgotten, Cuomo now carries the business card of the city's elite, a group passionately committed to keeping one of its very own in City Hall. Cuomo is of counsel to Willkie Farr & Gallagher, the law firm that serves as the Washington lobbyist for Bloomberg L.P., the mayor's $22 billion corporation. The firm is also defending the company in a discrimination lawsuit brought by 58 female Bloomberg employees. Last summer, it handled the $4.4 billion buyout of Bloomberg's longtime partner, Merrill Lynch.
The ties stem from close friendship: Top Willkie partner Richard DeScherer handles the Bloomberg family foundation and is an executor of the mayor's estate. He serves on Bloomberg L.P.'s executive committee and, oh yes, on the city's sports foundation. How better to help a friend than to send forth the firm's most famous envoy to do battle for one more mayoral term?
The taint of Bloomberg's multibillion-dollar reach—as mayor, businessman, and philanthropist—fell on many of the true believers who testified in favor of the mayor's end run around the 15-year-old term-limits law.
Here was Geoffrey Canada, celebrated Harlem anti-poverty fighter, whose reasoning for giving the council and Bloomberg an added term conveniently mirrored the mayor's own: "The city is facing its worst crisis in memory," he said. Was that the great Geoff Canada talking? Or was it the director of an organization that depends on $18 million in city contracts and the mayor's "anonymous" private donations?
Echoing Canada was George McDonald, president of the Doe Fund. The homeless-assistance group also benefits from the mayor's private giving and holds $25 million in city contracts. McDonald didn't wait for the hearings. On Columbus Day, he dispatched a crew of Doe Funders to the parade to cheer the mayor with signs proclaiming "Now More Than Ever." Newsday's Dan Janison watched these antics. "Must have been an impromptu decision to volunteer for this on a holiday," he noted.
Outside the council chambers, McDonald began sputtering when Henry Stern, former parks commissioner and foe of the mayor's bill, asked him if his city contracts had influenced his thinking. "You're saying I'm corrupt!" McDonald shouted. "We get $10 million from the city, and we do good work!"
Actually, fear was the most corrupting factor in City Hall last week: fear of angering a mayor who may well rule until 2013. Fear paralyzed the city's most powerful unions—the only possible political counterweight. The teachers' union quietly passed a resolution calling for term limits to be submitted for a new referendum—the thrust of a bill proposed by leading council dissenters Bill de Blasio and Tish James. The union never even issued a press release on it. The battlefield was left to the Working Families Party, of which the teachers are influential members. The WFP mounted a valiant campaign with a tiny budget. It had $50,000 for a TV ad buy opposing the mayor. Last year, the teachers' union spent $2.1 million on its Albany lobbying alone.
Labor's loudest voices at the hearings were in mayoral lockstep. Leaders of the building trades talked about how good Bloomberg has been for construction jobs. The uniformed municipal union leaders repeated in tandem the mayor's mantra that regular elections are the real term limits. Unmentioned were recent generous contracts or the ones now pending. AWOL from the scene was the biggest municipal workers' group, District Council 37. The union's city contract is currently being negotiated.
Only plucky Arthur Cheliotes, leader of Local 1180's city administrative workers, stepped forward to defend labor's honor. Cheliotes looked lonely as he waited hours to speak. "The mayor has cleverly gamed the system by not letting term limits get on the ballot this November," he said when he finally testified.
By the way, did you know that dissident labor leaders keep getting killed in Uribe's Columbia?
21 October, 2008
MASTER P: Hip Hop Stereotypes Testimony Before Congress
An interesting proposal. Too bad no one was listening.
20 October, 2008
19 October, 2008
MAYOR BLOOMBERG HAS SQUANDERED OUR MONEY
OPINION OCTOBER 16, 2008 New York Will Survive Without Bloomberg
The mayor never bothered to prepare the city for any lean years.By JASON L. RILEY
"Next to the assumption of power is the responsibility of relinquishing it."
-- Benjamin Disraeli
Citing the financial crisis, twice-elected New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to scrap the city's term-limit law. He's asking the city council to pass a bill that would allow him to seek four more years in office.
Obviously the mayor believes that he's indispensable to Gotham's well-being, which will come as no surprise to any journalist who's met with him. What's passing strange is that so much of the local press seems to share the mayor's inflated view of himself.
The city's two major tabloids, the New York Post and the Daily News, both ran editorials under the headline "Run, Mike, Run" that called for changing the rules so that Mr. Bloomberg could stand for re-election next year. And the New York Times complained that the term-limits law "is particularly unappealing now because . . . it would deny New Yorkers -- at a time when the city's economy is under great stress -- the right to decide for themselves whether an effective and popular mayor should stay in office."
The paper took the opposite view seven years ago, when there was talk of extending the second term of Mr. Bloomberg's predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, in the wake of 9/11. "To suggest that the city would be incapable of getting along without Mr. Giuliani . . . undermines New York's sense of self-sufficiency," said the Gray Lady. "While Mr. Giuliani has been a great leader during this crisis, the truth is that no one is indispensable."
How Times change.
With a job-approval rating around 70%, Mr. Bloomberg is almost certain to win a third term if allowed to run again. He's continued Mr. Giuliani's policing policies and kept crime down. The mayor also deserves praise for his aggressive pro-development policies, such as rezoning large swaths of the city where industry is not coming back. Mr. Bloomberg, a nominal Republican who switched parties to run for office, made education the centerpiece of his first campaign, and he's made good on a promise to implement reform. Merit-pay pilot programs have been introduced, the number of charter schools has expanded, and student test scores have improved modestly.
But the argument for extending the two-term limit for Mr. Bloomberg -- a self-made billionaire who got his start on Wall Street -- is that the city needs someone with his financial acumen to help weather the fallout from the banking crisis. The biggest problem with that argument is that Mr. Bloomberg hasn't been very adept at managing the city's finances, even though he's had record revenues to work with.
Between 2000 and 2007, New York's tax receipts grew by 41% after inflation. "That's something that's never happened or come close to happening in the city's modern history," says Nicole Gelinas, who follows municipal finance at the Manhattan Institute. This windfall had everything to do with the Wall Street bull market, and everyone knew that the rate of growth was unsustainable. Instead of using the flush-year surpluses to put New York's fiscal house in order, however, Mr. Bloomberg mostly squandered them.
The four big costs to New York's budget are Medicaid, pensions, debt and health care for public employees. Since the mayor took office seven years ago, those costs are up 57% after inflation. His handling of the city's debt is particularly disappointing, if not irresponsible, since debt-service payments are legal obligations that can't be suspended during economic slowdowns.
Since 1990, debt per person in New York is up by 185%, exceeding inflation by 118 percentage points and exceeding tax revenue growth by 27 percentage points. By most measures, New York has higher per-capita debt (about $7,000) than any other city in the nation. And while the problem obviously predates the current mayor, the future burden has worsened substantially on his watch.
Instead of cutting other parts of the budget and using the city's swollen coffers to service debt and pay for capital projects out of operating spending, Mr. Bloomberg chose to increase borrowing. Between 2000 and 2007, debt grew by 5.7% annually and will continue to grow by 5.9% annually over the next four years. By increasing the city's debt obligations while doing nothing to decrease the city's overdependence on income tax revenue from Wall Street wages and bonuses, Mr. Bloomberg has exacerbated a bad situation.
The mayor's spending record isn't much better. Between 1975, when New York faced its last fiscal crisis, and the Giuliani era, city spending rose by just 9% after adjusting for inflation and population growth. Mr. Bloomberg's 2008 budget is nearly 50% larger than the one he inherited from Mr. Giuliani in 2001. That far outpaces inflation, which rose 21% over the same period. Nor has the mayor shown any sustained interest in working with the state to reform a Medicaid system that costs the city $6 billion per year and is rife with waste and abuse. New York state's per-capita Medicaid spending is easily the highest in the U.S.
Another popular argument for keeping Mr. Bloomberg in City Hall is that his potential successors -- New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, City Controller William Thompson and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn -- are the political equivalent of the Three Stooges. It's true that the city could do worse than Michael Bloomberg. But it's also true that mayoral term limits were approved by New Yorkers twice in referendums in the 1990s, and not by small margins.
There is something deeply undemocratic about legislatively overturning the will of the people without giving voters a say in the matter. And there's something deeply disturbing about a local press corps that lets the political class get away with it.
Mr. Riley is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
The mayor never bothered to prepare the city for any lean years.By JASON L. RILEY
"Next to the assumption of power is the responsibility of relinquishing it."
-- Benjamin Disraeli
Citing the financial crisis, twice-elected New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to scrap the city's term-limit law. He's asking the city council to pass a bill that would allow him to seek four more years in office.
Obviously the mayor believes that he's indispensable to Gotham's well-being, which will come as no surprise to any journalist who's met with him. What's passing strange is that so much of the local press seems to share the mayor's inflated view of himself.
The city's two major tabloids, the New York Post and the Daily News, both ran editorials under the headline "Run, Mike, Run" that called for changing the rules so that Mr. Bloomberg could stand for re-election next year. And the New York Times complained that the term-limits law "is particularly unappealing now because . . . it would deny New Yorkers -- at a time when the city's economy is under great stress -- the right to decide for themselves whether an effective and popular mayor should stay in office."
The paper took the opposite view seven years ago, when there was talk of extending the second term of Mr. Bloomberg's predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, in the wake of 9/11. "To suggest that the city would be incapable of getting along without Mr. Giuliani . . . undermines New York's sense of self-sufficiency," said the Gray Lady. "While Mr. Giuliani has been a great leader during this crisis, the truth is that no one is indispensable."
How Times change.
With a job-approval rating around 70%, Mr. Bloomberg is almost certain to win a third term if allowed to run again. He's continued Mr. Giuliani's policing policies and kept crime down. The mayor also deserves praise for his aggressive pro-development policies, such as rezoning large swaths of the city where industry is not coming back. Mr. Bloomberg, a nominal Republican who switched parties to run for office, made education the centerpiece of his first campaign, and he's made good on a promise to implement reform. Merit-pay pilot programs have been introduced, the number of charter schools has expanded, and student test scores have improved modestly.
But the argument for extending the two-term limit for Mr. Bloomberg -- a self-made billionaire who got his start on Wall Street -- is that the city needs someone with his financial acumen to help weather the fallout from the banking crisis. The biggest problem with that argument is that Mr. Bloomberg hasn't been very adept at managing the city's finances, even though he's had record revenues to work with.
Between 2000 and 2007, New York's tax receipts grew by 41% after inflation. "That's something that's never happened or come close to happening in the city's modern history," says Nicole Gelinas, who follows municipal finance at the Manhattan Institute. This windfall had everything to do with the Wall Street bull market, and everyone knew that the rate of growth was unsustainable. Instead of using the flush-year surpluses to put New York's fiscal house in order, however, Mr. Bloomberg mostly squandered them.
The four big costs to New York's budget are Medicaid, pensions, debt and health care for public employees. Since the mayor took office seven years ago, those costs are up 57% after inflation. His handling of the city's debt is particularly disappointing, if not irresponsible, since debt-service payments are legal obligations that can't be suspended during economic slowdowns.
Since 1990, debt per person in New York is up by 185%, exceeding inflation by 118 percentage points and exceeding tax revenue growth by 27 percentage points. By most measures, New York has higher per-capita debt (about $7,000) than any other city in the nation. And while the problem obviously predates the current mayor, the future burden has worsened substantially on his watch.
Instead of cutting other parts of the budget and using the city's swollen coffers to service debt and pay for capital projects out of operating spending, Mr. Bloomberg chose to increase borrowing. Between 2000 and 2007, debt grew by 5.7% annually and will continue to grow by 5.9% annually over the next four years. By increasing the city's debt obligations while doing nothing to decrease the city's overdependence on income tax revenue from Wall Street wages and bonuses, Mr. Bloomberg has exacerbated a bad situation.
The mayor's spending record isn't much better. Between 1975, when New York faced its last fiscal crisis, and the Giuliani era, city spending rose by just 9% after adjusting for inflation and population growth. Mr. Bloomberg's 2008 budget is nearly 50% larger than the one he inherited from Mr. Giuliani in 2001. That far outpaces inflation, which rose 21% over the same period. Nor has the mayor shown any sustained interest in working with the state to reform a Medicaid system that costs the city $6 billion per year and is rife with waste and abuse. New York state's per-capita Medicaid spending is easily the highest in the U.S.
Another popular argument for keeping Mr. Bloomberg in City Hall is that his potential successors -- New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, City Controller William Thompson and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn -- are the political equivalent of the Three Stooges. It's true that the city could do worse than Michael Bloomberg. But it's also true that mayoral term limits were approved by New Yorkers twice in referendums in the 1990s, and not by small margins.
There is something deeply undemocratic about legislatively overturning the will of the people without giving voters a say in the matter. And there's something deeply disturbing about a local press corps that lets the political class get away with it.
Mr. Riley is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
15 October, 2008
No End In Sight
A Must See Especially FOR ANYONE STILL CONSIDERING McCain. Please, please watch this.
YOU MUST READ THIS
There's a wonderful article about Joe Biden on The Huffington Post. The address is below. You MUST read it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-petrow/joe-bidens-tears-remember_b_133902.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-petrow/joe-bidens-tears-remember_b_133902.html
13 October, 2008
12 October, 2008
Paul Krugman warning from 2005
These days Mr. Greenspan expresses concern about the financial risks created by "the prevalence of interest-only loans and the introduction of more-exotic forms of adjustable-rate mortgages." But last year he encouraged families to take on those very risks, touting the advantages of adjustable-rate mortgages and declaring that "American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage.
If Mr. Greenspan had said two years ago what he's saying now, people might have borrowed less and bought more wisely. But he didn't, and now it's too late. There are signs that the housing market either has peaked already or soon will. And it will be up to Mr. Greenspan's successor to manage the bubble's aftermath.
How bad will that aftermath be? The U.S. economy is currently suffering from twin imbalances. On one side, domestic spending is swollen by the housing bubble, which has led both to a huge surge in construction and to high consumer spending, as people extract equity from their homes. On the other side, we have a huge trade deficit, which we cover by selling bonds to foreigners. As I like to say, these days Americans make a living by selling each other houses, paid for with money borrowed from China.
One way or another, the economy will eventually eliminate both imbalances.
Aug 29, 2005, NY Times. Quote is now posted on The Huffington Post.com
If Mr. Greenspan had said two years ago what he's saying now, people might have borrowed less and bought more wisely. But he didn't, and now it's too late. There are signs that the housing market either has peaked already or soon will. And it will be up to Mr. Greenspan's successor to manage the bubble's aftermath.
How bad will that aftermath be? The U.S. economy is currently suffering from twin imbalances. On one side, domestic spending is swollen by the housing bubble, which has led both to a huge surge in construction and to high consumer spending, as people extract equity from their homes. On the other side, we have a huge trade deficit, which we cover by selling bonds to foreigners. As I like to say, these days Americans make a living by selling each other houses, paid for with money borrowed from China.
One way or another, the economy will eventually eliminate both imbalances.
Aug 29, 2005, NY Times. Quote is now posted on The Huffington Post.com
11 October, 2008
09 October, 2008
The 20,000 Teacher: New York's Greatest Bargain
Where in NY can you hire someone with 16 years of experience and solid performance in their field for 20,000? The New York City Department of Education, that's where.
Principals all over NY are now looking for ATR's to hire -- as ATR's. They want to hire a full-time substitute to be a full-time subsitute, not as a member of their faculty. Then, they take the substitute and give the teacher a full program of classes and assignments, AS IF THEY WERE ON FACULTY. The kids don't know the difference and the parents think that the school has a seasoned teacher on its staff!
You see, to actually hire an ATR as a FACULTY MEMBER you have to pay his/her full salary using your budget. But, YOU CAN GET THE SAME PERSON FOR 75 percent off if you don't hire him/her and then request him/her as an ATR! In this case, RENTING IS CHEAPER THAN BUYING. The rest of the money is paid by the Department of Education. The school only pays that 20,000. And they don't have to take responsibility for this person, either. They don't have to hire him/her back as an ATR for even the next term. So, while the parents think there's seasoned faculty who are PART OF THE SCHOOL, this person is just a rental. And the person knows it. So, he or she can try to be part of the team and some principals and schools will treat the ATR's as such but the odds are good, he or she won't be taken all that seriously as...well...you know, they're just here for a few months or so. There's no reason for a principal to take you seriously. Mine does, but I'm lucky. Most of my colleagues are not so lucky at all, and one retired because of inhumane treatement... Respect and humane treatment shouldn't depend on luck, though. When you're an ATR the school can always trade you in for another. People actually INTERVIEW for ATR positions, that's how much they want to work.
Who ARE the principals responsible for? Those younger teachers who may be full of energy and ideas or who may not know how to handle a class at all. They have no track records. They were hired BECAUSE THEY WERE CHEAP AND MALLEABLE. Sure, they have good grades and great training. I'm sure you'd feel comfortable knowing your insurance plan decided not to retain experienced, proven doctors but hired young kids just out of their residency. As you go under, just think: he got really good grades and wrote killer papers. "Killer" metaphorically speaking. So, of course, you feel really good knowing that the principal of your school goes around hiring "A" students to teach your kids and only rents experienced teachers. After all, with those grades he/she is bound to be a quick study -- unless, of course, you realize that the teacher will be teaching and not writing papers and sitting in class and being graded her/himself. I was a terrific student in graduate school, but I don't walk into my classes with little note cards and fifteen books with me to give my presentations like I did in my seminars.
Plus, these young kids are in the most VULNERABLE positions a teacher can be in. They have no tenure -- no job security. So, they are at the principal's veritable mercy. In case you were hoping of asking one of them to get behind the PTA's drive to cut class size or change any kind of policy, think again. What you have in front of you is someone who has NO POWER to speak up if he/she sees something wrong. And he/she knows that, too.
So, your schools are now staffed by inexpensive young people and veterans rented periodically. All of these people have no real say in how the school is run. That's up to the principal. And this is how the Chancellor and the Mayor want it and they have the ultimate control. They have the ultimate say over what your kids get or don't get. Your teachers will find ways to explain why there are no computers or sports or arts at the school because they have to. They literally don't have a choice. So, you want something changed, you are going to have to fight City Hall. Literally.
Still think the 20,000 teacher is a great bargain?
Principals all over NY are now looking for ATR's to hire -- as ATR's. They want to hire a full-time substitute to be a full-time subsitute, not as a member of their faculty. Then, they take the substitute and give the teacher a full program of classes and assignments, AS IF THEY WERE ON FACULTY. The kids don't know the difference and the parents think that the school has a seasoned teacher on its staff!
You see, to actually hire an ATR as a FACULTY MEMBER you have to pay his/her full salary using your budget. But, YOU CAN GET THE SAME PERSON FOR 75 percent off if you don't hire him/her and then request him/her as an ATR! In this case, RENTING IS CHEAPER THAN BUYING. The rest of the money is paid by the Department of Education. The school only pays that 20,000. And they don't have to take responsibility for this person, either. They don't have to hire him/her back as an ATR for even the next term. So, while the parents think there's seasoned faculty who are PART OF THE SCHOOL, this person is just a rental. And the person knows it. So, he or she can try to be part of the team and some principals and schools will treat the ATR's as such but the odds are good, he or she won't be taken all that seriously as...well...you know, they're just here for a few months or so. There's no reason for a principal to take you seriously. Mine does, but I'm lucky. Most of my colleagues are not so lucky at all, and one retired because of inhumane treatement... Respect and humane treatment shouldn't depend on luck, though. When you're an ATR the school can always trade you in for another. People actually INTERVIEW for ATR positions, that's how much they want to work.
Who ARE the principals responsible for? Those younger teachers who may be full of energy and ideas or who may not know how to handle a class at all. They have no track records. They were hired BECAUSE THEY WERE CHEAP AND MALLEABLE. Sure, they have good grades and great training. I'm sure you'd feel comfortable knowing your insurance plan decided not to retain experienced, proven doctors but hired young kids just out of their residency. As you go under, just think: he got really good grades and wrote killer papers. "Killer" metaphorically speaking. So, of course, you feel really good knowing that the principal of your school goes around hiring "A" students to teach your kids and only rents experienced teachers. After all, with those grades he/she is bound to be a quick study -- unless, of course, you realize that the teacher will be teaching and not writing papers and sitting in class and being graded her/himself. I was a terrific student in graduate school, but I don't walk into my classes with little note cards and fifteen books with me to give my presentations like I did in my seminars.
Plus, these young kids are in the most VULNERABLE positions a teacher can be in. They have no tenure -- no job security. So, they are at the principal's veritable mercy. In case you were hoping of asking one of them to get behind the PTA's drive to cut class size or change any kind of policy, think again. What you have in front of you is someone who has NO POWER to speak up if he/she sees something wrong. And he/she knows that, too.
So, your schools are now staffed by inexpensive young people and veterans rented periodically. All of these people have no real say in how the school is run. That's up to the principal. And this is how the Chancellor and the Mayor want it and they have the ultimate control. They have the ultimate say over what your kids get or don't get. Your teachers will find ways to explain why there are no computers or sports or arts at the school because they have to. They literally don't have a choice. So, you want something changed, you are going to have to fight City Hall. Literally.
Still think the 20,000 teacher is a great bargain?
05 October, 2008
Comments, comments
First, an explanation. I got a nasty, nasty comment on my blog after I made a comment about Randi Weingarten's being "grateful the Mayor stepped up" to run again.
I don't like conflict, I don't need conflict. Maybe there's no connection and it was a coincidence. But there are people who go around attacking teachers regularly on behalf of party lines. We've all read their anonymous emails or their emails under the names of various dead philosophers. Still, no matter why the person wrote it, I want to be clear about two things: I still find Randi Weingarten's personal opinion about the Mayor running again disatisfying. And I will not waste my time on people who write anonymous nasty comments on my blog. No more opportunities for such cowardice will be given. I have a life to lead, a job to protect. I am entirely self-supporting -- I don't want to be begging relatives for help at 40 years old. Ask me why I don't have more savings and I'll show you the receipts for all the things I've bought for school over the years. Just the copying alone has eaten my money away.
1) Personal opinion or not: How Randi Weingarten as someone who leads the UFT CAN WANT BLOOMBERG TO RUN FOR MAYOR AGAIN IS BEYOND ME and IT SHOWS A DISCONNECT BETWEEN HER AND HER UFT MEMBERS. If she PERSONALLY had any feelings for us as UFT Members, SHE COULD NOT HAVE WELCOMED THE MAYOR'S DECISION. But, since her statement is qualified with the word, "personal" I can't technically fault her for speaking on my behalf. So, NOW I AM MAKING CLEAR. WHAT SHE SAID ON HER OWN BEHALF WAS OFFENSIVE TO ME. UNFORTUNATELY, A LOT OF COMFORTABLE WHITE PEOPLE THINK LIKE HER AND I'M RELATED TO SOME OF THEM. SO, I've grown accustomed to people who say they care about my position then voting to put a gun to my head, metaphorically speaking. And yes, Bloomberg in a third term is like a metaphorical gun to my head and you would think that my UFT President would know how much agony and pain this man caused me and other teachers like me. You would think that PERSONALLY and PROFESSIONALLY she would be horrified by his running for a third term. But, she's not. And that no longer surprises me, since she basically fed my school and my job to the Mayor and forced a contract down people's throats which I didn't vote for. Maybe, as a friend said, she is just a bad chess player and didn't see it coming. However, all the qualifiers aside, my students are out of a school and a very good educational team because of Bloomberg. So, no, I don't want him "stepping up". I wish she didn't.
Second, some evil, evil human put a comment on my blog tonight which showed a very close awareness of my family history. This person put that comment there anonymously, but wanted me to know that he or she knows me. This happened coincidentally after I put my comment up about Randi. So, I pulled back out of fear. I can't afford to and can't handle being tortured any more than the circumstances which I am in cause me to be. To be perfectly honest, my personal opinion is that no one WILL HEAR the word, "personally" in the sound bite or read it in the email. Her opinion is seen as UFT opinion. But, she did say the word, so I have to give her credit for it.
I have been working on this post for hours. Here are the facts:
I am entitled to my opinion about my UFT President's opinion.
She is entitled to her personal opinion, though I think giving it to the press is a grey area -- if it's only personal, why say it? Still, she has a right to see things what I think is the wrong way. She does not have the right to misrepresent me or my interests.
I can't help feeling that, however it was said, welcoming Mike back for term three didn't represent my interests.
At the same time, I am afraid that now that I've gone so far as to say something public, I will face difficulties with my union which is just great because I am a stone's throw from losing my job, as are all ATR's.
Mike Bloomberg holds that stone. It's Randi's job to catch it, no matter what her personal opinion is. I would think she'd be sick of the game by now, but that's not my personal business.
My personal business is I want peace of mind.
BOTTOM LINE: I hope a good PRO-SCHOOL candidate "Steps up" and our union does everything we can to get him/her elected.
As an old enemy used to say, quoting The Godfather, "This isn't personal. It's business." It's her business to take care that I don't lose my job, whatever her personal feelings are about the Mayor.
I hope Randi gets that.
I don't like conflict, I don't need conflict. Maybe there's no connection and it was a coincidence. But there are people who go around attacking teachers regularly on behalf of party lines. We've all read their anonymous emails or their emails under the names of various dead philosophers. Still, no matter why the person wrote it, I want to be clear about two things: I still find Randi Weingarten's personal opinion about the Mayor running again disatisfying. And I will not waste my time on people who write anonymous nasty comments on my blog. No more opportunities for such cowardice will be given. I have a life to lead, a job to protect. I am entirely self-supporting -- I don't want to be begging relatives for help at 40 years old. Ask me why I don't have more savings and I'll show you the receipts for all the things I've bought for school over the years. Just the copying alone has eaten my money away.
1) Personal opinion or not: How Randi Weingarten as someone who leads the UFT CAN WANT BLOOMBERG TO RUN FOR MAYOR AGAIN IS BEYOND ME and IT SHOWS A DISCONNECT BETWEEN HER AND HER UFT MEMBERS. If she PERSONALLY had any feelings for us as UFT Members, SHE COULD NOT HAVE WELCOMED THE MAYOR'S DECISION. But, since her statement is qualified with the word, "personal" I can't technically fault her for speaking on my behalf. So, NOW I AM MAKING CLEAR. WHAT SHE SAID ON HER OWN BEHALF WAS OFFENSIVE TO ME. UNFORTUNATELY, A LOT OF COMFORTABLE WHITE PEOPLE THINK LIKE HER AND I'M RELATED TO SOME OF THEM. SO, I've grown accustomed to people who say they care about my position then voting to put a gun to my head, metaphorically speaking. And yes, Bloomberg in a third term is like a metaphorical gun to my head and you would think that my UFT President would know how much agony and pain this man caused me and other teachers like me. You would think that PERSONALLY and PROFESSIONALLY she would be horrified by his running for a third term. But, she's not. And that no longer surprises me, since she basically fed my school and my job to the Mayor and forced a contract down people's throats which I didn't vote for. Maybe, as a friend said, she is just a bad chess player and didn't see it coming. However, all the qualifiers aside, my students are out of a school and a very good educational team because of Bloomberg. So, no, I don't want him "stepping up". I wish she didn't.
Second, some evil, evil human put a comment on my blog tonight which showed a very close awareness of my family history. This person put that comment there anonymously, but wanted me to know that he or she knows me. This happened coincidentally after I put my comment up about Randi. So, I pulled back out of fear. I can't afford to and can't handle being tortured any more than the circumstances which I am in cause me to be. To be perfectly honest, my personal opinion is that no one WILL HEAR the word, "personally" in the sound bite or read it in the email. Her opinion is seen as UFT opinion. But, she did say the word, so I have to give her credit for it.
I have been working on this post for hours. Here are the facts:
I am entitled to my opinion about my UFT President's opinion.
She is entitled to her personal opinion, though I think giving it to the press is a grey area -- if it's only personal, why say it? Still, she has a right to see things what I think is the wrong way. She does not have the right to misrepresent me or my interests.
I can't help feeling that, however it was said, welcoming Mike back for term three didn't represent my interests.
At the same time, I am afraid that now that I've gone so far as to say something public, I will face difficulties with my union which is just great because I am a stone's throw from losing my job, as are all ATR's.
Mike Bloomberg holds that stone. It's Randi's job to catch it, no matter what her personal opinion is. I would think she'd be sick of the game by now, but that's not my personal business.
My personal business is I want peace of mind.
BOTTOM LINE: I hope a good PRO-SCHOOL candidate "Steps up" and our union does everything we can to get him/her elected.
As an old enemy used to say, quoting The Godfather, "This isn't personal. It's business." It's her business to take care that I don't lose my job, whatever her personal feelings are about the Mayor.
I hope Randi gets that.
WHITE PEOPLE DON'T GET IT.
I hate to be blunt, but listen.
The schools in my neighborhood are much the same as the were before Bloomberg, before Giuliani, before Koch. It's a neighborhood which attracts hungry European and now Asian immigrants. They come, they pool their funds, they kick their kids into school and make them fear getting "B's" let alone failing, and they do well. My cat Larry could be teaching English. Those kids are going to find a way to understand the work and their parents will pay tutors with their last dime to do it. I know. I was one of those kids in a neighborhood which is its twin on the other side of Brooklyn.
My students, who are predominantly African-American and Hispanic do not reside in this sheltered world. And sheltered it is. My mother didn't tell me anything about the relationship of college to getting a job. That wasn't the point. You went to college because that's what snobby intellectuals did. Being a snobby intellectual was the apex of existence. Distinguishing between good music, literature, politics and food was what I was told a person lived to do. Mine, like many of the families in my neighborhood, was a family which LIED to itself every day about the hardships of life so that they could find joy within them. Going to the opera by subway and eating cold spaghetti when we got home was a glory -- the music was worth the trouble and the growling stomach.
It's easy for me to imagine how my students feel because I feel the same way. Despite those trips to hear Verdi at The Metropolitan Opera House, I no longer feel the need to even leave my house outside of going to work. The duckets matter: 40 or so dollars to sit in the Family Circle where I will see nothing although I will hear well, and then take the long subway ride home is just not a bargain to me. I can listen at home, read the review, imagine. The bottom line for me and money is always about staples and what I do with my money is about how I will survive. Every time I listen to music, I long to go back to school and get a Ph.D., but I will never do it. No jobs in it.
As Joe Biden hinted in the Vice Presidential debate, fewer people in the US can cloister themselves in the feeling that they will achieve the American Dream. My immigrant neighbors band together in groups larger than ten to buy houses or shares of businesses hoping someday to each have space of their own. They are aging more and more on my street and few people move out. I've noticed beer cans in EVERYONE's garbage these days. They're hard to overlook as the elderly Chinese immigrants in my neighborhood often go from pail to pail, looking for a misplaced can that they can add to their enormous plastic bags. For them, the rewards will not be on earth, but they imagine they will be so for their children who imagine it will be so for their children. At some point, they will tire, too. It's inevitable.
Meanwhile White People don't see what is going on. They continue to stretch their credit and push for that lucky break. It has to be there. Things look the same except that there are fewer and fewer jobs and the economy is shot. They know that, but they don't know what it means in terms of schools and education.
My students see the everyone stretched to their limit and they don't lie to themselves. Sure, they listen to pop and spend away on ridiculous trends in clothing. That's partially what's left of a dream of someday being successful and partially the result of a sense of "might as well, NOW." They know they won't be able to afford the 45 dollar hat when they get older. And a 45 dollar hat lasts forever as far as they can tell. It provides status, pleasure and it looks like what successful people wear. It's the same theory that pushed my JAPPY friends and I to buy Ralph Lauren and Lacoste in the 80's. We wanted to look like the proud and successful second and third generation Jewish immigrants we hoped to be. Now all of those clothes are in a suitcase somewhere. I can't fit into them as I have gained weight and they are very old, anyway. But, it was a way then to keep me in my dreamworld and that illusion kept me in school. It doesn't for my students because many of their heroes didn't finish school and many of their family members did and are suffering economically.
How many times did you hear of a millionaire with a "C" average or who quit school early? You blocked it out because you thought it was a fluke, or like me, you knew you had no business sense so school was your only hope. Imagine that more of the successes you know of fit that category than people in school.
I have always said that had I gone to the general public schools as they are, I would've dropped out of school and become a car thief. I have fast hands and am good at navigating through the dark. There is no comfort in the current public high school. No one even tries to sell the idea of study for its own sake, or of success based on anything but SKILLS. When I was growing up, I never heard that word. I searched for knowledge. Skills, I expected, I would gain in life, afterwards and I would apply what I knew to my work which would somehow make me better. It has been a career of problem solving, much of which I learned in school. A skill.
I no longer write on cover letters that my experience or education will be of use. I talk about my "varied skill sets".
Generally, I don't leave the house or buy anything which does not have to do with the aforementioned "sets".
If I were a student now, I'd be planning to be a nurse. I'd get an A.S. I'd try to get the B.S.N. later, but the priority would be on learning what I could do in all kinds of situations.
My students, I guess, see themselves as constantly facing challenges ahead -- handling things. When I was their age, I wanted to discover ideas, to write precisely and with authority. Sometimes I accomplish those things, but the email would be just as useful if I wrote it without punctuation and shipped it off ASAP.
All self-deprecation aside, though, I have enjoyed my education and all of my work. And the jury is still out on what will be remembered and what I will focus the bulk of my life on. I wouldn't give up a minute of the time I've spent in the theater and I haven't worked on a project yet which wasn't well respected. And, yes, it made a difference that I got that FANTASTIC education -- the quality of my life and work has been enriched by it. I've done some amazing artistic work and I have taught some terrific classes. I've ALWAYS given my students a good education and a few laughs. My students defied the odds. I get calls all the time from kids who are in college who weren't expected to graduate high school. WHO COULD REGRET THAT?
It's NOT FAIR that I got to have this kind of enriching experience very much because I am WHITE. Being WHITE made it easier to balance theater and education because I was given much more leeway than a person of color. I'm white and well-spoken and I am accorded INSTANT RESPECT because of it and THAT'S NOT FAIR. Furthermore, I got that fabulous education largely because I was fortunate enough to have a parent who could afford to send me (on scholarship, but still) to Hebrew School, which got me into Stuyvesant, which got me into Barnard and then to Stony Brook -- both of which came with scholarships. Children don't choose their parents, and those first years of education mean everything. And my Hebrew School existed for MY COMMUNITY -- white, lower-middle class Jews struggling to get ahead. Again, I got shelter and chances to enjoy things my students don't necessarily have time for because of my SKIN COLOR. And that's not fair. I COULDN'T BELIEVE how badly the public schools treat my students when I started my career and I still can't-- it is NOTHING like the way I was treated in Hebrew School or at Stuyvesant. Frankly, I was given MORE CHANCES TO FAIL. It was assumed that eventually I would get it right...because I'm a bright, nice Jewish girl. And I know that.
I don't know how to make WHITE PEOPLE get it until they have lived it. I'm one white lady who knows that our economy has drained our schools not just of their resources, but of their relevance. The crudeness of our greed has made listening to a beautiful voice not a pleasure, but an obstacle. We must now fight the distraction of art and all sentiment to see the bottom line. Keats said famously that "Truth is beauty." Then we no longer seek truth, but the answer of the moment, which is often, ugly indeed
The schools in my neighborhood are much the same as the were before Bloomberg, before Giuliani, before Koch. It's a neighborhood which attracts hungry European and now Asian immigrants. They come, they pool their funds, they kick their kids into school and make them fear getting "B's" let alone failing, and they do well. My cat Larry could be teaching English. Those kids are going to find a way to understand the work and their parents will pay tutors with their last dime to do it. I know. I was one of those kids in a neighborhood which is its twin on the other side of Brooklyn.
My students, who are predominantly African-American and Hispanic do not reside in this sheltered world. And sheltered it is. My mother didn't tell me anything about the relationship of college to getting a job. That wasn't the point. You went to college because that's what snobby intellectuals did. Being a snobby intellectual was the apex of existence. Distinguishing between good music, literature, politics and food was what I was told a person lived to do. Mine, like many of the families in my neighborhood, was a family which LIED to itself every day about the hardships of life so that they could find joy within them. Going to the opera by subway and eating cold spaghetti when we got home was a glory -- the music was worth the trouble and the growling stomach.
It's easy for me to imagine how my students feel because I feel the same way. Despite those trips to hear Verdi at The Metropolitan Opera House, I no longer feel the need to even leave my house outside of going to work. The duckets matter: 40 or so dollars to sit in the Family Circle where I will see nothing although I will hear well, and then take the long subway ride home is just not a bargain to me. I can listen at home, read the review, imagine. The bottom line for me and money is always about staples and what I do with my money is about how I will survive. Every time I listen to music, I long to go back to school and get a Ph.D., but I will never do it. No jobs in it.
As Joe Biden hinted in the Vice Presidential debate, fewer people in the US can cloister themselves in the feeling that they will achieve the American Dream. My immigrant neighbors band together in groups larger than ten to buy houses or shares of businesses hoping someday to each have space of their own. They are aging more and more on my street and few people move out. I've noticed beer cans in EVERYONE's garbage these days. They're hard to overlook as the elderly Chinese immigrants in my neighborhood often go from pail to pail, looking for a misplaced can that they can add to their enormous plastic bags. For them, the rewards will not be on earth, but they imagine they will be so for their children who imagine it will be so for their children. At some point, they will tire, too. It's inevitable.
Meanwhile White People don't see what is going on. They continue to stretch their credit and push for that lucky break. It has to be there. Things look the same except that there are fewer and fewer jobs and the economy is shot. They know that, but they don't know what it means in terms of schools and education.
My students see the everyone stretched to their limit and they don't lie to themselves. Sure, they listen to pop and spend away on ridiculous trends in clothing. That's partially what's left of a dream of someday being successful and partially the result of a sense of "might as well, NOW." They know they won't be able to afford the 45 dollar hat when they get older. And a 45 dollar hat lasts forever as far as they can tell. It provides status, pleasure and it looks like what successful people wear. It's the same theory that pushed my JAPPY friends and I to buy Ralph Lauren and Lacoste in the 80's. We wanted to look like the proud and successful second and third generation Jewish immigrants we hoped to be. Now all of those clothes are in a suitcase somewhere. I can't fit into them as I have gained weight and they are very old, anyway. But, it was a way then to keep me in my dreamworld and that illusion kept me in school. It doesn't for my students because many of their heroes didn't finish school and many of their family members did and are suffering economically.
How many times did you hear of a millionaire with a "C" average or who quit school early? You blocked it out because you thought it was a fluke, or like me, you knew you had no business sense so school was your only hope. Imagine that more of the successes you know of fit that category than people in school.
I have always said that had I gone to the general public schools as they are, I would've dropped out of school and become a car thief. I have fast hands and am good at navigating through the dark. There is no comfort in the current public high school. No one even tries to sell the idea of study for its own sake, or of success based on anything but SKILLS. When I was growing up, I never heard that word. I searched for knowledge. Skills, I expected, I would gain in life, afterwards and I would apply what I knew to my work which would somehow make me better. It has been a career of problem solving, much of which I learned in school. A skill.
I no longer write on cover letters that my experience or education will be of use. I talk about my "varied skill sets".
Generally, I don't leave the house or buy anything which does not have to do with the aforementioned "sets".
If I were a student now, I'd be planning to be a nurse. I'd get an A.S. I'd try to get the B.S.N. later, but the priority would be on learning what I could do in all kinds of situations.
My students, I guess, see themselves as constantly facing challenges ahead -- handling things. When I was their age, I wanted to discover ideas, to write precisely and with authority. Sometimes I accomplish those things, but the email would be just as useful if I wrote it without punctuation and shipped it off ASAP.
All self-deprecation aside, though, I have enjoyed my education and all of my work. And the jury is still out on what will be remembered and what I will focus the bulk of my life on. I wouldn't give up a minute of the time I've spent in the theater and I haven't worked on a project yet which wasn't well respected. And, yes, it made a difference that I got that FANTASTIC education -- the quality of my life and work has been enriched by it. I've done some amazing artistic work and I have taught some terrific classes. I've ALWAYS given my students a good education and a few laughs. My students defied the odds. I get calls all the time from kids who are in college who weren't expected to graduate high school. WHO COULD REGRET THAT?
It's NOT FAIR that I got to have this kind of enriching experience very much because I am WHITE. Being WHITE made it easier to balance theater and education because I was given much more leeway than a person of color. I'm white and well-spoken and I am accorded INSTANT RESPECT because of it and THAT'S NOT FAIR. Furthermore, I got that fabulous education largely because I was fortunate enough to have a parent who could afford to send me (on scholarship, but still) to Hebrew School, which got me into Stuyvesant, which got me into Barnard and then to Stony Brook -- both of which came with scholarships. Children don't choose their parents, and those first years of education mean everything. And my Hebrew School existed for MY COMMUNITY -- white, lower-middle class Jews struggling to get ahead. Again, I got shelter and chances to enjoy things my students don't necessarily have time for because of my SKIN COLOR. And that's not fair. I COULDN'T BELIEVE how badly the public schools treat my students when I started my career and I still can't-- it is NOTHING like the way I was treated in Hebrew School or at Stuyvesant. Frankly, I was given MORE CHANCES TO FAIL. It was assumed that eventually I would get it right...because I'm a bright, nice Jewish girl. And I know that.
I don't know how to make WHITE PEOPLE get it until they have lived it. I'm one white lady who knows that our economy has drained our schools not just of their resources, but of their relevance. The crudeness of our greed has made listening to a beautiful voice not a pleasure, but an obstacle. We must now fight the distraction of art and all sentiment to see the bottom line. Keats said famously that "Truth is beauty." Then we no longer seek truth, but the answer of the moment, which is often, ugly indeed
A question for Palin
She's so passionate about our school building efforts in Iraq. I'm wondering if she can NAME FIVE SCHOOLS WE'VE BUILT THERE.
04 October, 2008
Sekou Sundiata 1948-2007
This feels right for a lot of reasons. Not just about driving. About living. And not just skin color. Skin of teachers, students
02 October, 2008
Biden / Palin Debate Part 4 - Health Care
Ultimate bridge to Nowhere...She is no Jack Kennedy! Squish.
01 October, 2008
Can we "replay" the moment below tomorrow night, Joe B.?
I know it won't make that much of a difference in the election -- Bentsen's smash of Quayle (the Senator, not the bird) didn't help either.
I'd just like to see Sarah Palin put in her place the same way. Who wouldn't?
I'd just like to see Sarah Palin put in her place the same way. Who wouldn't?
30 September, 2008
Happy New Year
You don't have to be Jewish to decide to start your year over now, either.
But, does anyone belong to a synagogue which does not use a shofar made from an animal horn? I know it's not technically allowed to be done any other way, but that's a barbaric rule, in my opinion.
But, does anyone belong to a synagogue which does not use a shofar made from an animal horn? I know it's not technically allowed to be done any other way, but that's a barbaric rule, in my opinion.
29 September, 2008
I made it through class today
Ironically, being an ATR has put me emotionally very much where I was when I began teaching 18 years ago. The energy/drive comes from getting to know the kids.
Today, I went to school -- arrived late. New discovery: after 7am, the B8 bus doesn't stop at where I pick it up if it is already full and two buses were.
Did my morning work as a Dean at Scanning. Then went up to teach my class with a lesson that was totally different from what I had spent the weekend planning because the printer I bought last night turned out to be defective. It went ok. I'm getting to know the kids a little better. The more I connect, the better I feel. (Understand, I've taught these kids three times because I was just handed the class recently.)
I had gotten beyond this stage -- this isn't necessarily the best place to teach from ultimately because sometimes you don't "connect" personally with a kid, but you reach him/her intellectually -- and the latter is your goal. Many lessons that reach kids intellectually are fairly mechanically logical, or game-like. That doesn't involve deep discussion.
For now, though, I'm reaching out and hoping they will reach back. Part of it is that I am teaching a course that involves music and poetry, two areas in which my tastes are radically different from theirs and I want them to trust me enough to take a look at things which are not what they usually listen to/read (Opera and Shakespeare, for one.) I want to have a reason to go see these people I care about. Again, that's not necessarily ultimately where you want to be. Sometimes, you might dislike your students passionately but you must teach them regardless (and according to one colleague, harder and with even more care, if you do know you hate them.) It will help me get to work and bypass some of the fear/focus on what will be the end of my career.
That is how it has always been: I focus on the fact that I am being helpful to the kids and even though I'm about to get my head cut off, it's all right. I think that's what everybody does.
So, I felt good leaving Tilden and then, there lurked in my mind the usual fears:
1) x didn't say hello to me: Am I now on her hit list?
2) Another dean told me that kids were cutting my class -- so I could call their parents. Is he documenting things somewhere? Am I being watched?
3) I got down to my post late again for 6th period because it takes me so long to pack up my music system. As it was, I left my power strip in the room. Is this being documented?
4) People were nice to me: Do they know something?
There are difficulties I have, too, just because I'm from such a different planet in so many ways. I mentioned to an incredibly nice and helpful teacher that the one place I knew of that consistently had an art program was Rikers Island and he was taken aback and insulted. He doesn't realize that, too me, that's an ordinary place. That I would work anywhere. That I actually had a good time teaching the students at Rikers.
I wasn't trying to insult him, but he's from a much more normal planet, where people believe that after years of experience they will go on to teach in warm and comfortable places. OR, one's closer to their choosing. I never expect to have a choice of where I work. I will work anywhere there are students. I really meant no harm. Will he understand that?
Each day the goal is to get through the day. That I am getting better at. The nights are still very hard.
Today, I went to school -- arrived late. New discovery: after 7am, the B8 bus doesn't stop at where I pick it up if it is already full and two buses were.
Did my morning work as a Dean at Scanning. Then went up to teach my class with a lesson that was totally different from what I had spent the weekend planning because the printer I bought last night turned out to be defective. It went ok. I'm getting to know the kids a little better. The more I connect, the better I feel. (Understand, I've taught these kids three times because I was just handed the class recently.)
I had gotten beyond this stage -- this isn't necessarily the best place to teach from ultimately because sometimes you don't "connect" personally with a kid, but you reach him/her intellectually -- and the latter is your goal. Many lessons that reach kids intellectually are fairly mechanically logical, or game-like. That doesn't involve deep discussion.
For now, though, I'm reaching out and hoping they will reach back. Part of it is that I am teaching a course that involves music and poetry, two areas in which my tastes are radically different from theirs and I want them to trust me enough to take a look at things which are not what they usually listen to/read (Opera and Shakespeare, for one.) I want to have a reason to go see these people I care about. Again, that's not necessarily ultimately where you want to be. Sometimes, you might dislike your students passionately but you must teach them regardless (and according to one colleague, harder and with even more care, if you do know you hate them.) It will help me get to work and bypass some of the fear/focus on what will be the end of my career.
That is how it has always been: I focus on the fact that I am being helpful to the kids and even though I'm about to get my head cut off, it's all right. I think that's what everybody does.
So, I felt good leaving Tilden and then, there lurked in my mind the usual fears:
1) x didn't say hello to me: Am I now on her hit list?
2) Another dean told me that kids were cutting my class -- so I could call their parents. Is he documenting things somewhere? Am I being watched?
3) I got down to my post late again for 6th period because it takes me so long to pack up my music system. As it was, I left my power strip in the room. Is this being documented?
4) People were nice to me: Do they know something?
There are difficulties I have, too, just because I'm from such a different planet in so many ways. I mentioned to an incredibly nice and helpful teacher that the one place I knew of that consistently had an art program was Rikers Island and he was taken aback and insulted. He doesn't realize that, too me, that's an ordinary place. That I would work anywhere. That I actually had a good time teaching the students at Rikers.
I wasn't trying to insult him, but he's from a much more normal planet, where people believe that after years of experience they will go on to teach in warm and comfortable places. OR, one's closer to their choosing. I never expect to have a choice of where I work. I will work anywhere there are students. I really meant no harm. Will he understand that?
Each day the goal is to get through the day. That I am getting better at. The nights are still very hard.
28 September, 2008
Of Joel Klein, Randi Weingarten and Getting It Done
Here's a lesson on how to provide results from the business world in which a teacher turns out to be the hero.
The article is called "All in the Execution". Just paste the link below
http://www.webcpa.com/article.cfm?articleid=23381&searchTerm=all%20in%20the%20execution
The article is called "All in the Execution". Just paste the link below
http://www.webcpa.com/article.cfm?articleid=23381&searchTerm=all%20in%20the%20execution
The Life (Ending) of an ATR
It's impossible for me to be calm, except for the few moments I am resting alongside one of my cats. Even then, unless I fall asleep, my body won't settle in. I sleep in fits and starts, and sometimes not at all.
October 2009 seems far away to some people. It isn't to me. It's tomorrow. It's moving boxes from my apartment to a share. It's living on half my salary at a job I may not be able to keep, either. The continual worry that my life is one step from the streets.
What do I re-train as? I've been asking myself this for years because I don't know. The vistas keep changing. What do I have money and time to learn? What professions are welcoming to people over 40 who switch careers?
Everyone has an answer and whom do you trust. No one is pragmatic enough or completely sees my situation for what it is -- people either think that it will be simple to live on half the money, or that my job prospects are better than they are.
What did I do to deserve this? Is this the what I get for having come into the system in the early 90's when the UFT made all sorts of bargains to help young people enter the profession. People took pay cuts, but they didn't give up their jobs.
The bottom line, and I was finally able to put it into words tonight, is that I see the end of my life coming toward me and I don't think there's anything I can do about it. That's what I see. Every day. Beyond the sunshine and the trees and all of nature's beauty. I try to hide it from my cats if I can.
I see the end of my life coming toward me and I don't know what to do about it.
I see the end of my life coming toward me and I don't know what to do about it.
I see the end of my life coming toward me and I don't know what to do about it.
I don't know how to stop it.
October 2009 seems far away to some people. It isn't to me. It's tomorrow. It's moving boxes from my apartment to a share. It's living on half my salary at a job I may not be able to keep, either. The continual worry that my life is one step from the streets.
What do I re-train as? I've been asking myself this for years because I don't know. The vistas keep changing. What do I have money and time to learn? What professions are welcoming to people over 40 who switch careers?
Everyone has an answer and whom do you trust. No one is pragmatic enough or completely sees my situation for what it is -- people either think that it will be simple to live on half the money, or that my job prospects are better than they are.
What did I do to deserve this? Is this the what I get for having come into the system in the early 90's when the UFT made all sorts of bargains to help young people enter the profession. People took pay cuts, but they didn't give up their jobs.
The bottom line, and I was finally able to put it into words tonight, is that I see the end of my life coming toward me and I don't think there's anything I can do about it. That's what I see. Every day. Beyond the sunshine and the trees and all of nature's beauty. I try to hide it from my cats if I can.
I see the end of my life coming toward me and I don't know what to do about it.
I see the end of my life coming toward me and I don't know what to do about it.
I see the end of my life coming toward me and I don't know what to do about it.
I don't know how to stop it.
27 September, 2008
REPEAT AFTER ME: THERE ARE AS MANY JOBS AS TEACHERS, IF NOT MORE
THERE ARE MORE VACANCIES THAN TEACHERS. THIS MYTH THAT THERE ARE MORE TEACHERS IS A LIE. ALL OF US WHO ARE ATRS AND ARE TEACHING KNOW THIS. ATRS are teaching full schedules at many, if not most of the schools at which they work. Often, they do so, EVEN AFTER, new hires are made to the school. So, there is A NEED for them within the school. The schools are just NOT MAKING POSITIONS AVAILABLE TO THEM. Two of my colleagues were passed over for kids despite putting in hard and appreciated work. One retired in disgust. The second is still working -- still teaching classes. So, she's in an INVISIBLE POSITION which will become available, perhaps, next year and then AGAIN not be offered to her. Meanwhile, the school has a VIRTUALLY FREE TEACHER.
Tilden High School is staffed heavily by ATR's. There are classes that need to be taught. Positions need to be filled. THe principal has UNFAIRLY not been given the opportunity to hire people. (Even if the school IS closing, you should be given A JOB while you are working THAT JOB.)
Instead, he has to fills WHAT WOULD BE FULL-TIME POSITIONS with ATR's. So, all of us are working in in POSITIONS THAT THE DOE DOESN'T PAY FOR. IT'S FALSE ACCOUNTING. If the ATR's left their schools, kids would be without teachers all over the city.
What would Joel Klein then do?
He'd HIRE YOUNG KIDS.
SO THE POSITIONS ARE THERE.
THEY ARE JUST NOT AVAILABLE TO ATR'S.
Tilden High School is staffed heavily by ATR's. There are classes that need to be taught. Positions need to be filled. THe principal has UNFAIRLY not been given the opportunity to hire people. (Even if the school IS closing, you should be given A JOB while you are working THAT JOB.)
Instead, he has to fills WHAT WOULD BE FULL-TIME POSITIONS with ATR's. So, all of us are working in in POSITIONS THAT THE DOE DOESN'T PAY FOR. IT'S FALSE ACCOUNTING. If the ATR's left their schools, kids would be without teachers all over the city.
What would Joel Klein then do?
He'd HIRE YOUNG KIDS.
SO THE POSITIONS ARE THERE.
THEY ARE JUST NOT AVAILABLE TO ATR'S.
26 September, 2008
The Fine Print
In Klein's Response to Randi's Demands were the following:
"Forced placement contradicts both of those goals. It would be far better to give excessed teachers a reasonable period of time to find a position before they are placed on unpaid leave."
It's clear that Joel Klein has talked with Randi Weingarten about the REALITY of putting ATR's on unpaid leave. That is what he wants to do. Somewhere in their discussions, it has come up as an option.
I feel so GOOD about the printer/copier I have to buy tomorrow to keep myself sane so I can teach my class before I am put on unpaid leave.
CAN SOMEBODY HELP ME?
LATER THE NEXT DAY... I wrote to Randi Weingarten asking her point blank if I can be put on unpaid leave by Joel Klein and she said that he can't do that because we have a closed contract and that she wasn't giving up our job security. The only condition, under this contract, in which we can be placed on unpaid leave is if there is a citywide layoff and then it is done in reverse Seniority order.
That's good to have in hand, at least, when people tell me that Klein is going to lay me off in January, which people have told me at school. Teachers. Rumors go around, you know.
That doesn't say anything about my life AFTER OCTOBER 2009, when this contract is up. But, I return to my October 2009, fear instead of January 2009 fear.
"Forced placement contradicts both of those goals. It would be far better to give excessed teachers a reasonable period of time to find a position before they are placed on unpaid leave."
It's clear that Joel Klein has talked with Randi Weingarten about the REALITY of putting ATR's on unpaid leave. That is what he wants to do. Somewhere in their discussions, it has come up as an option.
I feel so GOOD about the printer/copier I have to buy tomorrow to keep myself sane so I can teach my class before I am put on unpaid leave.
CAN SOMEBODY HELP ME?
LATER THE NEXT DAY... I wrote to Randi Weingarten asking her point blank if I can be put on unpaid leave by Joel Klein and she said that he can't do that because we have a closed contract and that she wasn't giving up our job security. The only condition, under this contract, in which we can be placed on unpaid leave is if there is a citywide layoff and then it is done in reverse Seniority order.
That's good to have in hand, at least, when people tell me that Klein is going to lay me off in January, which people have told me at school. Teachers. Rumors go around, you know.
That doesn't say anything about my life AFTER OCTOBER 2009, when this contract is up. But, I return to my October 2009, fear instead of January 2009 fear.
25 September, 2008
To spend or not to spend
At my new ATR position, I was offered the opportunity to create a class on Hip Hop and Poetry.
At 7am, when the class was offered to me, it sounded like a good idea.
....novel, good on the CV
....the kids ought to like it
....I could imagine one or two lessons easily.
After two days of teaching, which went well, I started to panic.
WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?
I've already spent more money than I ever wanted to on music I never listen to.
My printer is out of ink and I can't get new ink until the weekend -- that's fine, but at this rate, it'll be a new cartridge every two weeks --- 30 bucks each. Easily.
The copy lady who they said is available hasn't been sighted by ME yet. I don't know when she's available. Someone told me I can slip my requests under the door. That doesn't sound like a plan to me.
There's a great documentary on Hip Hop and Masculinity -- 30 bucks.
There's a lot of criticism -- I can borrow books, some I'll buy because I want to. But again, who makes the copies. Some of this I can download. Here again, a lot of ink.
And how long can we talk about Lyrics, Culture and Fashion before we need to talk about another Genre of music?
Do I move on to Jazz? Blues? More Music, more DVD's, copies.
Ink, ink, ink. And I see myself funding Kinko's whether I like it or not. -- I spent 44 dollars on the first day's materials and I swore I wouldn't do it again.
DO I SPEND SOMETHING LIKE 500 - 750 dollars, ultimately, to develop a course for a job at a temporary assignment at which I will not have been credited as having existed, really, as anything more than a substitute? Do I do this when the Mayor is threatening to fire me and everyone like me?
I went into a panic which coincided with a family emergency and I ended up at home for part of two days.
So far as I can see, I have NO FUTURE as a teacher. Yet, the right thing to do is to break the piggy bank and spend like a bandit on this course "for the kids". But, I can't. Not quite, anymore. I emailed the principal and apologized for my absence, but then explained my dilemma. Can he provide a printer? I have to track down this copy lady by hook or by crook and I have to get her to commit to making some copies for me. I can't fund this myself.
Or, he can put me back into my full-time Dean position and give this course to someone better qualified. Or, I will have to try to teach it as best I can limiting the resources I use and stretching them. I cannot break the bank anymore for anyone else but me.
According to the Department of Education, I do not exist at this school. I am a reserve teacher. Not a creator of curricula. Not a savior of a program.
They will not rescue me if I spend my wages on the course, therefore.
So, I can't.
At 7am, when the class was offered to me, it sounded like a good idea.
....novel, good on the CV
....the kids ought to like it
....I could imagine one or two lessons easily.
After two days of teaching, which went well, I started to panic.
WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?
I've already spent more money than I ever wanted to on music I never listen to.
My printer is out of ink and I can't get new ink until the weekend -- that's fine, but at this rate, it'll be a new cartridge every two weeks --- 30 bucks each. Easily.
The copy lady who they said is available hasn't been sighted by ME yet. I don't know when she's available. Someone told me I can slip my requests under the door. That doesn't sound like a plan to me.
There's a great documentary on Hip Hop and Masculinity -- 30 bucks.
There's a lot of criticism -- I can borrow books, some I'll buy because I want to. But again, who makes the copies. Some of this I can download. Here again, a lot of ink.
And how long can we talk about Lyrics, Culture and Fashion before we need to talk about another Genre of music?
Do I move on to Jazz? Blues? More Music, more DVD's, copies.
Ink, ink, ink. And I see myself funding Kinko's whether I like it or not. -- I spent 44 dollars on the first day's materials and I swore I wouldn't do it again.
DO I SPEND SOMETHING LIKE 500 - 750 dollars, ultimately, to develop a course for a job at a temporary assignment at which I will not have been credited as having existed, really, as anything more than a substitute? Do I do this when the Mayor is threatening to fire me and everyone like me?
I went into a panic which coincided with a family emergency and I ended up at home for part of two days.
So far as I can see, I have NO FUTURE as a teacher. Yet, the right thing to do is to break the piggy bank and spend like a bandit on this course "for the kids". But, I can't. Not quite, anymore. I emailed the principal and apologized for my absence, but then explained my dilemma. Can he provide a printer? I have to track down this copy lady by hook or by crook and I have to get her to commit to making some copies for me. I can't fund this myself.
Or, he can put me back into my full-time Dean position and give this course to someone better qualified. Or, I will have to try to teach it as best I can limiting the resources I use and stretching them. I cannot break the bank anymore for anyone else but me.
According to the Department of Education, I do not exist at this school. I am a reserve teacher. Not a creator of curricula. Not a savior of a program.
They will not rescue me if I spend my wages on the course, therefore.
So, I can't.
11 September, 2008
War Heroes
It's appropriate that my first posting after a week of observance of the third anniversary of my love Karen's death is about war heroes. Karen was intensely interested in potential seeds of conflicts which lay ahead and the schematics with which various agencies may have placed them. Randi Rhodes and Mike Malloy would have been good company for her.
So many people find themselves impressed with John McCain's war record. I want to take this moment to call upon the memory of two of my relatives: My grandmother, Sadie Greenberg Fisher and my great-uncle, Albert Greenberg. I never got to meet the latter because his plane was shot down in World War II.
John McCain:
As I understand it, John McCain graduated from the bottom of his class at Annapolis, but nevertheless was trained as a pilot. He had some difficulties and was shot down in action in Vietnam and brought to a prison in Hanoi where he claims he was tortured. In a story he wrote about his experience for US News and World Report in 1973, he actually admitted to being willing to give up State Secrets for Medical Care because he was afraid of dying.
Here's the selection:
"I think it was on the fourth day [after being shot down] that two guards camein, instead of one. One of them pulled back the blanket to show the other guardmy injury. I looked at my knee. It was about the size, shape and color of afootball. I remembered that when I was a flying instructor a fellow had ejectedfrom his plane and broken his thigh. He had gone into shock, the blood hadpooled in his leg, and he died, which came as quite a surprise to us - a mandying of a broken leg. Then I realized that a very similar thing was happeningto me. "When I saw it, I said to the guard, `O.K., get the officer.'" "An officer came in after a few minutes. It was the man that we came to knowvery well as "The Bug." He was a psychotic torturer, one of the worst fiendsthat we had to deal with. I said, `O.K., I'll give you military information ifyou will take me to the hospital
It turned out to be too late. They wouldn't make the deal.
I understand that in various publications, he has written about various kinds of torture he endured. At least one story -- the story about his having had his ropes losened by a guard on Christmas and the guard then making a sand in the cross -- was proven to be a lie. You can read about that here
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/the-dirt-in-the.html
But, let's grant that McCain was tortured. And, let's grant that McCain came home to write about it, get married several times, the last time to a beer heiress, have a career in the Senate and now run for president. He did all that without
1) Improving the quality of life for other veterans
2) Voting for better spending for veterans' issues/healthcare
3) Voting to increase spending to find POW/MIA's.
Sadie Greenberg-Fisher and Albert Greenberg
Grant me that I am putting this together from what my grandmother told me over years, what my mother told me and what I remember. But, the gist of the story is what matters.
Sadie Greenberg-Fischer came to the United States from a small town outside of Warsaw in the twenties, with the hopes of becoming a singer. Though she had a gorgeous soprano voice she was painfully shy and she couldn't break herself of this, so she resolved to work with her older sister, who had come to accompany her in her career, as milliners which they did until that industry died out. She was so beautiful that she also modeled hats -- she was fine in a line of other girls, so long as she didn't have to say anything and was on and off the stage quickly.
Albert Greenberg, slightly younger than Sarah, arrived to the United States during this period. A gifted mathematician and watchmaker, the family thought he could ply his talents somehow and also help his sisters. He found work quickly and did very well. Meanwhile, both girls got married. Sarah married her hometown sweetheart, Arthur Fischer who emigrated for that very purpose and because he was a friend of Al's. He, too, was a gifted mathematician and he hoped that he and Al could go into business together.
The group held together, even through the depression. Arthur worked by day behind the counter of the appetizer section of a supermarket and by night learned English and then Accounting. Al had a solid position in a Jewelry store and enough money to put into his side of business and was waiting for Arthur to catch up. His accounting was terrific, his English, slow moving. Arthur was getting closer and closer as the 40's started, but Al couldn't take the stories coming out of Europe about what was happening to the Jews and they knew from the letters from their family that they were suffering. Al was young and strong and he felt he owed a lot to the United States because he come a long way. So, they all talked it over and agreed that Al could enlist. Arthur couldn't because he was 4'11, flatfooted and had pneumonia the year before which had weakened his heart. Besides, he had two kids. I've never known if Al was married or not. My grandmother so loved him, it was hard to imagine that there was anyone else around him. Arthur didn't need the English lessons anymore, so he worked day and night, this time doing accounting work which paid better to save money for a store and the kids.
Al was selected by the Air Force and he flew many successful missions. He also spoke German, Polish, Russian, some French and, of course English. He was very handsome and charming and I'm sure could have been useful in many ways. He had black hair and blue eyes and an aquiline nose. From the pictures, he looks about 5'8" -5'10" and absolutely impossible to be mad at, ever. He had one of those faces and attitudes. His plane was shot down toward the end of the war and his body was never recovered. For his sake, I hope he was killed as soon as the plane was shot down because it happened in German territory, no place for a nice Jewish-American boy to be in 1944 or thereabouts.
My grandmother, Sadie Greenberg-Fisher, was broken by Al's death, the way John McCain says he was broken by his torturer's. She told me the story when I was 4. Some 30 years later, like it happened yesterday. About a year after Al died, her husband, Arthur, went out to play handball on a Saturday, like he usually did. He had a sudden heart attack and died right on the court. My grandmother and her sister were never the best of friends. She had just lost her only real connection on the planet and she had two kids to raise. She had agreed to give her brother to the war effort and her husband had perished in part trying to make up for what her brother could've contributed.
What's the difference among the three survivors?
John McCain survived and went on to a rich life.
Al Greenberg died as did most of his family in Europe. Out of 11 siblings, only 4 lived after World War Two and that was because three left before the war and ONE survived Aushwitz. The rest of the Greenbergs and the Champagnes (my grandmother's mother's family, responsible for the French) were all murdered. It was a huge family. I can't list them all. In dying, he left behind a family in America who also needed him.
Sadie Greenberg-Fisher raised two kids on her own, working most of the rest of her life as a Sales Manager for Kleins Department Store. They lived in the projects for a brief period -- the Nostrand Projects, created for the Veterans of World War Two by Democratic Administrations. Then, in 1970, my grandmother moved into a one bedroom apartment in a fancy building two blocks from the water in Sheepshead Bay.
Her body was riddled with arthritis and she never really had a person in her life she could confide in again. She preferred to be alone. She missed her family in Europe to the very end and she told me about them all the time.
WHO'S THE WAR HERO? IS JOHN McCAIN MORE OF A WAR HERO THAN MY GREAT UNCLE? THAN MY GRANDMOTHER?
As she used to say, "He lived. My brother died. And he wants ANOTHER MEDAL."
So many people find themselves impressed with John McCain's war record. I want to take this moment to call upon the memory of two of my relatives: My grandmother, Sadie Greenberg Fisher and my great-uncle, Albert Greenberg. I never got to meet the latter because his plane was shot down in World War II.
John McCain:
As I understand it, John McCain graduated from the bottom of his class at Annapolis, but nevertheless was trained as a pilot. He had some difficulties and was shot down in action in Vietnam and brought to a prison in Hanoi where he claims he was tortured. In a story he wrote about his experience for US News and World Report in 1973, he actually admitted to being willing to give up State Secrets for Medical Care because he was afraid of dying.
Here's the selection:
"I think it was on the fourth day [after being shot down] that two guards camein, instead of one. One of them pulled back the blanket to show the other guardmy injury. I looked at my knee. It was about the size, shape and color of afootball. I remembered that when I was a flying instructor a fellow had ejectedfrom his plane and broken his thigh. He had gone into shock, the blood hadpooled in his leg, and he died, which came as quite a surprise to us - a mandying of a broken leg. Then I realized that a very similar thing was happeningto me. "When I saw it, I said to the guard, `O.K., get the officer.'" "An officer came in after a few minutes. It was the man that we came to knowvery well as "The Bug." He was a psychotic torturer, one of the worst fiendsthat we had to deal with. I said, `O.K., I'll give you military information ifyou will take me to the hospital
It turned out to be too late. They wouldn't make the deal.
I understand that in various publications, he has written about various kinds of torture he endured. At least one story -- the story about his having had his ropes losened by a guard on Christmas and the guard then making a sand in the cross -- was proven to be a lie. You can read about that here
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/the-dirt-in-the.html
But, let's grant that McCain was tortured. And, let's grant that McCain came home to write about it, get married several times, the last time to a beer heiress, have a career in the Senate and now run for president. He did all that without
1) Improving the quality of life for other veterans
2) Voting for better spending for veterans' issues/healthcare
3) Voting to increase spending to find POW/MIA's.
Sadie Greenberg-Fisher and Albert Greenberg
Grant me that I am putting this together from what my grandmother told me over years, what my mother told me and what I remember. But, the gist of the story is what matters.
Sadie Greenberg-Fischer came to the United States from a small town outside of Warsaw in the twenties, with the hopes of becoming a singer. Though she had a gorgeous soprano voice she was painfully shy and she couldn't break herself of this, so she resolved to work with her older sister, who had come to accompany her in her career, as milliners which they did until that industry died out. She was so beautiful that she also modeled hats -- she was fine in a line of other girls, so long as she didn't have to say anything and was on and off the stage quickly.
Albert Greenberg, slightly younger than Sarah, arrived to the United States during this period. A gifted mathematician and watchmaker, the family thought he could ply his talents somehow and also help his sisters. He found work quickly and did very well. Meanwhile, both girls got married. Sarah married her hometown sweetheart, Arthur Fischer who emigrated for that very purpose and because he was a friend of Al's. He, too, was a gifted mathematician and he hoped that he and Al could go into business together.
The group held together, even through the depression. Arthur worked by day behind the counter of the appetizer section of a supermarket and by night learned English and then Accounting. Al had a solid position in a Jewelry store and enough money to put into his side of business and was waiting for Arthur to catch up. His accounting was terrific, his English, slow moving. Arthur was getting closer and closer as the 40's started, but Al couldn't take the stories coming out of Europe about what was happening to the Jews and they knew from the letters from their family that they were suffering. Al was young and strong and he felt he owed a lot to the United States because he come a long way. So, they all talked it over and agreed that Al could enlist. Arthur couldn't because he was 4'11, flatfooted and had pneumonia the year before which had weakened his heart. Besides, he had two kids. I've never known if Al was married or not. My grandmother so loved him, it was hard to imagine that there was anyone else around him. Arthur didn't need the English lessons anymore, so he worked day and night, this time doing accounting work which paid better to save money for a store and the kids.
Al was selected by the Air Force and he flew many successful missions. He also spoke German, Polish, Russian, some French and, of course English. He was very handsome and charming and I'm sure could have been useful in many ways. He had black hair and blue eyes and an aquiline nose. From the pictures, he looks about 5'8" -5'10" and absolutely impossible to be mad at, ever. He had one of those faces and attitudes. His plane was shot down toward the end of the war and his body was never recovered. For his sake, I hope he was killed as soon as the plane was shot down because it happened in German territory, no place for a nice Jewish-American boy to be in 1944 or thereabouts.
My grandmother, Sadie Greenberg-Fisher, was broken by Al's death, the way John McCain says he was broken by his torturer's. She told me the story when I was 4. Some 30 years later, like it happened yesterday. About a year after Al died, her husband, Arthur, went out to play handball on a Saturday, like he usually did. He had a sudden heart attack and died right on the court. My grandmother and her sister were never the best of friends. She had just lost her only real connection on the planet and she had two kids to raise. She had agreed to give her brother to the war effort and her husband had perished in part trying to make up for what her brother could've contributed.
What's the difference among the three survivors?
John McCain survived and went on to a rich life.
Al Greenberg died as did most of his family in Europe. Out of 11 siblings, only 4 lived after World War Two and that was because three left before the war and ONE survived Aushwitz. The rest of the Greenbergs and the Champagnes (my grandmother's mother's family, responsible for the French) were all murdered. It was a huge family. I can't list them all. In dying, he left behind a family in America who also needed him.
Sadie Greenberg-Fisher raised two kids on her own, working most of the rest of her life as a Sales Manager for Kleins Department Store. They lived in the projects for a brief period -- the Nostrand Projects, created for the Veterans of World War Two by Democratic Administrations. Then, in 1970, my grandmother moved into a one bedroom apartment in a fancy building two blocks from the water in Sheepshead Bay.
Her body was riddled with arthritis and she never really had a person in her life she could confide in again. She preferred to be alone. She missed her family in Europe to the very end and she told me about them all the time.
WHO'S THE WAR HERO? IS JOHN McCAIN MORE OF A WAR HERO THAN MY GREAT UNCLE? THAN MY GRANDMOTHER?
As she used to say, "He lived. My brother died. And he wants ANOTHER MEDAL."
01 September, 2008
Life as I have known it
for Karen B. Hunter
Nov 23. 1951 - Sept. 2. 2005
A close friend said to me, "Life as I have known it, does not exist anymore."
I have understood that phrase since Sept. 2, 2005 at 9:15pm.
To be more precise, I got the call on Sept. 3. at 10am, that Karen's plane crashed. But, all night I had been wondering why the hell I hadn't been hearing from her and I had left a ton of messages on her machine. So, part of me knew something was wrong. I didn't sleep and neither did my cats. When I got the call, Larry just looked at me like, "It's THAT. THAT. I thought so." I went into automatic mode, was on the phone with all sorts of people, sorting through papers, and then more of her friends came over and they sorted through papers. The family wanted all of her records at the funeral. Nice people. At some point, I stopped doing anything and a friend's dog and I just communed. I wanted someone to mix me a drink and just go sit on the deck. But, I stayed in the middle -- I doled out some things to some of her friends before the beastly family got there. When I got back to my apartment -- Larry and I curled up, and Henry leaned on me. We were in shock -- what one of my friends calls "God's novacaine." Henry just knew something very very bad had happened, but not what. All he wanted to do was make me comfortable.
The next day, when I got to the apartment, the family was already there, arguing over who got which of her books. I was late because I had to buy a suit for the funeral. I wasn't showing up to her funeral looking like a mess, she wouldn't have it. They laughed at me. Clearly, they had come ready to bargain with me over a price tag. "What did I want?" All of Karen's girlfriends had taken her to the cleaners. I explained that I just wanted to help. Really. They were cynical. They pressed on about how the most important person was her daughter who SUFFERS IN SILENCE. My best friend, who was with me, looked at me as if to say, "Can I sock them in the face, NOW?" I told her not to. I was going to really suffer in silence because that's how I pretended I was raised. Or maybe I was. I don't remember. Somewhere between Hebrew School, a lot of Romantic and Existential literature, core philosophy classes and your standard Verdi repertoire, I'd developed a code of honor. These fools could say what they wanted. They weren't going to get to me. I didn't need their money or their pity. They would either learn who I was or not, but I was not going to fight with them as they were Karen's family and I wanted to be able to attend her funeral and I would accord them the respect necessary to do so.
And that's when life had started to really change. When I had started to sing private arias in silence in order to gain the smallest tokens of what were due to me. Of course I should have been able to go to Karen's funeral. But, I wasn't certain they would let me go. And I don't know what they did with her ashes to this day. I never saw her body, and in the back of my mind, there is always this part of me that wonders if they wisked her away alive and hid her from the world. I'll never know for certain. Nobody who knew Karen will believe that any government document, including a death certificate, cannot be forged. Of course, I accept what is standard common knowledge. But, when you have come into an apartment of a person you cared for, to find her brother and sister arguing over a copy of Freakanomics and later, her daughter and sister discussing a job interview as they are looking for clothes to dress her body in, you kind of wonder what's really going on.
I'm sure they found me just as odd. I'm sure what they were doing was just a defense mechanism for the pain -- a result of God's Novocaine. I'm sure later, they broke down and that, like for me, only now are more memories, especially the best ones, beginning to really come back. I guess I just wish they had been a little more reserved like I wished they had dressed for the funeral. If not for Karen's sake, for the sake of her friends. Call me the boorish lower middle class. There are some places where tradition exists because it provides a certain amount of comfort. At least, it would have, for me. My apologies. I just couldn't handle the striped shirt and plaid jacket on her brother and the tight white shirt and cords on her nephew and the gold shoes on her daughter. It wasn't proper. I begged my uncle for money for a suit. You just don't do things like that. You just don't. I wore a suit, I tore the collar, as we do according to Jewish tradition. My friends came to support me and they dressed.
Since that day, I have fallen into a space where I am continually astonished by the capacity for humans to hurt one another. It's as if I fell into a zone in which
1) I can assume that I am allowed nothing
2) I can assume that people will not CONSIDER MY NEEDS AT ALL
Some of this is just the result of being thrown back into the economy without being part of a "we". I didn't depend on Karen, at all economically, but we did do things together and I had a kind of feeling that I wasn't alone, at least. I certainly depended on Karen emotionally and she did me and it was wonderful to have someone you could rely on. And we had love, that incredible thing that makes you more you than you ever knew.
This is an economy that kills love. That's why it was so important in 1984 for Winston Smith to be in a relationship and for that relationship to be broken by "Big Brother". In this economy, we are asked to be so brutal to each other -- to not understand when our own friends are in trouble because we can't afford to lose our jobs -- that we can't fully love. At least, we can't fully love everyone we want to. And love becomes a different thing. I know that people have looked at marriage as a business for centuries, but that doesn't exclude the possibility of love. With time shrinking and people singing more and more private arias, who has the prospect of loving, where?
Karen and I went to see Verdi's Otellotogether and she thought it was so important that the Iago had been given a motivation for what he had done -- it made what he had done so human. (I know, I know, she was a psychologist -- but it's still a brilliant point.)In it's simplest sense, Otello tells the story of a beautiful young Italian girl who falls in love with a War hero who happens to be a person of color. In the Shakespeare, Iago, his ensign drives him mad with jealousy, telling him that his wife is cheating on him with Cassio, and later providing him with false evidence, quite brilliantly and he kills Desdemona. The play is a test case in how a person can be slowly convinced by his own ability to be jealous to hurt the one person he loves most. In the opera, Iago does this because he was passed over for a promotion and because he is generally cynical about human nature -- he is a man full of bitterness, not unlike those in his contemperary audience, perhaps.
I remember how shocked she was by the simple brutality in the staging -- just Ben Heppner's (as Otello)throwing down of a paper on the floor in a harsh fashion with Desdemona in the room. She hated brutality and was really sensitive to it. She loved light and especially glass that picked up light. She had this big yellow glass plate that looked like a sun.
So, now we are a world of Iago's, Otello's and Desdemona's. And some of us are bystanders like those in the play or the opera. And in being so, there is the possibility for change. Life is no longer the way it was. Then it must become something else. It cannot be this. I know that I am no war hero. I have encouraged no one to murder. And I seem to be still breathing. Yeah, I've been nearly choked to death and so have some of my friends. We've survived some pretty hideous places and we're in some now. But, we're not dead. We can still get away, we just have to plot how. So, they and I are bystanders.
Or audience. They and I have a choice. For once, there's an advantage to having not been given the leading role.
I'll be shopping for a lot of pretty glass this fall and thinking.
Nov 23. 1951 - Sept. 2. 2005
A close friend said to me, "Life as I have known it, does not exist anymore."
I have understood that phrase since Sept. 2, 2005 at 9:15pm.
To be more precise, I got the call on Sept. 3. at 10am, that Karen's plane crashed. But, all night I had been wondering why the hell I hadn't been hearing from her and I had left a ton of messages on her machine. So, part of me knew something was wrong. I didn't sleep and neither did my cats. When I got the call, Larry just looked at me like, "It's THAT. THAT. I thought so." I went into automatic mode, was on the phone with all sorts of people, sorting through papers, and then more of her friends came over and they sorted through papers. The family wanted all of her records at the funeral. Nice people. At some point, I stopped doing anything and a friend's dog and I just communed. I wanted someone to mix me a drink and just go sit on the deck. But, I stayed in the middle -- I doled out some things to some of her friends before the beastly family got there. When I got back to my apartment -- Larry and I curled up, and Henry leaned on me. We were in shock -- what one of my friends calls "God's novacaine." Henry just knew something very very bad had happened, but not what. All he wanted to do was make me comfortable.
The next day, when I got to the apartment, the family was already there, arguing over who got which of her books. I was late because I had to buy a suit for the funeral. I wasn't showing up to her funeral looking like a mess, she wouldn't have it. They laughed at me. Clearly, they had come ready to bargain with me over a price tag. "What did I want?" All of Karen's girlfriends had taken her to the cleaners. I explained that I just wanted to help. Really. They were cynical. They pressed on about how the most important person was her daughter who SUFFERS IN SILENCE. My best friend, who was with me, looked at me as if to say, "Can I sock them in the face, NOW?" I told her not to. I was going to really suffer in silence because that's how I pretended I was raised. Or maybe I was. I don't remember. Somewhere between Hebrew School, a lot of Romantic and Existential literature, core philosophy classes and your standard Verdi repertoire, I'd developed a code of honor. These fools could say what they wanted. They weren't going to get to me. I didn't need their money or their pity. They would either learn who I was or not, but I was not going to fight with them as they were Karen's family and I wanted to be able to attend her funeral and I would accord them the respect necessary to do so.
And that's when life had started to really change. When I had started to sing private arias in silence in order to gain the smallest tokens of what were due to me. Of course I should have been able to go to Karen's funeral. But, I wasn't certain they would let me go. And I don't know what they did with her ashes to this day. I never saw her body, and in the back of my mind, there is always this part of me that wonders if they wisked her away alive and hid her from the world. I'll never know for certain. Nobody who knew Karen will believe that any government document, including a death certificate, cannot be forged. Of course, I accept what is standard common knowledge. But, when you have come into an apartment of a person you cared for, to find her brother and sister arguing over a copy of Freakanomics and later, her daughter and sister discussing a job interview as they are looking for clothes to dress her body in, you kind of wonder what's really going on.
I'm sure they found me just as odd. I'm sure what they were doing was just a defense mechanism for the pain -- a result of God's Novocaine. I'm sure later, they broke down and that, like for me, only now are more memories, especially the best ones, beginning to really come back. I guess I just wish they had been a little more reserved like I wished they had dressed for the funeral. If not for Karen's sake, for the sake of her friends. Call me the boorish lower middle class. There are some places where tradition exists because it provides a certain amount of comfort. At least, it would have, for me. My apologies. I just couldn't handle the striped shirt and plaid jacket on her brother and the tight white shirt and cords on her nephew and the gold shoes on her daughter. It wasn't proper. I begged my uncle for money for a suit. You just don't do things like that. You just don't. I wore a suit, I tore the collar, as we do according to Jewish tradition. My friends came to support me and they dressed.
Since that day, I have fallen into a space where I am continually astonished by the capacity for humans to hurt one another. It's as if I fell into a zone in which
1) I can assume that I am allowed nothing
2) I can assume that people will not CONSIDER MY NEEDS AT ALL
Some of this is just the result of being thrown back into the economy without being part of a "we". I didn't depend on Karen, at all economically, but we did do things together and I had a kind of feeling that I wasn't alone, at least. I certainly depended on Karen emotionally and she did me and it was wonderful to have someone you could rely on. And we had love, that incredible thing that makes you more you than you ever knew.
This is an economy that kills love. That's why it was so important in 1984 for Winston Smith to be in a relationship and for that relationship to be broken by "Big Brother". In this economy, we are asked to be so brutal to each other -- to not understand when our own friends are in trouble because we can't afford to lose our jobs -- that we can't fully love. At least, we can't fully love everyone we want to. And love becomes a different thing. I know that people have looked at marriage as a business for centuries, but that doesn't exclude the possibility of love. With time shrinking and people singing more and more private arias, who has the prospect of loving, where?
Karen and I went to see Verdi's Otellotogether and she thought it was so important that the Iago had been given a motivation for what he had done -- it made what he had done so human. (I know, I know, she was a psychologist -- but it's still a brilliant point.)In it's simplest sense, Otello tells the story of a beautiful young Italian girl who falls in love with a War hero who happens to be a person of color. In the Shakespeare, Iago, his ensign drives him mad with jealousy, telling him that his wife is cheating on him with Cassio, and later providing him with false evidence, quite brilliantly and he kills Desdemona. The play is a test case in how a person can be slowly convinced by his own ability to be jealous to hurt the one person he loves most. In the opera, Iago does this because he was passed over for a promotion and because he is generally cynical about human nature -- he is a man full of bitterness, not unlike those in his contemperary audience, perhaps.
I remember how shocked she was by the simple brutality in the staging -- just Ben Heppner's (as Otello)throwing down of a paper on the floor in a harsh fashion with Desdemona in the room. She hated brutality and was really sensitive to it. She loved light and especially glass that picked up light. She had this big yellow glass plate that looked like a sun.
So, now we are a world of Iago's, Otello's and Desdemona's. And some of us are bystanders like those in the play or the opera. And in being so, there is the possibility for change. Life is no longer the way it was. Then it must become something else. It cannot be this. I know that I am no war hero. I have encouraged no one to murder. And I seem to be still breathing. Yeah, I've been nearly choked to death and so have some of my friends. We've survived some pretty hideous places and we're in some now. But, we're not dead. We can still get away, we just have to plot how. So, they and I are bystanders.
Or audience. They and I have a choice. For once, there's an advantage to having not been given the leading role.
I'll be shopping for a lot of pretty glass this fall and thinking.
31 August, 2008
Brooklyn Bridge View
Karen Hunter took this photo one day on her way home from work bicycling over the Brooklyn Bridge. She loved that Bridge and it had figured into her life in several ways. I've never forgotten how she looked, bounding down the street on her bicycle, past the bus, disappearing into the traffic as if she were just a part of the movement of the day itself. It scared me how quickly she did that. She beat me to Canal Street from 14 Street by train. I still don't understand how, but then again, I was taking the "N" train. It was just ONE STOP, but there was the wait and I've grown so accustomed to the latter I wouldn't even have noticed it. Still, I was totally shocked when I got out of the train, and there she was, off of her blue Montegue bike, helmet off, but ipod still in ears, giving me this really big wave, huge smile that was already slowly converting to a kiss and big hug, her whole body reeling the slow poke in. "Of course I beat you," she said.
Karen B. Hunter, Nov. 23. 1951 - Sept 2. 2005
28 August, 2008
Tie for best quote
"And I realized he has tapped into the oldest American belief of all: We don't have to accept a situation we cannot bear. We have the power to change it..." --Joe Biden about Barack Obama, although it is the
"belief" that is key here.
"belief" that is key here.
27 August, 2008
A First
A Hillary Clinton Quote Worth Preserving. From Last Night's Speech.
"We need a President who understands that the genius of America has always depended on the strength and vitality of the middle class."
"We need a President who understands that the genius of America has always depended on the strength and vitality of the middle class."
26 August, 2008
24 August, 2008
BEST QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"America is not a company. Nowhere does it say that the President shall make a profit for his friends."
-- Randi Rhodes
-- Randi Rhodes
It was a beautiful afternoon on the waterfront
For Karen B. Hunter
The 69th Street Pier, to be precise, but the water crossed it's fingers and twined itself into what felt like WATERFRONT. The lifting of blues and greens like pie under the crust of the city. An explosion of apples turned blue, green and lilting and dissolving into rain. Touchable.
Tree rings gripped downward into green algae along the wall of the Pier. The brown and white, black, and grey birds paraded toward crusts of bread. And I felt comfortable talking about spiritual places and feelings.
My friend went off on her bicycle and I left immediately, feeling I'd been close to you and wanting to take you home.
The 69th Street Pier, to be precise, but the water crossed it's fingers and twined itself into what felt like WATERFRONT. The lifting of blues and greens like pie under the crust of the city. An explosion of apples turned blue, green and lilting and dissolving into rain. Touchable.
Tree rings gripped downward into green algae along the wall of the Pier. The brown and white, black, and grey birds paraded toward crusts of bread. And I felt comfortable talking about spiritual places and feelings.
My friend went off on her bicycle and I left immediately, feeling I'd been close to you and wanting to take you home.
23 August, 2008
Here it is: Text of Joe Biden's First VP Campaign Speech
As beautiful as it is roughshod, and perhaps beautiful because it is roughshod. I love the guy, though not all of his views, and apparently he is popular across the country according to polls in one article at the Huffington Post. You just have to take for what he is because that's the only way you can. He's figured out how this team is going to work. I hope Barack Obama can fit into the template he's set up. He can give his speech and then just nodd through Joe's speeches. Kind of like salesmen or preachers did in the early twentieth century. Barack and Elmer Gantry? But, seriously, he's going for it. So what that he knows John McCain better than Obama -- his job is to beat the crap out of McCain, for one and he'll do a good job of it. Anyway, here's the speech, in all it's glory.
Well, it's great to be here! On the steps of the old State House in the land of Lincoln. President Lincoln once instructed us to be sure to put your feet in the right place. Then stand firm. Today, Springfield, I know my feet are in the right place. And I am proud to stand firm for the next president of the United States of America, Barack Obama. Folks, Barack and I come from very different places, but we share a common story. An American story. He was the son of a single mom, a single mom who had to struggle to support her son and her kids. But she raised him. She raised him to believe in America. to believe that in this country there is no obstacle that could keep you from your dreams. If you are willing to work hard and fight for it. I was different. I was an Irish-Catholic kid from Scranton with a father who like many of yours in tough economic times fell on hard times, but my mom and dad raised me to believe, it's a saying Barack you heard me say before, my dad repeated it and repeated it. Said champ, it's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how quickly you get up. It's how quickly you get up. Ladies and gentlemen, that's your story. That's America's story. It's about if you get up, you can make it.
That's the America Barack Obama and I believe in. That's the American dream. And ladies and gentlemen, is there no ordinary times, and this is no ordinary election. Because the truth of the matter is, and you know it, that American dream under eight years of Bush and McCain, that American dream is slipping away. I don't have to tell you that. You feel it in your lives. You see it in your shrinking wages, and the cost of everything from groceries to health care to college to filling up your car at the gas station. It keeps going up and up and up, and the future keeps receding further and further and further away as you reach for your dreams. You know, ladies and gentlemen, it is not a mere political saying. I say with every fiber of my being I believe we cannot as a nation stand for four more years of this. We cannot afford to keep giving tax cuts after tax cuts to big corporations and the wealthiest Americans while the middle class America, middle class families are falling behind and their wages are actually shrinking. We can't afford four more years of a government that does nothing while they watch the housing market collapse. As you know, it's not just the millions of people facing foreclosure. It's the tens of millions of your neighbors who are seeing the values of their homes drop off a cliff along with their dreams.
Ladies and gentlemen, your kitchen table is like mine. You sit there at night before you put the kids -- after you put the kids to bed and you talk, you talk about what you need. You talk about how much you are worried about being able to pay the bills. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's not a worry John McCain has to worry about. It's a pretty hard experience. He'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at. Folks, again, it's not political sloganary when I say we literally can't afford four more years of this non-energy policy written by and for the oil companies, making us more and more dependent from hostile nations on our ability to run this country and literally, not figuratively, literally putting America's security at risk, we can't afford four more years of a foreign policy that has shredded our alliances and sacrificed our moral standing around the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's the bad news. But there is good news, America. We don't have to have four more years of George W. Bush. And John McCain. The next President of the United States is going to be delivered to the most significant moment in American history since Franklin Roosevelt. He will have such an incredible opportunity, incredible opportunity, not only to change the direction of America, but literally, literally to change the direction of the world. Barack Obama and I believe, we believe with every fiber in our being that our families, our communities as Americans, there's not a single solitary challenge we cannot face if we level with the American people. And I don't say that to say it; history, history has shown it. When have Americans ever, ever, ever, let their country down when they've had a leader to lead them?
--
Ladies and gentlemen, we believe that our tomorrows will be better than our yesterdays, and we believe we'll pass on to our children an even better life than the one we lived. That literally has been the American way, and it can be that way again. But there's a big, missing piece. The missing piece is leadership.
In all my time in the United States Senate, and I want you to know there's only four senators senior to me, but Barack, there's still 44 older than me. I want you to know that part. But all kidding aside, of all my years in the Senate, I have never in my life seen Washington so broken. I have never seen so many dreams denied and so many decisions deferred by politicians who are trying like the devil to escape their responsibility and accountability. But, ladies and gentlemen, the reckoning is now. And the reality, the reality is that we must answer the call or we will risk the harshest version and verdict of history. These times call for a total change in Washington's worldview. These times require more than a good soldier. They require a wise leader. A leader -- a leader who can deliver. A leader who can deliver the change we need.
I'll say straight up to you - John McCain and the press knows this, is genuinely a friend of mine. I've known John for 35 years. He served our country with extraordinary courage and I know he wants to do right by America. But the harsh truth is, ladies and gentlemen, you can't change America when you boast. And these are John's words, quote, the most important issues of our day, I've been totally in agreement and support of President Bush. Ladies and gentlemen, that's what he said. You can't change America when you supported George Bush's policies 95% of the time. You can't change America when you believe, and these are his own words, that in the Bush administration we've made great progress economically. You can't change America and make things better for our senior citizens when you signed on to Bush's scheme of privatizing social security. You can't change America and give our workers a fighting chance when after 3 million manufacturing jobs disappear, you continue to support tax breaks for companies who ship our jobs overseas. You can't change America and end this war in Iraq when you declare and, again, these are John's words, no one has supported President Bush in Iraq more than I have, end of quote. Ladies and gentlemen, you can't change America, you can't change America when you know your first four years as president will look exactly like the last eight years of George Bush's presidency.
My friends -- yes, we can. My friends, I don't have to tell you, this election year the choice is clear. One man stands ready to deliver change we desperately need. A man I'm proud to call my friend. A man who will be the next president of the United States, Barack Amer -
You know, you learn a lot of things being up close with a guy. Let me tell you about Obama. You learn a lot about a man when you campaign with him. When you debate him 12 or 13 times. When you hear him speak. When you see how he thinks. And you watch how he reacts under pressure. You learn a lot about his strength of his mind, and I think even more importantly, the quality of his heart. Ladies and gentlemen, no one knows better than I do that presidential campaigns are crucibles in which you're tested and challenged every single day. And over the past 18 months, I've watched Barack meet those challenges with judgment, intelligence, and steel in his spine. I've watched as he's inspired millions of Americans, millions of Americans to this new cause.
And during those 18 months, I must tell you, frankly, I've been disappointed in my friend, John McCain, who gave in to the right wing of his party and yielded to the very swiftboat politics that he so -- once so deplored. And folks, campaigns for presidents are a test of character and leadership. And in this campaign, one candidate, one candidate has passed that test.
Barack has the vision, and what you can't forget, you know his vision, but let me tell you something. He also has the courage, the courage to make this a better place, and let me tell you something else, this man is a clear eyed pragmatist who will get the job done. I watch with amazement as he came to the Senate. I watch with amazement. He made his mark literally from day one reaching across the aisle to pass legislation to secure the world's deadliest weapons, standing up to some of the most entrenched interests in Washington, risking the wrath of the old order to pass the most sweeping ethics reform in a generation. But I was proudest, I was proudest, when I watched him spontaneously focus the attention of the nation on the shameful neglect of America's wounded warriors at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Ladies and gentlemen, I know I'm told I talk too colloquially, but there's something about this guy. There's something about this guy. There's something about Barack Obama that allows him to bring people together like no one I have worked with and seen. There's something about Barack Obama that makes people understand if they make compromises they can make things better.
It's been amazing to watch him. But then again, that's been the story of his whole life. I end where I began. This is a man raised by a single mother who sometimes was on food stamps as she worked to put herself through school, by grandparents from the prairies of Kansas who loved him, a grandfather, a grandfather who marched in Paton's Army and then came home and went to college on the G.I. Bill, and a grandmother, a grandmother with just a high school education, started off working in a small bank in the secretarial pool and rose to be vice president of that bank. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, these remarkable people gave Barack Obama the determination and drive, and, yes, the values to turn down that big job on Wall Street, to come to Chicago's south side, where he helped workers help themselves after the steel mills had been shut down and the jobs disappeared.
Ladies and gentlemen, my wife Jill, who you'll meet soon, is drop dead gorgeous. My wife Jill, who you'll meet soon, she also has her doctorate degree, which is a problem. But all kidding aside, my Jill, my Jill, my wife Jill and I are honored to join Barack and Michelle on this journey, because that's what it is. it's a journey. We share the same values, the values that we had passed on to us by our parents and the values Jill and I are passing on to our sons Beau and Hunter and Ashley.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here for their future. I'm here for the future of your kids. I'm here for everyone I - I'm here for everyone I grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, who's been forgotten and everybody in Claymont, Delaware, in Wilmington where I lived. I'm here for the cops and the fire fighters, the teachers and the line workers, the folks who live - the folks whose lives are the measure of whether the American dream endures.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is no ordinary time. This is no ordinary election. And this may be our last chance to reclaim the America we love, to restore America's soul. Ladies and gentlemen, America gave Jill and me our chance. It gave Barack and Michelle their chance to stand on this stage today. It's literally incredible. These values, this country gave us that chance. And now it's time for all of us, as Lincoln said, to put our feet in the right place and to stand firm. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to elect Barack Obama president. It's our time. It's America's time. God bless America, and may he protect our troops.
Well, it's great to be here! On the steps of the old State House in the land of Lincoln. President Lincoln once instructed us to be sure to put your feet in the right place. Then stand firm. Today, Springfield, I know my feet are in the right place. And I am proud to stand firm for the next president of the United States of America, Barack Obama. Folks, Barack and I come from very different places, but we share a common story. An American story. He was the son of a single mom, a single mom who had to struggle to support her son and her kids. But she raised him. She raised him to believe in America. to believe that in this country there is no obstacle that could keep you from your dreams. If you are willing to work hard and fight for it. I was different. I was an Irish-Catholic kid from Scranton with a father who like many of yours in tough economic times fell on hard times, but my mom and dad raised me to believe, it's a saying Barack you heard me say before, my dad repeated it and repeated it. Said champ, it's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how quickly you get up. It's how quickly you get up. Ladies and gentlemen, that's your story. That's America's story. It's about if you get up, you can make it.
That's the America Barack Obama and I believe in. That's the American dream. And ladies and gentlemen, is there no ordinary times, and this is no ordinary election. Because the truth of the matter is, and you know it, that American dream under eight years of Bush and McCain, that American dream is slipping away. I don't have to tell you that. You feel it in your lives. You see it in your shrinking wages, and the cost of everything from groceries to health care to college to filling up your car at the gas station. It keeps going up and up and up, and the future keeps receding further and further and further away as you reach for your dreams. You know, ladies and gentlemen, it is not a mere political saying. I say with every fiber of my being I believe we cannot as a nation stand for four more years of this. We cannot afford to keep giving tax cuts after tax cuts to big corporations and the wealthiest Americans while the middle class America, middle class families are falling behind and their wages are actually shrinking. We can't afford four more years of a government that does nothing while they watch the housing market collapse. As you know, it's not just the millions of people facing foreclosure. It's the tens of millions of your neighbors who are seeing the values of their homes drop off a cliff along with their dreams.
Ladies and gentlemen, your kitchen table is like mine. You sit there at night before you put the kids -- after you put the kids to bed and you talk, you talk about what you need. You talk about how much you are worried about being able to pay the bills. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's not a worry John McCain has to worry about. It's a pretty hard experience. He'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at. Folks, again, it's not political sloganary when I say we literally can't afford four more years of this non-energy policy written by and for the oil companies, making us more and more dependent from hostile nations on our ability to run this country and literally, not figuratively, literally putting America's security at risk, we can't afford four more years of a foreign policy that has shredded our alliances and sacrificed our moral standing around the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's the bad news. But there is good news, America. We don't have to have four more years of George W. Bush. And John McCain. The next President of the United States is going to be delivered to the most significant moment in American history since Franklin Roosevelt. He will have such an incredible opportunity, incredible opportunity, not only to change the direction of America, but literally, literally to change the direction of the world. Barack Obama and I believe, we believe with every fiber in our being that our families, our communities as Americans, there's not a single solitary challenge we cannot face if we level with the American people. And I don't say that to say it; history, history has shown it. When have Americans ever, ever, ever, let their country down when they've had a leader to lead them?
--
Ladies and gentlemen, we believe that our tomorrows will be better than our yesterdays, and we believe we'll pass on to our children an even better life than the one we lived. That literally has been the American way, and it can be that way again. But there's a big, missing piece. The missing piece is leadership.
In all my time in the United States Senate, and I want you to know there's only four senators senior to me, but Barack, there's still 44 older than me. I want you to know that part. But all kidding aside, of all my years in the Senate, I have never in my life seen Washington so broken. I have never seen so many dreams denied and so many decisions deferred by politicians who are trying like the devil to escape their responsibility and accountability. But, ladies and gentlemen, the reckoning is now. And the reality, the reality is that we must answer the call or we will risk the harshest version and verdict of history. These times call for a total change in Washington's worldview. These times require more than a good soldier. They require a wise leader. A leader -- a leader who can deliver. A leader who can deliver the change we need.
I'll say straight up to you - John McCain and the press knows this, is genuinely a friend of mine. I've known John for 35 years. He served our country with extraordinary courage and I know he wants to do right by America. But the harsh truth is, ladies and gentlemen, you can't change America when you boast. And these are John's words, quote, the most important issues of our day, I've been totally in agreement and support of President Bush. Ladies and gentlemen, that's what he said. You can't change America when you supported George Bush's policies 95% of the time. You can't change America when you believe, and these are his own words, that in the Bush administration we've made great progress economically. You can't change America and make things better for our senior citizens when you signed on to Bush's scheme of privatizing social security. You can't change America and give our workers a fighting chance when after 3 million manufacturing jobs disappear, you continue to support tax breaks for companies who ship our jobs overseas. You can't change America and end this war in Iraq when you declare and, again, these are John's words, no one has supported President Bush in Iraq more than I have, end of quote. Ladies and gentlemen, you can't change America, you can't change America when you know your first four years as president will look exactly like the last eight years of George Bush's presidency.
My friends -- yes, we can. My friends, I don't have to tell you, this election year the choice is clear. One man stands ready to deliver change we desperately need. A man I'm proud to call my friend. A man who will be the next president of the United States, Barack Amer -
You know, you learn a lot of things being up close with a guy. Let me tell you about Obama. You learn a lot about a man when you campaign with him. When you debate him 12 or 13 times. When you hear him speak. When you see how he thinks. And you watch how he reacts under pressure. You learn a lot about his strength of his mind, and I think even more importantly, the quality of his heart. Ladies and gentlemen, no one knows better than I do that presidential campaigns are crucibles in which you're tested and challenged every single day. And over the past 18 months, I've watched Barack meet those challenges with judgment, intelligence, and steel in his spine. I've watched as he's inspired millions of Americans, millions of Americans to this new cause.
And during those 18 months, I must tell you, frankly, I've been disappointed in my friend, John McCain, who gave in to the right wing of his party and yielded to the very swiftboat politics that he so -- once so deplored. And folks, campaigns for presidents are a test of character and leadership. And in this campaign, one candidate, one candidate has passed that test.
Barack has the vision, and what you can't forget, you know his vision, but let me tell you something. He also has the courage, the courage to make this a better place, and let me tell you something else, this man is a clear eyed pragmatist who will get the job done. I watch with amazement as he came to the Senate. I watch with amazement. He made his mark literally from day one reaching across the aisle to pass legislation to secure the world's deadliest weapons, standing up to some of the most entrenched interests in Washington, risking the wrath of the old order to pass the most sweeping ethics reform in a generation. But I was proudest, I was proudest, when I watched him spontaneously focus the attention of the nation on the shameful neglect of America's wounded warriors at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Ladies and gentlemen, I know I'm told I talk too colloquially, but there's something about this guy. There's something about this guy. There's something about Barack Obama that allows him to bring people together like no one I have worked with and seen. There's something about Barack Obama that makes people understand if they make compromises they can make things better.
It's been amazing to watch him. But then again, that's been the story of his whole life. I end where I began. This is a man raised by a single mother who sometimes was on food stamps as she worked to put herself through school, by grandparents from the prairies of Kansas who loved him, a grandfather, a grandfather who marched in Paton's Army and then came home and went to college on the G.I. Bill, and a grandmother, a grandmother with just a high school education, started off working in a small bank in the secretarial pool and rose to be vice president of that bank. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, these remarkable people gave Barack Obama the determination and drive, and, yes, the values to turn down that big job on Wall Street, to come to Chicago's south side, where he helped workers help themselves after the steel mills had been shut down and the jobs disappeared.
Ladies and gentlemen, my wife Jill, who you'll meet soon, is drop dead gorgeous. My wife Jill, who you'll meet soon, she also has her doctorate degree, which is a problem. But all kidding aside, my Jill, my Jill, my wife Jill and I are honored to join Barack and Michelle on this journey, because that's what it is. it's a journey. We share the same values, the values that we had passed on to us by our parents and the values Jill and I are passing on to our sons Beau and Hunter and Ashley.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here for their future. I'm here for the future of your kids. I'm here for everyone I - I'm here for everyone I grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, who's been forgotten and everybody in Claymont, Delaware, in Wilmington where I lived. I'm here for the cops and the fire fighters, the teachers and the line workers, the folks who live - the folks whose lives are the measure of whether the American dream endures.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is no ordinary time. This is no ordinary election. And this may be our last chance to reclaim the America we love, to restore America's soul. Ladies and gentlemen, America gave Jill and me our chance. It gave Barack and Michelle their chance to stand on this stage today. It's literally incredible. These values, this country gave us that chance. And now it's time for all of us, as Lincoln said, to put our feet in the right place and to stand firm. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to elect Barack Obama president. It's our time. It's America's time. God bless America, and may he protect our troops.
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