Even as a hunter, he is a philosopher

Dar Williams - When I Was A Boy FRFF 2008

This song reminds me of Karen

The all around talented...

Happy Holidays

Things are okay. My principal and AP have been very supportive and my two babies have been cuddling me round the clock.

So, here are some warm and fuzzy pictures of my warm and furry guys.

When there is no redemption

Last Thursday, I was asked to stay late to keep the boundary between two of the schools in our building secure. It wasn't very difficult and I found most of the students understanding -- one even told me that he knew that our students created too much noise when they got out of gym and that was why we were trying to re-route them out of the other school's territory. One student slightly pushed me out of the way, but then he apologized. He didn't quite understand the rule itself, but he knew he handled himself incorrectly.

Then I got on the bus going home.


There's a wonderful little middle school a block away from my high school and I wait for my bus at its entrance. The girls were yelling at a boy who had broken up nastily with a girl. I joked with a stranger about how seriously these little kids took their relationships. Thinking back now, I actually DIVORCED my first boyfriend in the fourth grade. I got on the school bus and said that everyone who was my friend had to sit on one side of the bus, and his friends had to sit on the other. Most of the bus crammed into my side and my former boyfriend was nearly alone on his side. I remember him, all swallowed up by the green vinyl seats, crying.

The boy, in the middle school drama I witnessed also fled the scene and the B8 bus arrived, crammed with passengers, to my dismay. For the first two minutes of the bus ride things were fine. Then we stopped in front of my high school. I avoid getting the bus there because most of the seats get taken at the middle school. As it turned out, on this night I was standing anyway. A group of MY students got on the bus and I smiled at them and even joked that I had the "enemy" cap on (I was wearing a baseball cap with the initials of one of the other schools in the building.)

One very tall girl with a space between her front teeth began the chanting of "BAT, BAT, BAT, BAT." Then I was called a "snitch" and my every move was commented on. "You get people suspended," said the tall girl. I tried to explain that I don't -- but I stopped. It seemed, perhaps, not a good idea to dispel the belief that I had the power to do something I can't actually do. Truthfully, I only document student behavior and reach out to parents. Once or twice I have recommended someone be suspended, but my suggestions weren't taken. The chanting of "Bat, Bat, Bat, Bat" and the comments continued. I stood still, reading my book and at the next stop, I got a seat and continued to read. A student asked if I was reading the Bible. Several students said that I was "tight" (which means tense). This continued until the students got off of the bus. This was about twenty minutes.

At one point, I did say that I could call the police but that the students were "just not that important." I wanted them to understand that my life would go on despite their escapades and, sadly, that I didn't care about them as much as they thought. They didn't get it.

The next day my class went miserably. (I only have one on Fridays. The rest of the day I am a dean.) The subtitles on West Side Story didn't work and my students couldn't follow the language without them. I tried fast forwarding between active scenes -- the big fight, etc. Nothing. Students were talking and talking. Then a security guard knocked and asked me if I would take in a student kicked out of another class. This was a student who had harassed me weeks ago, but with whom I no longer had problems. So, I said, "okay." She joined in the talking with her group of friends and they became more vociferous and aggressive. One of them accused me of being "in love" with a female student because I had laughingly commented on her goofy outfit. (Friday was also "wacky tacky" day.) When they left, the girl I admitted called me "Ms. Dyke" and when I went after her in the hallway to tell her that she had just committed a hate crime, she said she didn't care about my "gay ass."

The girl was suspended. I wanted her arrested but was discouraged from doing so.
I've never been gaybashed verbally before. Sure, the same girl used to call me "Mr. Kay" but I never took that in the same way.

When friends of the same girl came into the Dean's Office for something and I asked them what they wanted, I heard one girl outside yell, "Oh no, no!" and the girls left. They weren't embarassed; they were indicating that they would take no help from me.

My first instinct was to asked to be transferred -- which won't happen. I have never felt unsafe before in my career -- not this way. I might have felt that one student was aggressive toward me, but for academic reasons. No one ever really showed me complete and utter hatred.

not another website...

Recently, I've heard that the UFT is trying to put together a kind of website for teacher resumes. First, I think that this action misses the point:
TEACHER RESUMES ARE OUT THERE. PEOPLE SEND THEM OUT. PEOPLE AREN'T READING THEM. PUTTING MORE OUT WON'T HELP.

Second, I think this wastes resources which need to go elsewhere:
TEACHERS NEED TO LEARN HOW TO HANDLE THE LEADERSHIP ACADEMY PRINCIPALS AND THEIR INTERVIEW STYLE.

TEACHERS NEED TO PUT MORE PRESSURE ON THE UFT TO PRESSURE KLEIN INTO HIRING US.

OR, we had all better brace ourselves for careers as ATR's -- at best.....

College Preparatory

Today I interviewed for a position at a Charter School which aims to be College Preparatory. When I stated that all high schools are college preparatory -- or aim to be -- I was told that it is a "communications issue" -- that the school will have to find a way to say it is academically rigorous/competitive without being selective. Perhaps, the school would like people to self-select out who aren't interested in going Ivy League and would like to find a way to present this while still being politically correct. I mean, they could just call themselves "the middle class alternative to Horace Mann." That might backfire however.

I've never met a kid in my life who wasn't interested in the opportunity to train to become Ivy League Material. Nor have I ever met a parent who didn't believe his/her kid deserved the chance.

What I wanted to say, but of course didn't right then (they can certainly read this blog posting) is: whom do you expect to be teaching? It's not as though I don't believe the average kid off the street couldn't be prepared for Princeton. To the contrary, I think you can build a student if you have the time, resources and commitment from the student and parents. However, the organizers of this school don't seem to be aware that the students whom they reach will not have much of a foundation when they arrive at their doorstep. Their reading and math skills are going to be poor, or mostly so. Their behavior will be challenging, and as their frustrations grow, it will get worse. A strong system has to be in place to reinforce the culture and methods of the school. There will also need to be strong incentives for the students and parents to buy into the school philosophy.

They won't just be able to hold up the flags of Harvard, Yale and Columbia and expect students to go hopping. Students need tangible reasons to believe these names still matter, and who could blame them. Eight years of Yale and Harvard educated "Nucular" Bush, and our students have had a very concrete lesson in what happens when you know the right people and you don't know anything else. I hardly think that people who apply to Yale do so with the Shrub in mind -- and those who are applying generally have a sense of tradition which goes with the school and reaches beyond the past eight years. That, however, is a small section of the population and not necessarily a part of the public school population. Even of the elitist public school population.

Many of my friends have students in the public schools because they can't afford private schools. They don't anticipate being able to send their kids to private colleges either. For them, SUNY Binghamton, Buffalo, Albany, Queens, Hunter and Brooklyn are going to have to suffice -- as the latter three once did in the 50's and 60's when people usually only attended private schools when they couldn't get into the best CUNY's. When someone who went to school in that era mentioned going to NYU, they didn't usually do so with pride -- it was testimony to their failure to get into Queens, Brooklyn or Hunter. Without the major financial aid which exists now, few people could afford Columbia, Barnard and Cornell. This held true even for graduate school. My uncle won the Regents Scholarship in Dentistry and wanted to go to Harvard's Dental School but they couldn't match the financial aid, so he went to NYU.

I remember, back in 1985, how many of my fellow graduates from Stuyvesant went to Binghamton. Most of them got into Ivy League schools but couldn't afford to go. Believe me, if there is any student who wants to go to an Ivy League school, it is a graduate of Stuyvesant. People were already practical by then and realized what was affordable and what was not. I was lucky that I grew up so poor that I knew I would get an enormous financial aid package from Barnard.

The guidelines for that kind of financial aid are very strict and many struggling middle class families live well above them.

So, I guess I hope that the planners of the school I spoke with today are ready to meet the needs of their students and to help them to compete for the best education available --- knowing they will start with disadvantages and that they may have to make compromises along the way.

Most importantly, though, they will need to find a reason for students to want this education. Some of my brightest students have chosen technical educations or to go into the military because they don't see a connection between an Ivy League quality education and a steady job. They've met too many teachers from such schools who are constantly worried about their positions, even after years of service. They have brothers and sisters who went to respectable schools and are out of work. Meanwhile, their mechanic friends, their friends in the armed forces and their cab driver friends are still managing.

I'll be curious to see how it works out.

Now you see it, now you don't

I've been a dean for a total of three months. In that time, I have had my, "let me help you change" days and my "get off my planet" days. I've found that being somewhat unpredictable can be useful because students are less inclined to test you if they are concerned you might do something insane. I guess the same rationale motivates a lot of people.

For the past few days, I've submitted paperwork on students only to find that the students weren't punished. I mean, they were ALMOST punished -- parents were called and some came up. Those who didn't come up didn't miss anything as their children were let back in the building with a slap on the wrist. In one case, a student was actually suspended....and then the suspension was taken back. What'd'ya know?

In all cases, I had been in my "heavier" moods on the theory that these were repeat offenders who needed to be taught a lesson. I guess the lesson was really being taught to me.

Perhaps what has to happen in a school is for everyone to feel as if they cannot tell what will happen no matter what they do. In the case of those of us writing up students, we might consider how we might best meet the needs of the student in the IMMEDIATE action. Will the act of writing the student up, calling a parent, etc. be enough -- will it make a difference in the student's life. We can't expect anything else will happen because that's not in our control. So, we have to best utilize what is in our control.

As a teacher, I rarely called for help from others and I mostly relied on the interaction between the students and me in the moment to maintain order. Even when I called parents, I placed little expectation on the result. There were some terrific parents. No parent, no matter how great, can be there at the moment the student decides to throw an orange across a room or pull a knife on someone. At that moment, the student is his/her own judge and jury.

What I've learned in my three months as a dean, therefore, is that my most important decisions will also come in the moment. What is done after will have limited effect and I have no control over what it will be. It could be that the student will be reprimanded by a parent or suspended for 90 days. There's no way of knowing. The only one I can depend upon is me.

And that's a lesson I learned as a teacher long, long ago.

Razzle Dazzle

We sat in our balcony seats for ten minutes after the show ended, just talking to the people next to us. For some reason, I remember there being sparkle dust all over the stage. I guess they were cleaning up.

Nobody lets you stay that late at the theater anymore. You're ushered out immediately and you don't get to see the stagehands do their work.

I was seven years old and it was my second musical - Chicago - with the original cast Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera. My mother kept telling me to watch the dancers' feet -- how swiftly and quickly they moved. But, I was enraptured in the satire of the show and, though I appreciated how good the women were, I was glued to Jerry Orbach. I remember what he looked like when he came onstage and I never took my eyes off of him. He was all stage presence and sharp moves. He couldn't really sing in the conventional sense, but the man could move in a commanding and lightning-like fashion and he radiated an understanding of the show itself. The Razzle Dazzle that was a comment on the Razzle Dazzle of the 1920's that often obscured reality and justice. Unlike now, when things are clear and justice is swift and squeaky clean as the window on a washed car.

I had some trouble, as I still do, getting the story itself. But, I got the characters and the games they were playing.

Here's a troubling fact: I've been showing the film version to my students these past days and they don't get it, at all. I mean, they follow the story and they remember the songs. But, they don't understand the comments the show makes and they can't keep up with the pace of Fosse's dancing. It's a blur of nakedness and heels to them. Even the second time we watched "Cell Block Tango" it took a while for the meaning of the choreography to become clear. I made the simple point that the women dominate the men and one of my students asked me what "dominate" means.

For the first time in my life, and I can honestly say it is the first time, I am on a completely different planet from my students. A different planet. I'm bouncing eagerly to what I think is the simplest and probably the most obvious music in the American Musical Theater -- this has to be sharper hitting than "Some Enchanted Evening" -- and my students don't have a clue what's going on. They know some chick murdered a guy and it looks like she might get off, but they don't know why this could be interesting and they don't instinctively lift off to Bob Fosse's footstrokes. They have no instincts for this. One of my students didn't realize this was a musical -- granted, she came in for the last twenty minutes only and what could she tell?

Two women get away with murder by manipulating the press and public. What could be more contemporary?

Of course, my students also don't know who Rush Limbaugh is or what the difference is between Fox and CNN. Not that they watch the news. They watch BET even though I've tried to explain to them that the network is owned by ClearChannel, a company not particularly interested in the real needs of urban youth. They don't care. They have the right to consume.

And that right has taken away their ability to distinguish between what is worth consuming and what is garbage.

I'm not for a minute saying that anything by Ebb and Kandor is better than South Pacific or, for that matter, anything by Rogers and Hammerstein (except maybe Oklahoma!). I see Ebb and Kandor as the "ABC" of Musical Theater -- ordinary voices do extraordinary dancing (sometimes) about urbane topics. The stuff of Saturday Nigh Live. Pop. Accessible, I thought.

Probably, my students would be better off with the fairy tale narrative of South Pacific or The Sound of Music neither of which they have seen.

Before coming to Tilden, I had no idea there was a world in which people had not seen The Sound of Music. My Brooklyn Comprehensive students had seen it. Maybe they stay up late or are more adventurous in checking out cable. Or, more likely, they rented these films for their kid or kid sister whom they babysit.

Meanwhile, we finish Chicago tomorrow and then move on to...I don't know yet, though I have many choices.

Where do you go when Razzle Dazzle needs translation?

Bernie is two! Happy Birthday Bernie!

Here's a picture of the Birthday boy after finishing some broccoli -- his favorite vegetable and with Larry, snuggling, this weekend.

Ya think?

The best graduation rate of a transfer high school in 2007 was 69 percent. This comes from a 2007 report by the Office of Multiple Pathways to Education.

1) How was this graduation rate measured -- did the students have to come in the same year they graduated?

2) Brooklyn Comprehensive's graduation rate was always above 60%.

3) The graduation rate at YABC's with Learning-to-Work programs is 44% according to Mayor Bloomberg's own website. This percentage is presented as a GOOD THING.

Something is rotten in the State of DOE...

I believe we were closed because

1) All transfer high schools now STOP ADMITTING STUDENTS AFTER 18.
2) Students over 18 are shipped to GED programs because typically, according to the Office of Multiple Pathways' report, it only takes them a year to graduate.

We kept students till 21. We let them take three years if they needed them to get a REAL high school diploma.

for ATR's who want one...

It's been interesting that all of the recent writings about ATR agreements have referred to finding placements for those "ATR's who want one". Up until reading these, it had never occurred to me that there would be an ATR who wouldn't want a permanent position. Is the DOE implying that there is a place in the school-world for ATR's to just remain ATR's until retirement? Surely, the UFT is implying this in accepting this language in any compromise it enters into with the DOE -- provided that the UFT still means to provide job security to ALL of the ATR's, those who want positions and those who do not.

I am certainly an ATR who wants a position. In the ideal world, I would teach five English classes a day and be an active member of a school community. The longer I remain in a school, however, as a kind of itinerant figure, the more I become accustomed to the idea that I do not and will not be a permanent member of a community. Though I do not yet have the thick skin you need to manage this way, I expect to need to develop it. I do not treat the Teacher's lounge in my school as mine. When I do enter, it is to get a soda and I try to leave as quickly as I can. Unfailingly, when I have those confident days and engage in conversation and even follow up on issues related to my job, I regret it. At best, it's like being one of the many guest hosts on The Tonight Show during the Carson era and inquiring about whether the suggestion you made about where Ed McMahon should sit was ever tried; you're taking yourself way too seriously and not acknowledging the fact that NO ONE but Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson had any say in such matters. You're job is to be a guest host -- to fit into the program as best you can and leave it in the condition you found it. As an ATR, you're not even really even as good as a regular guest host who might be considered for the job once the host leaves. You won't be. You're not Jay Leno or David Letterman or Joan Rivers. You're David Brenner. That's right, David who? (Pictured above)

Disclaimer: I thought David Brenner was very funny and still remember that he was from Philadelphia and had a long nose. Nevertheless, unlike the indomitable Joan Rivers, he know lives in the same world as LP's, cassettes and Robert Klein.

Knowing that you are designated for oblivion brings an interesting tinge to daily activities. You walk the same halls as everyone else and you are expected to fulfill all of the duties you are assigned and to be immediately fluent in the lingo of the country. However, you won't get tapes to watch to prep you. You go on and figure it out as you go. The other day, I used the wrong terminology for what are called "Referral Forms" or "Pink Slips" in our school. I called it a report -- I pulled the appropriate word out of my brain quickly enough to be understood, but not before I was greeted with the kind of looks that are given to Americans speaking French in Paris. And I can't and don't blame the native residents -- they now have to contend with this person who doesn't even make sense handling some of their problems with students. About as much fun as watching The Tonight Show with a guest host and boring guests. They can't change the channel, though, and they have to put up with the students while they do it.

Worse, I've come off as a real idiot in conversations left and right. I've tried to be intelligent and literary when I'm sleepy and confused and, worst of all, desperate to be liked. There's no precedent or convention which has given me the ability to apologize, either, because I'm not a regular feature anywhere except during the periods in which I teach. Time passes and it's harder and harder to go up to someone and say, "remember that time I came up to you and tried to make sense about ..." They think you're weird, but they've forgotten why and they aren't going to remember. You're just going to seem weirder. There are all sorts of misunderstandings and signals you can't address like this. There are, at least, three people with whom I wish I could just apologize and start over. But, I'm not that important. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten it quite out of my head yet that all of this is temporary, that I'm just visiting at a place which is soon to be gone anyway. I want to make amends.

I know, I was supposed to be talking about GETTING USED to this condition.

P.S. A few hours after writing this, I did a Google search on David Brenner. Eerily, he and I have the same birthday, though he's 23 years older. Robert Klein's birthday is 4 days after that, and he's 25 years older.
I STAND CORRECTED. DAVID BRENNER WAS BORN IN 36 and so he is 32 years older and Klein was born in 42 is 26 years older. Mea Culpa. I always want these guys to be younger so I am more likely to meet them.

Thanksgiving

From "Perdidos"

Karen and I used to listen to Monchy and Alexander -- she loved the song, "Perdidos." Much, much too late, I know what most of the song means. We knew it was a love song, of course. Here's one of the lyrics, which of course, I would have love to have quoted to her and I do now....much, much too late:

Llevame a donde tu quieras amor
que junto a ti yo soy feliz, contigo
soy feliz (contigo soy feliz

Take me wherever you want to, my love, because with you I am happy.
With you, I am happy.

Encounters with Shrub Mid-Air: A Karen Story

Karen loved to tell this story to everyone she met. I post it in honor of her upcoming birthday, November 23. She would have been 57. (See my post below this one for my thoughts). She told the story better than I do here and, she understood better what all the technical things were, of course. All I can do is my best, which is necessary, but not sufficient.

It was the summer of 2004, the night of the Republican convention in which W was to speak. Karen and I were returning from Provincetown and had designed things so that we would NOT be on the ground in NYC for the event. So, there we were in the night sky, Karen attending to the pilot things and me, thinking, "I'm in the night sky. This is so cool. This is beautiful. I'm like a star..." and other non-profound thoughts. Suddenly, I got a punch in the leg.

In order for Karen and I to hear each other, we both had to wear headphones. That technically meant that, were I not contemplating singing "Twinkle, twinkle" to myself, I should have heard the transmission from the tower in NY. So, when a flustered Karen followed the punch with "Did you hear that?" I was forced to tell the truth and say, "No, I was night-dreaming." She didn't find it cute.

"Ma'am, get out of BRAVO space now." BRAVO space refers to the central, most important air space -- in this case we were in NY's BRAVO space which we needed to be in order to get home. And suddenly we were being told to scram somewhere in the night sky. Karen was about to ask where in this vast expanse we were expected/allowed to go in order to get to our destination of Caldwell airport when a nicer voice came on the radio and said, "Just point toward ----" I forget where it was he said, but it made instant sense to Karen and she proceeded to re-program whatever the device is called that you do that to in order to change course. About a minute later, we both heard another transmission. "Air Force One Requesting Clearance for take off." Karen says my eyes went raccoon wide. About a half minute later, we heard, "Air Force One you have clearance to take off."

So, apparently, we'd been bopped out of BRAVO space because the Shrub didn't want to spend any more time on the ground than he had to, either. His ship and ours literally passed in the night, both avoiding each other.

Shortly after, I believe, we were able to ask if we could return to our original course, which we did, feeling just a little bit cooler than we already thought we were.

Karen Beth Hunter, November 23, 1951 - Sept 2, 2005.

Proof of Heaven, while you're living. For Karen, always.

The line comes from Steven Sondheim's song, "Pretty Women" from the musical, "Sweeney Todd". "Proof of Heaven, while you're living. Pretty women." Appropriately, Sweeney coins it, singing, as we in the audience know, about the love of his life who is lost to him forever.

Karen Beth Hunter was far more than a pretty woman -- she was beautiful and brilliant, exciting and honest, and boldly loving, even if this meant being vulnerable to people who might, and often did, hurt her. She WAS very much "proof of heaven." In fact, she believed in god and the eternity of the soul so I am sure she would be/is glad to know that she affirmed their possibility in her very existence. Shortly after she passed away, a friend of mine, who is not given to paltry sentiment, wondered if she were my guardian angel and said, "She looked like one." My friend meant it.

This isn't to say she was conventionally "angelic". Like my cat Larry, whom she loved, she got as close to you as possible by asserting the truth. The truth wasn't always gentle or bucolic. It was beautiful because it was as essential as breathing. When something is wrong or he is very angry, Larry will kick things up and howl. Karen would get all red and do much the same. She couldn't stomach unfairness and I was to put things right or cause her tremendous pain and sadness. I'm afraid I did that a lot. Like Larry, she held that sadness in and it turned into anxiety. She told me once that she felt like Gumby because she had to twist into so many shapes to fit so many people's viewpoints/needs -- especially, I think, in her office. I used to joke that she was becoming, "America's Favorite Lesbian" because she counseled so many people who viewed her as a mother-figure, but were extremely homophobic (and had no idea about her sexuality).

I have never seen anyone be made so happy, however, by honest feeling and pure warmth. A good meal. Odetta. Irish music. Bachata music. Bicycling on a beautiful day. Clear, pure water. Feelings full, rich and pulsating. Love at its most elemental and finest. Brushing the hair from my face and caressing the stray silver in the strands of brown. Seeing beauty in details of me when it is not yet in the whole of me.

The paradox for me these past three years has been that nothing destroyed my faith in everything more than Karen's death and nothing affirmed my willingness to believe more than her life. She wasn't just "proof of heaven," but proof of earth -- and selfishly my ability to be a whole functioning person on it. She remains my "proof of heaven" and it's wondrous complexity. Like Sondheim's Sweeney, I feel cheated and the bitterness has transformed me, but I try, for her sake, not to let it do so as much as it could.

November 23rd is Karen's birthday and she would have been 57. In my mind, she was eternally 7 years old and I told her so. She was that child on the swing, going too high and too fast in pure exhiliration. In flight. She is still flying. And I am eternally 10 years old. My bicycle and my favorite coat no longer quite fit. My mother's loneliness has overpowered me and I no longer play outside. I guarded my 7 year old friend in the hopes that I can save her from this fate, but alas I could not save her at all. She reminded me of every pure joy I'd ever had and she was all of them at once. "Proof of Heaven" in a world where laughter without irony, without fear, that rises like unbridled passion from the belly upward is so, so rare. In a world in which the concept of goodness is often used to propulgate the very opposite, she was proof that true "heaven" is maddeningly, enchantingly and honestly beautiful.

I'm sick of buying retail for names.

On my toolbar, always, are updates from the NY Yankees. As the season is LONG over, the updates are mostly the same with the occasional mentions of whom the Yankees are shopping for in the pool of free agents. This year, it feels like we are going to Bloomingdales and Macy's when the world has already learned to buy at Greenmarkets and Costco. What does it take for an institution to learn that it's habits are unhealthy? I guess, like a person, organizations have a hard time letting go of their addictions, in this case, to buying other club's stars when their best years are either behind them, or still in front of them -- but few and far between.

Take C.C. Sabathia. A great pitcher, but he's been such for a while. The time to have pitched for him was two years ago or even last year. Sure, he'll be a terrific addition to the club for five years or so. Maybe. Or Maybe three years. Still good, of course. But what was it that prevented us from getting him when he was a clearly gifted younger pitcher? Why do we wait for people to become veritable stars somewhere else? I hate to say it, but I feel as though I am taking away someone from a ball club which built him and had faith in him to squeeze out what's left of him. It's like buying stock in Goldman Sachs (which someone advised me, very wrongly to do). You assume because of the name that it would always be a good product even though you can see that the world is changing and the product is headed for trouble. That kind of denial was lethal for the economy.

Now, Jake Peavy would be an exception. He's still young and not an established ace. I would like to go after him as hard or harder than we are going after Sabathia.

Of course, we NEED an established ace because we have yet to build one of our own in a while and we need an aspiring ace so we have someone to follow in his footsteps. So, we are, to some extent, locked into this pattern -- unless we could buy two pitchers on the verge of becoming aces and let them grow together. The latter would be healthier and more exciting to watch as a fan. Perhaps the reports that Phil Hughes is become a strong pitcher in the AFL portend of such an event. But, why do we expect a VERY young pitcher to be more than just that? Why are we creatures of such extremes -- chasing hard after Sabathia and expecting gold of Phil Hughes or Chamberlain for that matter? What would have been wrong with purchasing Gil Meche last year, an indisputably solid pitcher who has years of good work ahead of him? Or is there something in us that loves the gamble of watching the ever-absent Carl Pavano on his rare stints on the mound, hoping to win a 100 - 1 bet that he will have a good night?

And even Jake Peavy has been a good bet for a while. What stops us from seeing what the rest of the world sees and waiting until someone is almost legend somewhere else? Are we also addicted to taking away other club's pride and joy?

Finally, why would a team which has been losing with the same General Manager for years give him a contract to 2011? Renewing Brian Cashman's contract feels to me like buying Jordache jeans in 2008. Sure, some people find wearing designer jeans cunningly retro, and they look good in a certain way, but the world has moved on, mostly.

Wailing children and the mist of 10pm

It's like a trumpet which can't quite get the sound out. The sound of the father's plea. He must be saying, "Now what?" "What" is definitely the second word. Like the slow grind of a drill through bone, his child's cries have been persistently scratching at the air.

Were I to keep my head just on the windowsill, it would feel like being on a boat. Gentle, cool mist and the waves of occasional cars against the road. Like low tide shifting in on sand, they flood in and pull back in slow, easy breaths.

The cry chews through every bit of wall, however, and even the outermost edges are not unscathed. It is like this every night. Between the cotton-muffed hum of the television which, ironically, is at a tasteful volume, are the jabs of tears and howl that shake the skeleton awake from within your muscles.

She is mute, but for the screams. Or is it he? Who can tell? It is wordless, just a long, attempt to lull the weakness and rancid pain inside. It bubbles up against the ribs and billows into a cloud of one-voweled ache. Terror spills, and I can feel her jaw, her mouth, her lips, her teeth, falling, shaking, wishing they could bang against the ground.

He has stopped speaking to her, but now lets her wail into the room beneath me, filling the carpet with the heat of her breath. She becomes a pulse.

My ears pull inward toward the edges of the pond that is my room. I hear the slow drip of water from a faucet and the television adjacent to me, playing the news. My soul is riding the wave, away from her pain because it cannot know it.

Stop Obama from nominating Joel Klein for Sec. of Education

Apparently, the rumor about Chancellor Klein being a serious contender of Sec. of Education comes from The Huffington Post. The Nation is putting together a list of reasons, garnered from readers, why Klein shouldn't be chosen. Write to Habiba@thenation.com and info@nycore.org immediately.

Looking through a web of fingers

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.