I'm Just Askin'....

If the US had not struck a Faustian bargain with Hosni Mubarak (to not go to war with Israel) and thereby sanctioning a dictatorial regime which (among other failings) strangled opportunity, would there have still been a Mohamed Atta?  And, if there were no Mohamed Atta would there have been a September 11th?  And, if there had been no September 11th would the US have invaded Afghanistan, and then Iraq?

Special Place in Hell, 2nd Edition

Let me add to the honor roll, Leslie Gelb.  And how could we forget the unforgettable, motor-mouthing, shit-talker extraordinaire, Condoleeza Rice?
 

Surely There Are Special Places in Hell

for Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton, Jeanne Kilpatrick, Elliott Abrams, Martin Peretz, Tony Blair (who is certifiably barkin' mad) and the rest of the day-old fish called the punditry, the intelligentsia, the Western diplo-political elite who view Egypt's revolution primarily through the prism of realpolitik and "America's interest" and "strategic alliances" and "cold peace with Israel" and the list goes on of those who easily ignore the human suffering and dignity that all the above costs.  (If I link to some of their recent statements my head will explode which might not be a bad idea if it melts some ice, but still ...).

Egypt and Clinton had already been co-joined for me.  Below is an excerpt from a letter to Rita Parker, a friend who lived for several years in Lebanon:

13 March 2008

Mark and I went to Egypt for the first 15 days of September last year.  The genesis of the trip was a conversation with my friend, Fred, who had traveled there a few years prior and had a great time.  Almost 2 years ago Fred was diagnosed with Stage III colon cancer, and one day when we were talking I said wistfully, “Well, after you get through this cancer, why don’t we go to Egypt in 5 years?”

Fred, who is nothing if not assertive replied, “Why don’t we go next year?”  And that started it.  ...  In the meantime, Dailey piped up and said that she really, really wanted to go and so the 3 of us were trying to organize a trip.  ...[s] he couldn’t go until January 2008.  So while the family went to Egypt we did it in 2 legs.

[…] Mark is an experienced traveler – he lived in India, Germany, and southern France – and has trekked many other places in addition to driving through parts of the US.  He’s a great and patient companion on these trips.  We had a fantastic time both partaking of Egypt’s “greatest hits” and of the lives of contemporary Egyptians.

One of the seminal and bittersweet moments was on a trip to Alexandria.  The driver had worked for King Faisal (?) and went to Beverly Hills with him serving as a chauffeur.  He told us that he had been encouraged to get his green card but declined because he wanted to go back home.  (I can’t recollect the chronology, but my guess is that this happened after Nasser’s presidency.)  Considering what life is like for Egyptians today, he rued having made that decision.  He told us, and probably because we were in a van driving as opposed to sitting in a café, that if it weren’t prohibited in the Koran “all Egyptians would kill themselves…”

This was my first trip to an authoritarian country.  I should mention that I loved the country, absolutely loved it and made at least 1 friend there.  Of course there was a kind of kinship with the Egyptians.  (Although it was a hustler’s line “… welcome, my cousin” when we went shopping, I was still happy to hear it.  Having grown up in the US, especially the Midwest, it’s rare that I’ve lived somewhere were I felt at home.  That’s why New York City is my spiritual home.)  I’ve always been annoyed when American leftists talk about this nation as authoritarian.  Yes, there are definite elements of it, and particularly during the reign of Bush and Cheney we fearful Americans have submitted to government oversight like never before, yet we are far and away from being in the state of an Egypt.  One of the first impressions I got as I saw all the young men out is that Cairo resembles inner-city New York.  (I could probably say that of any American city where a great percentage of it’s young, able-bodied males are idle during the day.)  There was a familiarity I felt seeing the young men:  That crushing idleness co-joined with the presence of several kinds of police; the systemic corruption that squelches initiative.  Added to that is a Muslim culture that constrains and frustrates young people’s mating and forces them to delay marriage.  All those things lead to despair.  When a nation’s youth are in despair, I feel that a country cannot and will not grow.  The next generation feels defeated even before they have grappled with leadership.

[…] Years ago I said to friends that while I had no qualms about voting for Hillary Clinton as a senator (and I have twice) I would not vote for her as President.  I wasn’t able to articulate why thoroughly, and I doubt if I was even asked.  Lately, out of obvious necessity, I’ve had to flesh out my objection to her as a president.  My first answer is that both Clintons have a kind of amorality that is a necessary component of ambitious, driven and smart people.  (Necessary for “getting ahead”.)  That leads to a more elastic ethics, and over and over again I think I’ve seen that in the decisions that she’s made as a public figure.  (When people are being neutral about that trait, they call it “caution”.)  But, I disagree.  I’m a cautious person, and try to be prudent and thoughtful when making an important decision.  I can also examine and to some degree, understand the other side of an argument.  What I cannot do is throw my principles or values “under the bus” in order to curry influence, or to score a tactical victory.  And yes, since I can’t I’ll never get far in politics or corporate culture; but, I don’t pretend otherwise.  Hillary Clinton has – in the sense that she has rationalized decisions that are in conflict with professed values and acts as if there is no dissonance.  It’s that characteristic that’s at the root of what has and always will disturb me about her.  Secondly, and this is related to how I perceive her style of leadership, she, like many of our most recent presidents seem to subscribe to an executive style of management, where top-down leadership is the only legitimate leadership.  That, along with fear-mongering, has helped make the citizen body flaccid.  Mark, whose love of America is that idealistic love that immigrants who came here voluntarily as adults have, is so concerned about this country.  How all the initiative and belief in our ability to fix our problems seems to have been washed down the drain.  Hillary Clinton, as admirable as she is in many ways, does not inspire as a leader.  And, at this stage in my life, I’ve already had 1 boss too many.

I once said to to someone that the only thing that is greater than man's capacity for cruelty, is his capacity for rationalization. Now I'll add that a prerequisite to lusting for great power is an outsize capacity for amorality.

Egypt: Cairo, Alexandria & Elsewhere

Al Jazeera English: Live Stream - Watch Now - Al Jazeera English

Sphinx Rising

Three years ago Husband No. 1 and I went to Egypt.  I'm not an African-American Egyptianist, i.e., someone who spends time arguing who invented mathematics first -- the Greeks or the Egyptians.  (For the record, nor am I descended from great kings and queens of Africa.)  Fred had gone and recommended we go, so we did.  I now realize that my brain and many other Americans' brains need to be scrubbed because more than once when, after telling someone I travelled to Egypt, they'd ask, "Didya ever go to Africa?"

"Well, yes.  I travelled to Egypt."  Check a map if you don't believe me.

I love that country and hope to, need to go back.  We went to Alexandria one day and toured the modern Library of Alexandria where, I kid you not, I was treated like a movie star.  One moment I'm looking at a lithograph from the the days of Napoleon's sojourn in Egypt and the next minute I'm shaking hands with children asking me who I am, where I'm from and so on.  As stunned and flattered as I was, that's not why I love Egypt.  It's the people I met (some of whom may be out in the streets today).  We were very aware that as Americans we were undoubtedly safer in Cairo than in New York.  You figured out right away that Mubarak's regime would never ever let a Western tourist come to harm.  Husband No. 1 and I used to count the different uniforms we saw  representing different police and/or military forces.  We stopped at five and then wondered how many plain-clothes were around, too.

 When I read or hear of people here complaining about the US being a police state I roll my eyes, because, frankly, they don't know what they're talking about.  Egypt is the real thing.  It is what a dictatorship looks like smells like acts like.  Here's an example of what an authoritarian regime does to its people: The man who drove us to Alexandria spoke excellent English.  He explained that he worked in the States for several years as King Faisal's driver (when the King was in California).  At one point he was offered permanent residence (imagine that happening now) and he turned it down to return home.  Now, he said, if Islam didn't forbid it, he (and all other Egyptians) would commit suicide.

Egyptians are risking their lives in ways most of us Americans never have and can't imagine.  I am in awe of their courage.  I recommend visiting Mona Eltahawy's blog to find out more.

I Have Been Given the Weekend Off ...

... by my husband who decided, in His Infinite Wisdom, that he, too, has too much Work To Do.  (I mean , really now, what do college-educated people in their 50's with bad backs have to do but work?)  I am in the midst of picking up the pieces of a life interrupted (joyously) by a daughter's wedding, approximately 15 inches of snow over several days, and best of all, the offer (accepted) of writing another libretto after having not done so for, say, 15 years.

I'm working with a composer, Whitney George, and we are together writing an opera based on Guy de Maupassant's "The Diamond Necklace".  How times have changed!  Whitney and I have never met, and may not meet until the first performance.  Yet we have this mutual support society thing going on which is a joy.  We're doing this all through e-mail and (gulp) our face-to-face meetings might even be Skyped.  She was referred to me by my Very Good Friend, Fred Ho.  (He and I did some damage to the artistic firmament when we Wrote "Warrior Sisters" together, my last opera collaboration before this one.)  Anyway, doing the libretto is my idea of fun.  

Also, I was on my way to NY last Sunday and just by accident my friend, Taylor Ho Bynum, who I met through Fred was on the same train, and we had one of those rollicking co-artists conversational riots until he had to 'scuse hisself to work on the sheet music for the 10-piece Positive Catastrophe Band performing that night at Jazz Alley.  (Oh, God, New York will never be what it once was where jazz clubs were the center of the universe.  A part of me longs to have lived there in the 1950's, despite the fact that I would have probably drunk myself to death).  And, as I told The Husband, I realized that there was an "Ann T. Greene"  who got left behind when I left New York.  It's only when I work with or run into fellow "creatives" that she emerges.  I miss her and need her here.

My Thoughts About the Upcoming Edition of Huck Finn That Excises the Word "Nigger"

Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger.

Been in a Family Way

Which is my way of explaining not posting for weeks.  There has been much going on in the world at large -- the repeal of DADT, the possibility of murderous anarchy in the Ivory Coast -- and in the mini-universe of my own family (extended and otherwise).

The news round-up for my small world is:

1.  the world's tallest 4 1/2 year old is now smitten with Lady Gaga.  This is what happens when you let Uncle Mark babysit for a week.  Nuff said.  As long as this love affair doesn't get in the way of her getting a full scholarship to play basketball for UConn (which I assume will still be a powerhouse in 2024) then I'll turn a blind eye ....

2. Daughter No. 1 is getting married on her 30th birthday, a day I've always called One Onedy One Onedy One (01/11/11).  It's bittersweet; she and Son-in-Law No. 1 have been together for several years, and will have a good good marriage, of that I'm sure.  But, frankly, I know I'm losing her and with that realization comes sorrow.  As it has always been it will always be.  I know I'll get over this transitional grief and when I do I will become annoyingly relentless about grandbabies.

3.  This morning we will head out for the East Village to have New Year's Eve dinner with Mel and Fred.  Being with old friends tonight (and at Christmas) is a remarkable feat.  People who have known you and who you've known carry your history.  I continually learn who I was and who I am now through them.

As for the traditional festivities,  I won't make any pretense of staying up until midnight.  Rest assured I am as happy as the next person to wake up in the morning which is celebration enough these days.  And, have you noticed that the friends who send photos on or with their holiday cards are the friends who drink Elixir de Dorian Gray?  Gawd, don't you people ever age?  Can't you leave anything up to the imagination?

Happy New Year to You.  I hope we all have the grace we'll need.

Here's to Depression

I was texting this morning with a friend who's in therapy.  (Don't worry, there are so many of you your identity is safe!).  It reminded me of my time in therapy during the late 1980's through the early 1990's.  I wouldn't be here today without the work I did then and while no one would nickname me Sunny, I am a happier person because of it.

There are many names for depression and if I weren't in such a hurry to get ready to go to NYC for the weekend I'd look up what William Styron or Andrew Solomon had to say about the matter.  I think one thing depressives have in common is that they name their enemy.  Mine was called The Sludge, I explained to my friend this morning.  I envisioned it as a black, viscous, slow-moving organism that took up every molecule of optimism and will to live I owned.  (Remember the movie, "The Blob"?  It looked like that, I kid you not.)  In the process of leaving me, The Sludge would tear through my soul (thanks to the catalytic nature of psychotherapy) and I would be sick, inert with suffering and doom for days.  But it was leaving, that was the difference I intuitively realized.  It was leaving.  The feeling was different than my standard issue depression where I could feel it settle into some region of my body and leave barely enough energy for me to eat, sleep, job and take care of a kid.  I managed to endure this metamorphosis and since that time I've rarely been depressed in the way I once was.  Unhappy?  Yes.  Miserable?  Indeed.  But a depression that wasn't precipitated by a specific event (a break up, a literary rejection) but only by having the audacity of being alive?  Never again did I suffer one of those.

Every day without The Sludge has been a blessing magnified.  Now if I could do something about my visceral fat ...

We Can Dance Until We Die

How lucky I am to live in this modern age:  We here have progressed from seeing cancer as a moral failing to seeing dying from cancer as a moral failing.  The body dies in many ways, aided and abetted by the toxic shitstream we've made of Mother Earth, but it dies nevertheless.  It is never about how you die, it's about how you live.  If there is one gift of knowing in advance when one's contract with life is over is that we can choose what we do with our selves.  And, Elizabeth Edwards did so superbly.  With outspoken courage.  So, thank you Elizabeth Edwards.  I hope you see your son.

I'm Still Not Hearting Diane Ravitch, Part II

Although I was sober yesterday I wrote a convoluted paragraph about the way to teach children that mention private schools and public parks.  What I mean to say is that (as a generality) all children benefit from the same ways of teaching.  I don't believe that there's a way you teach kids who'd attend Choate that is profoundly different than the way you'd teach kids who'd attend any big city's public schools.  What had infuriated me with the Old Ravitch and others is that too often education is talked and written about as if there are some evolutionary differences between white and black kids.  Or, more to the point in Our America:  there are intractable differences between White and Asian (i.e., honorary white -- and if you don't believe me read some California history) and Black and Hispanic and Native American children.  The dirty little secret is that so many folks on all sides of the issue fear that it is innate and genetic.  (We are all evolutionary biologists now.)  Maybe, just maybe Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein were right after all.

I said it then and I'll say it now; I call bullshit on that.  My bona fides:  I'm black, which means that the percentage of African "blood" exceeds the percentage of European "blood" in me and my siblings.  And it means that by choice (and so as not to be classified as barkin' mad) I self-identify as such.  I'm middle class -- always have been, and sigh, unless the real estate market in NYC really goes crazy, always will be.  I grew up taking standardized tests such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and never met a standardized test I didn't like.  And I'm not unique.  So, can we stop with all lot of the racialized "black and brown" this and "black and brown" that and start looking at how class affects education?  Then let's talk.


These dispatches are about convincing myself to take Diane Ravitch seriously, since the positions she promulgated, defended and believed in were so obviously flawed.  I -- bet I'm not alone in this -- have trouble taking apostates seriously.  (And yes, Glen Loury and David Brock I'm talking about You!!)


To be continued.

I'm Still Not Hearting Diane Ravitch, Part I

Last night I attended a School Change Summit organized around Diane Ravitch's “The Death and Life Of The Great American School System”.  Disclaimer:  I have not read her book.  Yet.  So, my remarks are based on the panel's responses to her book, to her own responses during the forum and to my incomplete knowledge of her thinking and impact on American education.  The summit itself was a terrific idea.  Paul Bass, publisher of the New Haven Independent partnered with the Community Foundation and others to convene a panel of New Haven parents, educators, scholars and students to read the book and join Ravitch onstage.  Meanwhile (in the winds section) radio, print and net journalists (I don't know why I feel the need to make the distinctions), one of New Haven's state reps and the Mayor live blogged.  People could and did send in their comments while the Summit was live-streamed, and, the auditorium held a great and lively audience.

I like to "touch and smell the produce" so I actually attended.  Before I go off (I'm afraid I will) let me share my frame of reference because you know that people-of-a-certain age always look back.

I started teaching writing in New York City public schools in the mid-1990's.  That was during the years when Rudy Giuliani had school chancellors jumping the turnstiles faster than a broke pickpocket.  The work was great; I, and other writers and artists like me were on a mission, and there was a great deal of respect (tempered by many educators' skepticism and their own fear of writing) for teaching poetry, fiction and drama to city kids.  By the late 1990's the climate was changing as "standards" and "accountability" took up more of the educational airwaves.  All of us in the education biz fell down the rabbit hole of metrics and quantifying the work we did as if it were possible to slice thinner and thinner slivers of raw learning and still call it tuna.

Don't get me wrong.  I am all for standards and any child or adult who has survived one of my courses will tell you that if I get a whiff that you aren't challenging yourself to do better I will make your ears bleed.  But even back then I felt that whole school systems were heading off in the wrong direction where in the effort to quantify they would deracinate the joy of learning and erode what little autonomy public school teachers have.  I remember thinking at the time that if "they" wouldn't teach this way at Dalton or Brooklyn Friends or St. Ann's (to mention a few of the estimable private schools in New York) why would "they" think that teaching merely to pass standardized tests even for poor kids, kids with massive educational deficits, emotionally damaged kids is the right way to teach?  (Kind of reminds me of the welfare reform conundrum:  if you're a middle-class or upper middle-class mom we are all for you being a stay-at-home mother; but, if you're poor and we must supplement your living, raising children [which you are no damn good at anyway, or we wouldn't be having this education debate now, would we?] is second to cleaning the public parks.)

And back when I was on the Advisory Board of City-As-School High School I was part of a group of teachers, students and administrators who had a meeting at Tweed Hall with Joel Klein.  The meeting opened with us all introducing ourselves.  When the Chancellor, who by that time had been on the job close to a year said to all of us, "This is the first time I've met with students ...." I was stunned.  It was all I could do not to look around the table as if to say, did you hear what I heard?  Didn't this man think that his learning curve might have been accelerated by hearing how adolescents saw their own education?

Ohhh.  Kay, I said, don't make too much of one boneheaded executive oversight.  Change takes time.  I'll give Bloomberg 7 years.  Then we'll see how things work out.

 If I dwell on New York's reform experiment I will never, and I mean never, get to my thoughts about New Haven's.  So, let me say this.  If you asked any New York City public school supervisor, administrator or educator if they had to send their children to a New York City public school randomly assigned using some obscure algorithm would they be comfortable with that assignment, I bet their answer would be [expletive inserted] NO!  You can reform education all you want but I'll wager that there will never be an actualized urban public school system that adequately (and beyond) serves its children.  Public school education must be examined through the prisms of late-stage Western capitalism, the effects of race and class on urban demography, and the particular impact of the finance and real estate sectors on municipal development (to name just 3 factors).

I've gotten this far without actually talking about Ravitch.  (I haven't mentioned Sarah Palin either and that's something to be applauded.)  Last night's summit is the hanger on which I'm exploring my ideas about and relationship with public education.  That's why I'll call this posting Part I.  Part II (soon to a cinema near you!) will follow tomorrow.

Black Manhood is the Devil's Playground

It is now 3 days after the midterm elections and here in New Haven I did my small part to get Democrats elected.  I thought I'd be tired from the Election Day efforts, I just had no idea how tired I'd be and looked forward to having a quiet Thursday evening at home.  But, an e-mail landed yesterday morning advertising a community discussion that very night facilitated by Community Mediation with New Haven's Chief of Police, Frank Limon.  In a larger city I could have ignored it but on my way downtown I was picked up by Stacy (Are you coming?), had lunch with John (who sent the e-mail); and saw Kevin and ran into Blest (both of whom worked to bring a contingent of YBM to the meeting.)  This community dialogue had been planned way before the recent deaths of 2 young men, but the timing made it more urgent.  So, no way I couldn't be there.

The story of New Haven varies with the storyteller and the neighborhood.  It's one thing to live your life in the tony precincts of East Rock.  Another to live it in Newhallville or Hill South.  Last night was dominated by reportage from young men talking about life lived as perpetual suspects and perpetual targets in retaliatory "beefs".  They spoke of encounters with the police ranging from the annoying to the physically violent and emotionally humiliating to the likelihood of getting "violated" over some bullshit so that you're headed back to prison.  There were counternarratives offered, if not direct rebuttals to their lived experience.  Everyone in the room, even those who fear and despise the police, understand that their function is necessary and complex, and that not all cops are bad.  And yet, and yet.

It's national news that  intra-community murders and shootings plague New Haven.  It is a trope of inner city life that law enforcement is more to be feared than trusted.  So the dilemma is, if there is violent crime in your community you can 1) be a snitch, 2) settle it on your own or 3) mind your own goddamn business and hope it doesn't happen in your family.  Choice 1 will get you ostracized, maybe even killed.  Choice 2 means that you have vigilante "justice" in your community and when you do, at some point someone you know, and perhaps even love, is going to lose a fight with a bullet.  Which means that Choice 3 is no choice at all.

The police, the law-abiding, the formerly criminal, the safe and those at-risk know this state of affairs can't go on.  Last night we didn't hear much from the Chief about what the police see as solutions (although he did close with an anecdote illustrating disrespect towards him, his wife, and parents of some kids).  It wasn't the time or place; he came to listen, as did many of the rest of us.  In my understanding, for many YBM (and not-so-young BM), this problem with the police begins with respect.  They know that they are fundamentally held in suspicion and contempt by the NHPD.  That gets translated into police behavior that, ehem, if it is perpetuated on Yale students would make national news and invites lawsuits; but if done to YBM it is business as usual.

The young men talked about the boredom that comes from not having "anything to do" all day.  How they remembered the PAL Leagues and the recreational activities or community centers that were available to them when they were children.  And while I sympathize with them I was looking at young MEN not BOYS.  I can't speak for other adults in the room but as an older woman who has done more than her share of childcare (paid and unpaid), menial work, some of it under the watch of assholes with roving hands, and any kind of job in order to survive, I kept thinking that creating more recreational outlets is a palliative. Don't get me wrong, recreation has its place for all ages, but a 19 year old male should NOT be spending his day playing ball (unless, of course, he’s paid), he should be working.  I'm thinking, if legitimate pathways to respectable manhood weren’t so meager for these YBM we wouldn’t be sitting in a room with a dozen of them talking about disrespect.

The fraught relations between the police (in this city and any other) and YBM are a symptom of a greater, more insidious phenomena.  These young men and their predicament are the waste product of our post-industrial decline.  They were obsolete before they were born.  How are we going to address that?

A Modest Proposal for Improving American Public Education

Let's return to the days of of de facto or de jure sexual segregation in employment.  Let's close the doors to careers in medicine, law, science and engineering, business, elective office, finance and academia.  Preserve those fields for men and men only.  And where do you think all those ambitious, brilliant, passionate, innovative, driven, visionary women will go to make their mark?  The Post Office.  Nope.  Into public education.  Problem solved.

One of the hallmarks of my upbringing was that I was raised in a university town during a time when it was all too common for wives to put their husbands through school.  Many of those wives, after having obtained their bachelor's entered teaching, and we kids in the 1960's and 1970's were the beneficiaries of these smart, often brilliant, women supporting their families.  By the time I entered college that compact was eroding as more women opted for pursuit of advanced degrees in higher-status and more lucrative professions. 

I liken this change to the documented unintended consequences of racial desegregation for African-Americans -- given choices ambitious and affluent blacks left their communities leaving the poor and unemployable behind.  (And yes, I know I'm collapsing a complex phenomena, but allow me this concision.  My argument is also culturally-specific to the United States.  In Ireland, for instance, the expansion of opportunity probably meant that fewer gifted men and women trained for the religious vocations.)  In cities that led to what's described as a permanent underclass -- the very object of much of the anguish and frustration that accompanies school reform.

The success of post-WW II feminism (and increasing literacy) catalyzed analogous results.  Many (not all) gifted college-educated women, given opportunities to pursue other professions ignored elementary and secondary education.  In my grandmother's time teaching and teachers were respected and revered.  (The quartet of high-status occupations pre-segregation?  Doctor, lawyer, teacher, preacher.)  In our current time other professionals condescend to "those who teach" and too often, teachers, the training programs that produce them, and the school systems that hire teachers don't do themselves any favors.  Too many students attend and sustain Schools of Education where the admissions and competency standards are too low.  Too many unions have resisted squarely addressing some of the most troubling byproducts of guild protection such as job tenure for the incompetent.  And too few school systems have not created advancement pathways that reward teachers who want to stay in the classroom yet need more challenges.

So many ways to address this topic.  Maybe I'll do a post called"13 Ways to Look At American Public Education".  But for today I'm serious, what will it take to restore a universal sense of mission in American education?  And who should be leading the charge?


 

I Saw Michelle Obama and You Dinnit (Minny Minny BooBoo)

Way, way way back when I went to college (for the second time) at the University of Iowa (not my alma mater, but a holding pen while I had a slo-mo nervous breakdown) I had a great job, perhaps one of the best jobs of my life.  I was part of a group called the Commission for Alternative Programming (CAP), founded by a couple of visionary friends, Dave Olive and Jim Tade, who were multimedia artists long before the phrase had air quotes.  (I remember back in 1974 Olive asked me if I could rap [which I couldn't and still can't].  I looked at him for a beat and said, "I just delivered the Gettysburg Address."  Asked and answered.)

Anyway, CAP produced concerts at the University and within a couple of years I had helped present Keith Jarrett, Pharaoh Sanders, David Bromberg, McCoy Tyner and others.)  After a while what with all the sound checks, the missing luggage, the hotel accomodations and the groupies you're just too busy getting the show up to be in awe.  The gene of sangfroid in the presence of fame or greatness was seeded for me during those days; it got catalyzed in the 1990's when I was writing for opera and musical theatre.  (But that's a story for another day.)

A few days ago when Susie V. told me that she had an extra ticket to hear Michelle Obama speak at a fundraiser for Dick Blumenthal in Stamford my first thought was "Naaaah, do I really want to go?"  Then I have a vision of Husband No. 1 screaming in my ear like a drill sergeant who can't find his Preparation H:  You never go anywhere except to the bathroom!?"!+!$^@!  I'll show him, I huffed, and told Susie V. yes, even though it meant that it was going on 2 weeks where I had to be somewhere or be with somebodies instead of having an unscheduled and solitudinous (get used to that word because you are going to see it A Lot) day here at home.  I told Lilli that I was going to see Michelle Obama, and in that lovely way of children she asked, "Can I go, too?"  I told her I'd tell Michelle Obama hi for her and that was enough.

We arrive in Stamford on Monday morning.  I see a line snaking around the block, thinking, these folks are too well-heeled to be applying for food stamps.  (An overactive imagination makes you stupid.)  We park and join the line.  It slithers.  We get into the Palace Theater.  With a little VIP treatment we get seated.  We wait having been warned by someone who's "done this before" that the Secret Service observes the crowd for an hour.  Someone (god bless 'em) has programmed great music over the PA system.  I swear I'm listening to Charlie Parker.  Susie leaves to say hello to a few of the thousands of politicos she knows.  I lean over the balcony looking at, not for, people from New Haven.  I'm hoping "In a Sentimental Mood" is up next.

It's the usual set up:  the disembodied voice thanks us for our patience, the pre-introductions are done by campaign workers with circles under their eyes, the beneficiary speaks, and then the star appears.  We stand in unison and give her a standing ovation and sit down to be charmed.  After all, this is what we came for, right?


Michelle Obama is a pro who knows what her job is and does it.  She came to Connecticut to buck up the troops which she did with wit, panache and efficiency.  There is something in her voice which belies an attractive warmth that can seduce you into thinking she could easily be your BFF.  But her job that morning was to "carry water" for her husband, the administration, and Democratic candidates nationwide all under the guise of merely being the Mom-in-Chief and The Wife.  And I thought to myself:  I hope this isn't all there is (for her) because this woman is being wasted.  Wasted.

Overheard on the way to Grand Central

I'm riding the 7:35 Saturday morning on my way to Brooklyn.  Surrounded by a gaggle of girlfriends, nurses, I think, on their way to Manhattan to play.  Talking about work, life, sick parents.  One describes her father's last days in a hospice and how, after one visit, she greeted an acquaintance, another patient.  Have a nice weeked, she told him, or words to that effect.  And he says:

So little time.
So much pain.

Are There Third Acts in American Life?

Aaah, middle age.  You meet yourself coming and going.  I'd always heard that age begat wisdom, but what I wasn't prepared for was the notion that it also begats (pardon my conjugation) obsolescence.  By this time of life hopefully you know what you're good at and what you're very good at.  For instance, I am very good (if I may say so myself) at not cooking for my family.  Here's a typical dialogue that happens every year around a major feast:

Them:  So.  What'll we do for (insert your favorite holiday)?

Me:  Hey, I got an idea!  I'll cook.

Them:  Gaaaargh!!!(not an exact translation).  Oh no.  Oh HELL no!!!!!  And then the sound of feet big and small running upstairs to throw themselves out a window.

And that's that.  Each year I'm spared doing something I really don't want to do anyway.  But what of those things I do do well and want to do?  And what of the aforementioned set of things I do do well and want to do can I still be paid for?

That's where  the obsolescence comes in.  Those who know me well have heard me say that there are only two things I wanted to be in life -- a mother and a writer.  And I am.  But in my late 30's another calling emerged, one that is a tributary of mothering (at least for me), and that was teaching.  I became a teacher -- of writing primarily, but not exclusively.  I worked for many organizations, one of the best was Teachers & Writers Collaborative; it has a storied and sterling history in New York's public schools.  I taught (and played) with children and teachers all over the city (except Staten Island).  What an education that was.  A dispatch for another day when I get myself worked up over public education.  (I can feel it coming on.  Don't get me started on No Child Left Behind or Michael Bloomberg or, pause for steam to come out of my ears, Diane Ravitch, who has finally "seen the light".)  But, I digress ...

As I was saying, I taught for many years, some of them when Daughter No. 1 was in high school and I recall having a conversation with Bob Lubetsky, former principal of her alma mater, City-As-School High School.  I confessed that I'd been struggling with the need to remain a writer and the desire to teach mathematics.  I'm still struggling with it more than 15 years later.  (My experience with teaching is that it draws from the same well as writing.  The more I taught, the less I wrote.)

Over the years I've trained myself to accommodate my ambivalence, even ignore it and take the next step.  Today I'm headed over to Southern Connecticut State University for their Graduate School Open House.  I'll probably be mistaken for an adjunct faculty member but I'm going as a prospective student and I'll ask what it would take for someone who got her bachelor's degree in 1980 to get a master's in Mathematics.  I decided I want to teach math although I may be 60 years old before I'm fully qualified to do so.  From this distance it seems like folly if the point is to get a job.  It's not, though, is it?  The point is to answer yet another call.  That never gets old, even if I do.

On New Haven

Tim Holahan, a man with long roots in this city recently published a brilliant essay in The New Haven Independent about the city.  He views it through the prism of "The Wire".

Health Insurance or Russian Roulette for the Self-Employed

It's a beautiful Saturday morning and before I have my next attack of housekeeping I want to talk about getting old(er).  Here are a few things I don't understand and probably never will:

Lindsay Lohan.  Who is she and why should I care?  (I do get Paris Hilton.  I see her as this era's Edie Sedgwick, with better rehab options and without the Mayflower cred.)

Or Lady Gaga.  Ditto.

Or why Twitter matters.  (The Japanese invented haiku and any talkative 4 year old is an exemplar of non-consequential chatter, so why do I need Twitter?)

Or paying the equivalent of a house note for health insurance and still having a deductible so high that it's as if I weren't paying insurance at all.  (Every few months I get the equivalent of an F-bomb of a bill from some physician's practice, or some lab for work that was done long ago.  Sigh.)  When people are diagnosed with a life-threatening or terminal illness one of the questions that caroms through the mind is:  What did I do?  Could I have prevented this if only I did X or Y?  Will people add:  "What if I had affordable health insurance?  Maybe this wouldn't have happened."

As bad as it is to pay for health insurance out of pocket what's worse is not having it at all.  Years ago Husband No. 1 was doing a kitchen for a client on Long Island.  He didn't like the client, and he didn't like the kitchen.  One Saturday he drove there from Brooklyn, against his will or better judgment, to work on the job.  From what I've gathered he was both mad and bored.  Add distracted to the mix along with a running table saw and voila, he makes a nice 45 degree slice through the fingers of his left hand.  He and the carpenter he was working with pick up his fingers.  (Contractor's Rule No. 1:  clean up your job site when you are done for the day.)  Luckily, the next door neighbor was an EMT.  He wraps what was a hand up and Husband No. 1 is helicoptered to a Long Island Hospital.  The surgeons were thrilled to see him.  They get so many motorcyle accident middle-aged hot dogs that they're bored piecing those fools back together.  Here was something exciting!  Fingers to be reattached so that the patient can make a fist and hold a pencil.  Wooo-Hoo!!

After some very good surgery and weekly visits to a very good physical therapist HN1 regained almost full use of his hand.  (Funny gross out moment:  While tissue and bone are growing the fingers have to be kept straight.  To do this pins the diameter of paperclips are inserted in each finger.  One day buttoning his shirt cuff I accidentally caught one of the pins and pulled it out.  By the time you can pull a clean pin out the finger's close to healing, but still ...  I wished then he liked polo shirts half as much as he did button-downs.)

Re-attaching HN1's fingers qualifies as a success story you'd think.  A man can continue his work and he won't scare the little children, what could be better than that?  Except that this EMTing, and helicoptering and surgery and PT was done on a man who did not have a lick of health insurance.  So not only was he left with having to go back to Long Island to clean up all that blood in the client's kitchen (which the thought of still makes me laugh as in Annals in the History of Renovations From Hell) but we had our own metaphorical blood to clean up which was a $35,000 and counting bill.

Lesson learned.

There are so many things I'd love to be doing during my favorite season, and shopping around for health insurance is not one of them but given the choice between something we can afford (at least until 2014) and sounding like an old crank because I don't understand the aforementioned phenomena, well guess what I'll be doing?

Do You Really Think John Boehner is Going to Return Your Calls?

Last night I spent some time making phone calls on behalf of CT's Attorney General, Dick Blumenthal.  He's running for the US Senate.   (Reading the tea leaves, Chris Dodd "retired".)  Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a phone fan.  (Average waiting time to get a call returned from me = 2-3 days.)  I sat in a crappy, windowless office overhearing people I don't know, calling people I don't know to vote for a man that I don't know, will probably never meet, and having not lived in this state long enough to know or care about his record, have no personal stake in him triumphing over the Republican candidate, Linda McMahon.  I did it because I consider myself a liberal, Democratic pragmatist, and as such, I think it is important for each of us to perform the 1,001 things that are required to get the party's candidate elected in the best of times, much less some of the worst.

As a woman who can vividly recall Reagan's winning the Presidency (because my now almost 30 year old daughter was in utero and just as the election was called for him kicked me with a violence she hasn't displayed since); who remembers the 2000 Presidential election, and who spent part of November 2004 in West of Nowhere, Ohio, on my own dime working to get John Kerry elected (a man for whom I felt even less affinity for than I do Blumenthal).  I am here to tell you that it makes my blood boil to read "progressive" ideologues neigh about the Obama administration's perceived betrayals and shortcomings.  So much so as to decide not to vote in the midterm elections.

I am not saying oh don't talk about such things in public because anyone who knows me knows that I can sling dirty laundry when I want to.  But, really now, until we get a parliament instead of a 2-party representative democracy, power (and the ability to wield it skillfully) is situated in either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.  There are a few elected independents, an occasional Socialist, but even they have to caucus with one party or the other. What I'm saying is, we don't have the luxury of sitting this election out because Obama and the Democratic Party sometimes have feet of clay.  How effective was Cynthia McKinney when she was representing Georgia?  How effective is Dennis Kucinich?  And what voter anywhere wants to defend voting for Raph Nader in 2004?  If the outcome of that split vote didn't teach us that elections do have disastrous consequences, I don't know what will.

We have got to stop pretending that Congressional and Presidential politics are like modern marriage; that our feelings matter and that we need to dialogue about them.  Lyndon Johnson was a son of a bitch's son of a bitch but his presidency will forever rank as one of the most pivotal to the lived lives of Americans, particularly African-Americans.  (Him and Lincoln.)  Graze through Robert Caro's "Master of the Senate" or Taylor Branch's "Pillar of Fire"  to understand the kind of Congress that Johnson was up against.

Before November 2nd I will be making calls on behalf of Dan Malloy who is running for Governor, Rosa DeLauro (to return her to the House) and some more for Blumenthal.  As much as I love it and read it avidly, this is no time to sit back and hurl snark.  This is a time to step by step, vote by vote, elect people who have made peace with the down and dirty of politics (and the accompanying criticism).  They stay in the game and they get things done.  Wherever you are I hope you'll do the same.