Saturday Poetry: Oceanid

I've decided to post a poem on Saturdays.  This first one is from my unpublished manuscript, "Turn Left at the Dead Dog".

I moved to New York in the early 90's and temped to make a living.  One of my most memorable gigs was working at a Brooklyn shipyard in Red Hook as a secretary.  I'd take the G to it's last stop, Smith Street, and walk by the Red Hook projects to get to work.  The shipyard's lifeblood, Navy contracts, was drying up, and these old-timers, many of the men were in there 60's, knew that their life's work -- engineering, welding, painting, and so on -- was coming to an end.  (The shipyard was where Brooklyn Ikea is now.  My, how times have changed.)  I wanted to memorialize and honor a beloved world.

This poem came from imagining the kids swimming at the city pool near the projects, one of the great rituals of a New York summer:

Oceanid

 

I just love it in the summer

she says to me.

To get off work, while it’s still light?

You walk by the pool.

The kids are playing.

Brown kids black kids.

A few of them are white.

They glisten like baby seals

in bathing suits.

Screaming Spanish, English

It doesn’t matter

You see them running

boy after boy

boy after girl.

And the girls

they’re getting so bold now

not like when I was that age

we couldn’t go to the pool you know.

Our mothers didn’t want us getting too dark

and besides it would ruin our hair.

Lazy Mira got the beating of her life back then

and she was almost grown.

Mama had paid to have her hair done nice for a wedding

beautifully straightened, you’d a thought she was white.

Mira was that light, but as soon as Mama left

she flew to the pool where Mama saw her,

right here where we’re standing now,

arms full of A&P.

Fast Mira, a pink bikini

running around the edge

pretending to be afraid of Danny B,

who she loved, I don’t have to tell you.

And some little shit of a kid, pulling himself up out of the water

butted his bald head into my sister while she was dancing backwards

and she flipped a horseshoe right into the deep end.

Mira could swim, but it didn’t matter.

She knew she was dead.

Required Reading for a Rainy Day

If it weren't for the ability to link to great writing I'd had no ability to write at all.  Ta-Nehisi Coates' reflection on Trump-birtherism-Obama.  (His father is Paul Coates, publisher of Black Classic Press).  Here it is, The Longest War.

No, I'm Trig's Mother

I know it's been a long time.  Don't ask.

Just by accident I heard/read that the White House released Obama's birth certificate.  If ever there was a need to use the phrase WTF???!?!?!?!  this is it.

But I know and you know that in this demographic sea-change in American culture and in this conglomerated media age competing for ever smaller audiences and harder-to-come-by revenue, that if Barack Obama's father had not been a black African this rumor would have been strangled in its crib.

 

I Lost a Poet Once

I didn't mean to but those were my early days of promiscuously tasting what the internet had to offer and I thought surely, surely with his distinctive voice (and my impeccable spelling) I'd simply be able to Google him and find him again:  white man, in his 30's, lives in NYC, teaches for a living.  Couple of collections published.  Well, that narrows it down.

Needless to say I did not find him.  Have not.  And 3 or 4 unbacked up (who the hell backs up one's bookmarks?) hard drive crashes later, I never will.  My bad.  My very bad.

Ever since then I try not to make the mistake of assuming that information is at my fingertips and all I have to do is roll up my sleeve, stick my arm into the digital bin and bam! I pull out some writer's website.

What starts these junkets anyway is an elaborate preamble to writing.  It's Friday, do you know where your poetry is?  I look at various 'zines, walking back and forth before the storefront wondering if I should go in and if I do, will I buy?  Each time I think I'm done with "the poetry thing" another line offers itself.  (As in overhearing on Metro North the girlfriends talking about a hospice patient.)  Here are 2 to play with in honor of April being National Poetry Month:

"We're pregnant."  Maybe it's generational, maybe I'm stupid, but when, oh, when did men start having babies?  Introduce me to the man who's pushed a bowling ball through a key ring while lying on his back for, say, 5 hours and then we'll talk.  In the meantime, who can write a poem with that?

"Lonely as a Witness in Vegas."  I've always wondered (haven't you?) what it must be like to be both a Jehovah's Witness and a resident of Las Vegas.

You write a line

I'll write a line
We'll write a poem
together.
 

It's Saturday Night

As if that's an excuse for the blogger's equivalent of drunk dialing.  I've not written lately for many reasons; the most plausible excuse being that life lately has been so very personal.  So, if you want to know what I have to think about something feel free to hack into my personal e-mail accounts.  (Joke, that.)

Anyway, in addition to Happy Spring (and does anyone else feel like a fat, black bear unfurling from a long hibernation?) I want to share two of my comparative dumb-as-a-box-o'-rocks moments.  Both are tangentially related to religion.  I stopped attending church as a teenager.  A result of the cessation of my mother's enforcement regime (and my disenchantment with the congregation during the height of the Vietnam War).  For years my mother made sure we made it to Sunday School and church with my father.  (My long poem, "Beatrice's Neck" is crafted from those Sundays.)  Only now do I realize that it had less to do with inculcating religiousity than it had to do with creating some god-damn time to herself witha family of one husband and 4 rowdy kids.  (Although I do think church meant something to her; she, herself returned to church towards to end of her too short life.)  All of that to say that I do claim some home training which makes these lapses in recognition all the more mortifying.

Fast forward to the early 1980s.  I'm working in Washington, DC.  It's spring.  I'm still young enough and green enough that The City (and its comfortable denizens) were still undeniably glamourous to me.  One day I'm on say, K Street, and I see this elegant middle-aged woman walking towards me.  Looked like she graduated from Smith (back in the day), and worked for a law firm or was some high-level goverment appointee.  Well put together, like i wished I could be but never ever achieved.  I glanced at her but got stuck at her forehead.  This elegant, Ann Taylor-clad (yeah, yeah when it meant something) woman had a big black smudge on the middle of her forehead.  I wanted to wet my thumb and wipe it off.  It surprised me:  didn't you check the mirror before you left the house?  Don't you have a compact in your purse?  When was the last time you applied your Naked Librarian Coral lipstick?!?!?!  So, when I got into work I started babbling about this woman I saw who didn't realize that she had dirt on her face, can you b'leve it?

I'm sure someone, probably a co-worker who did graduate from one of the Seven Sisters, took pity on me and gently explained that that day was Ash Wednesday.  The Episcopal and Catholic observant are marked as an acknowledgement of mortality and human fallibility.  Oh.  Thanks and I hauled my lapsed Baptist ass to my desk and said not another word.

Never content to make a fool of myself once when I can do it several times years later I asked one of our Egyptian guides why so many men had a dark smudge on their foreheads.  (You know where my mind was going, don't you?)   I asked, of course, while being driven around by one such man.  Patiently and respectfully I was told that it is basically a sign of piety.  That men who pray the requisite times per day and have spent a lifetime putting head to ground acquire that bruise.

Oh.  Wash.  Rinse.  Repeat.

So, that's it.  Late and I just finished listening to a great Afropop radio documentary about Um Kulthum.  To Egypt, and elections.  To all the other Christians out there who don't believe in resurrection:  this is all we've got.  Happy spring.

Good night.

So what if April is the cruelest month?

February has got to be the dirtiest.  As feared and expected after the snow evaporated we were treated to everything that was left underneath, plus all the delightful dogshit that owners blithely left behind.

It has indeed been a long, hard winter.  I feel like a bear coming out of hibernation complete with a thick coat and added fat to keep me, eh hem, warm.  I am looking out at my backyard littered with plastic toys, construction debris, possum (I kid you not) feces, and last fall's leaves.  I am so out of shape that I can barely pick up a pencil, much less a rake or hoe.  If I were easier to embarrass I would have cleaned up this mess last fall, but I did not, and now I feel like I'll have to get physical and psycho therapy just to do something about it.  Am I feeling the insidiousness of middle age?  Or is it just the creakiness of a winter spent hunkered down?

In the fall I planted some Japanese maple saplings and burning bush.  I can see the burning bush from my window.  It was buried in the snow for weeks.  Maybe I should warm up a stethoscope and check them for signs of life.  Maybe I should do the same for myself.

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?