demography

As I wait for the train, at that time that is both early in the morning and late at night, two young men who look like they should still have bedtimes sit down next to me. The one with a skateboard is white, his friend is Hispanic. Both have piercings that suggest awkward a bit more than they suggest hip.

"Did you see that one chick I made out with?" asks the boy who is white.

His friend shrugs.

"She was white, I think," says the first. He proceeds to list off the night's conquests by race: four white girls, two black girls, one Asian chick [at this point I begin to doubt his reliability], and, to top it off, a few Hispanic girls.

I remain in a quandary of mirth and horror. What astonishes, one top of everything else, is how accurately his demographics mimic the nation's.

Revelation 19:16

Signing for packages at a certain New York publication, the delivery man points to my bare upper arm (the offices of the publication are excessively warm) and says I should get a tattoo there. I sigh and explain that I can never decide what to get.

"Get this," he says, lifting his shirt to reveal a life-sized handgun tattooed over his breastbone.

"Now how did you decide on that?" I ask.

"I was in a gang in L.A.," he tells me. "It was a long time ago."

The tattoo is slightly gray, as old tattoos go. He heads out to his next delivery. I turn back to my computer, editing a podcast about the legality of torture, a podcast about the science of loneliness.

Epiphany

Fact: on any given day, at least sixty percent of the people at my local branch library will be in a bad mood.

Having braved the grumps of Epiphany to check out Gilead and The Art of Fiction (thanks Ms. Nosneb), I was disgruntled to discover that someone has, at least throughout the preface, penciled in an s in front of every he. I am an advocate of marking--in pencil--sections of interest, but this I cannot abide. It seems to me that any person reading The Art of Fiction should have the good sense to know that this exercise in silliness isn't really doing anything for the state of women other than distracting them with ugliness.

the short answer

This seems to be a week of channeling ire toward standardized testing. Perhaps it's just a reflex; this is the time of year where, if I was still teaching, the districts would bring out the benchmark tests--practice tests written in-house, which guaranteed two things: a badly written test that provided no helpful results, and a squandered week of school. After November benchmarking, it was time for December review and polishing. Rest up on winter break, because when you burst into the classrooms in January, it's time for the the six week sprint before state testing. In many ways, the approach mimicked the activities of a person hoping to be in shape for a Spring Break cruise: curse yourself for all those years of overeating and then employ all sorts of desperate tactics--starvation, colon cleanses, exercising in plastic--to make up for lost time. Don't worry--keep it up and I'm sure you'll look great next year.

Actually, this is a terrible metaphor. For more productive information, read this piece by someone who's graded standardized test essays for the last 14 years. I have some pity for him for doing this (it must be a mind-numbing task) but, hey, he's writing a book about it, so my jealousy balances that out.

wonky wishes

I have sighed many times over Joan Acocella's writing--a sigh of desperate admiration. In a recent New Yorker article on the rise of overparenting, Acocella makes a succinct and astute observation:

No Child Left Behind: that sounds like the expression of a democratic wish. More likely, it was the product of an economic wish--that America not be left behind by India and China.

If one has any doubt this truth, let me show you the latest language on the need for a successful education system--it is tinged with a fear of losing our accustomed world order. Battalions of foreign students breath down our necks. We must devour our math and science textbooks not because their content might help us unlock the beauty and power of scientific and mathematical theory, but because a country that can't add can't calculate tax breaks for U.S. corporations; a country that can't reason through science experiments won't own the means of energy production. In the new era of xenophobia, it's not that we can't imagine a world where resources are freely shared, but that we can imagine it all too well--we see that it means we might have to give things up.

Of course, like most selfish impulses, it's wildly illogical and will, at some point, come to a diseased and deadly fruition (known in Texas as shooting oneself in the foot). As Adrienne Rich observed:

Universal public education has two possible--and contradictory--missions. One is the development of a literate, articulate, and well-informed citizenry so that the democratic process can continue to evolve and the promise of radical equality can be brought closer to realization. The other is the perpetuation of a class system dividing an elite, nominally "gifted" few, tracked from an early age, from a very large underclass essentially to be written off as the alienated from language and science, from poetry and politics, from history and hope, an underclass to be funneled--whatever its dreams and hopes--toward low-wage temporary jobs. ...The results are devastating in terms of the betrayal of a generation of youth. The loss to the whole society is incalculable.

Writing this in 1997, Rich was specifically referring to tracking, which has passed out of vogue in its most blatant forms. But regardless of this, we must remember that tracking was merely a symptom of a larger fear-plagued motivation--a motivation that remains just as viable in 2008 as it did during the Cold War.

Relatedly, the connections between George W. Bush and the testing companies were made years ago, but this remains an excellent article about the other economic wish that drove the development of No Child Left Behind. If there is one quality I will allow G.W.B., it is that he seems to know how to have fun. But I am befuddled by his cronyism: based on their inane curriculum and testing materials, the friends that made millions off NCLB appear to be the dullest of people.

Mumbai, Maximum City

a short video I worked on

Slumdog Millionaire

the varied carols I hear

Times Square on November 4: it is perhaps one of the few times the Square is full of native New Yorkers. We are celebrating not the fall of a new year and soon-to-be broken resolutions, but something real, something hopeful, something that requires Walt Whitman and a few good yalps.

An NYFD firetruck attempts to navigate the throngs. Our eyes on the screen high above the vertex of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, we part slowly. The driver begins to tap on the horn, syncopating the blasts, and we join in: "O-ba-ma! Yes we can! O-ba-ma!" We wave as they crawl by. One fireman, suited up, arm on the windowframe, puffs on a cigar.

location, location

Synecdoche, New York

at least expensive movie tickets buy new york opening weekends

zip codes

Last year I tutored at a school in Brooklyn. You could see the Empire State building from the classroom, but life still seemed far removed from "the city"—although one student surely had studied the subway map more than once, he was shocked to learn that the East River flowed half a mile from his doorstep. "There's no water around here," he insisted.

Now I work within a few blocks of the familiar Empire spire, at a charter school in Chelsea. The sixth graders have made multi-page, multi-colored reports on their neighborhoods: Gramercy Park, the West Village, the Lower East Side; their projects are more developed than a number of high schoolers' I've seen. It's a magnet school for readers and writers. When they finish tests they pull out hardbound sketchbooks and begin doodling. Last week the seventh graders held a raucous impromptu debate on disposing of nuclear waste. (As precocious as they appear, I must say I am glad they aren't calling the shots on that piece of policy. Some of them hardly quibbled over the pitfalls of shooting plutonium into space—one trigger-happy girl had a disturbingly detailed plan to deposit it on the moon.)

When I introduce myself on my first day of work, a few classes break out in applause when I tell them I'm studying journalism at New York University. Many of them are members of the newspaper club, which is anxiously awaiting publication of its first issue. The newspaper's political writer, a bespectacled sixth grader, tells me it should hit the stands by Election Day. “Election Day?” asks the boy beside him, although a second later he knocks the palm of his hand on his forehead. “Oh yeah! Obama!” He raises his hand in the air, and his tablemates lift their hands in solidarity and simultaneously cry, "Obama!" The original instigator, a slight boy with cornrows, grabs my wrist and tries to push it in the air. Seeing as the city has forbidden public school teachers to promote candidates, I resist, but can't help telling him, "Obama wants you to do your homework."

They ask which publications I want to write for. I mumble something about the New Yorker, and they bob their heads in recognition. One girl raises her hand: "My friend's dad is the music critic at the New Yorker," she says.

"Sasha Frere-Jones?" I stammer. She nods. I ask if she ever read his pieces. Sometimes, she says.

Later in the day, a boy comes over and asks if I want to be a journalist or a teacher when I grow up. I tell him I used to be a teacher and now I’d like to write about teachers. I say nothing about my age or state of grown up-ness.

They may need some clarity on the nuclear issue, but at the very least, they are generous.

modern medicine

In a few weeks my friend E- will complete her contract as an ICU nurse at an East Coast hospital. After one of her night shifts earlier this year, she came home at 8 a.m. and slept until the afternoon. When she awoke, she sat on her couch, bleary-eyed and exhausted, and told me how she'd spent an hour crawling around the morgue—literally climbing in the machinery, fumbling with broken equipment—in an attempt to move a DNR patient who died after spending two months in the ICU. "I hope this is my worst job ever," she said, and went off to work another night shift.

diarie gastronomica

triptych

three recent sights; one infuriating, one baffling, one dear:

+ "I am voting for the chick!" signs in the hills of Augusta County

+ hay bales in Manhattan

+ the P.S. 11 farm market, manned by four eager elementary school students

why I wish I was still teaching English

Sarah Palin et al. do not [currently] have their red pens on the education policy of the nation, but the vice presidential candidate has provided at least two day's worth of lessons.
Poetry

Diagramming

broken window theory, all shook up

Says the wonderfully subversive Banksy:

"I came to New Orleans to do battle with the Grey Ghost, a notorious vigilante who's been systematically painting over any graffiti he can find with the same grey shade of paint since 1997. Consequently he's done more damage to the city than any category five hurricane could ever hope to achieve."

some extra reading

New York University lost it's "Dream School" status earlier this year. To Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. Pshaw. A New York City true-blood reported that she had no problem working on her doctorate because life at Princeton was so boring all there was to do was watch spiders cross the windowsill.

Things still happen at fourth-place schools, however. Thanks to a hefty tuition bill, a prime location, and great connections, my ninth--and hopefully final--alma mater is good at wrangling guest speakers. Some other journalism class got Gay Talese, but I'm not holding any grudges.

Earlier this week we heard from David Grann, a writer for The New Yorker who has a book coming out early next year. In preparation, may I recommend the following pieces as a brief sample of his work:

Giving 'The Devil' His Due--for those of us who need another reason to make our blood boil over U.S. relations in Haiti

The City That Fell In Love With the Mob--oh me oh my oh: look what went on in Ohio

My professor, who is a friend and colleague of Grann's, reports that Grann will frantically declare he doesn't know what to write about next, and then comes up with something like this: The Chameleon.

just a spot by the sea

for those, like my mother, who are better people when there are mountains afoot and the ocean crashes on the proper side.

Today's vocab word: public

Just in case I wasn't partisan enough in my prior post (warily! warily! I say to you):

According to the New York Times, Senator McCain announced that "the federal government should play a limited role in public education."

If not a government (for the people, by the people) who then shall regulate the public school system? Will the government (that faceless entity) whittle away its hours with the private school system?

“Education is obviously not the issue Senator McCain spends the most time on,” said Lisa Graham Keegan, a former Arizona education commissioner and McCain adviser. Oops--not anymore.

Hey, teach

I think Teach for America slipped Obama some of their Koolaid. From a speech in Dayton, Ohio:

A while back, I was talking with my friend Arne Duncan, who runs the Chicago Public Schools. He was explaining how he’d managed to increase the number of kids taking and passing AP courses in Chicago over the last few years. What he said was, our kids aren’t smarter than they were three years ago; our expectations for them are just higher. Well, I think it’s time we raised expectations for our kids all across this country, and that’s what we’ll do when I’m President of the United States.

Actually, it's probably the influence of ED in '08, an advocacy group focused on education reform. They share a number of philosophies (and former alumni) with TFA, many of them reflected in the candidate's speech.

A few things I worry about:

The overenthusiastic push for charter schools--just because competition works for grocery stores does not mean it should work for our country's intellect.

Focusing on new teacher recruitment, if it is at the expense of retention and stimulating career development. (Stimulating is key here--I don't mean those teacher in-services with smiling motivational speakers and PowerPoint slides. You don't know boredom until you've sampled a few hours of one of these. Unless, of course, you've wallowed through a week of state testing.)

The underlying theme of competition. Yes, we need a knowledgeable workforce, and I don't wish this country into the Dark Ages. But there is something suspicious in lines such as "When the story of our time is told, I don’t want it to be said that China seized this moment to reform its education system, but the United States did not." I hope it merely reeks of rhetoric.

But these things worry me too:

High school sophomores counting on their fingers.
Seventh graders unable to write in complete sentences.
The junior who slapped her chapter book shut in frustration, unable to understand the words and old enough to be embarrassed.

I could go on.

This is not about competition. It's about dignity.

I admit I've tasted the Koolaid too. I suspect some batches contain Nutrasweet--synthetic and ultimately unsavory methods that create more problems--but it sure is better than dying of thirst. Let's just not forget to hold each other to our high expectations.

Prince Phillip

One last bit of non-New York color, before my life is completely ensconced in Manhattan's fall foliage: check out Phillips Seafood Festival Buffet, of Ocean City, Maryland. We did, but only externally--one of my traveling companions sampled the fare on an earlier trip to this lovely coastal town and suggested we dine elsewhere (in her defense, the visit was not of her own volition).

Phillips is an endless expanse of fried seafood and it's sundry companions (crab legs, french fries, and, I'd imagine, copious amounts of tartar sauce and ketchup). Unfortunately, and yet somehow predictably, it's not very good.

Despite its culinary failings, Phillips is world-renowned. This is what you do when you go to Ocean City. Afterwards, you can stagger down the boardwalk and ogle women in gold-lamé bathing suits. Or, as two women we observed coming from Phillips did, you can call friends and relations on your cellphone, click on the speaker phone (so as to capture the muddy Atlantic surf) and tell them "We're just calling to to brag that we just left Phillips!"

couldn't drag me away

I had high hopes for the wild ponies of Assateague—I imagined their majestic manes streaming in the tempestuous Atlantic winds, sinews straining as they raced across the rolling dunes. I saw them rearing fiercely in the sunset, whinnies echoing above the roar of the waves. (And yes, I maybe envisaged myself clasping my arms around their necks, swinging up upon their sturdy backs, yelling like a banshee and riding like hell.)

Perhaps it was my former dealings with the bears in Yosemite, the moose in the Maine, or the stampeding elephants in South Africa that filled me with romantic expectations. But the wild ponies of Assateague were anything but—it turns out that they’re not even ponies. And they certainly are feral: they show little regard for the beachgoer who may not wish to sunbath in their excrement. The small herd near my campsite did maintain a frighteningly obsessive habit of relieving themselves directly outside the entrance to the chemical toilets—although every day the placement varied every so slightly, a strategic deviation that kept campers on their toes and confirmed certain suspicions about the neuroses that develop during decades of in-breeding.

What the eager visitors do not yet realize, as they pay their $15 entrance fee, a fee that will permit them to scout out a towel-sized claim of feces-and-cigarette-butt-strewn beach front; as they toss their park pass in the windshield and excitedly tamp on the brake—it is their first wild pony and the thrill of the spotting makes them forget the vehicles that pause politely behind them while they click their cameras with frenetic abandon—what these eager visitors do not yet realize is that these wild ponies, descendants of the noble Misty of Chincoteague, descendant of the fierce Phantom, descendant of the shipwrecked ponies who swam to the island years ago (or, the Park Service gently apprises us, more likely the descendant of horses brought to the islands by 17th century agrarians who wanted to avoid fencing laws and livestock taxes): yes, these ponies of ponies are actually the squirrels of Assateague.

Do not feed the ponies. Do not touch the ponies. Shoo them away when they come near—clap and shout if you must. They may look docile, but they are prone to wild and unpredictable behavior. And while they might relieve themselves outside the chemical toilets with predictable alacrity, they certainly do engage in wild and unpredictable activities: nuzzling scantily-clad young ladies on the beach, rustling through the recycling in the middle of the night, standing stoically near one’s campsite for mysteriously long periods of time. (The gentlemen, I must note, also wantonly exhibit that which makes them men—I can say nothing of the gentle, as one of my companions recalls an earlier visit to the island, where she and her busload of classmates witnessed a very graphic rendition of the procreatory act.)

The ever-amiable Park Service does its best to defend the dear ponies: they remind visitors that the horses are “tough enough to survive the scorching heat, abundant mosquitoes, stormy weather and poor quality food found on this remote, windswept barrier island.” I will concur that unless one plans appropriately, food and drink is scant on the island, and that heat, mosquitoes and stormy weather appear in abundance. But the ponies' curriculum vitae fails to impress. For once upon a time I harbored childish ambitions to be a horse (don't ask), but alas, I am not, and despite domestication and a lack of equestrian attributes, I too survived life on the island and all the rigors and dilemmas of a holiday at the beach.

Misty of Chincoteague, it turns out, has not. I am sad to report that she, the equine heroine of the children’s classic (a surprising number of people I’ve spoken with are familiar with this book), passed in 1972. But never fear: if you wish to brave the mosquitoes, ultraviolet rays and horse-awn tourists, you can go see Misty, glassy-eyed and stuffed, in full taxidermic glory.

But please don’t touch.

paling in comparison

Well, we all know who Tina Fey will be spoofing for the next two months (I'm being optimistic here).

Why do I feel like they're trying to tug on the heart strings of my double X chromosomes?

When CCR sang "I ain't no fortunate son," I don't think they were arguing for the senators and governors and representatives to march their children and past experiences down the corridor to the sacrificial alter [ahem]. I don't think this is what Biden and Palin and McCain and Obama intend, but the specters of a child with Down syndrome, sons in Iraq, x & y chromosomes, melanin and a tortured body flit about the campaign speeches and television ads.

how cool will it be!?

Currently, barackobama.com opens with a nice graphic and the sweetly rhyming phrase "Who Will Be Barack's VP? Be the first to know." Us Virginians and pseudo-Virginians are crossing our fingers for Governor Tim Kaine. And we're eagerly awaiting the news. It's just a bit unfortunate that the slogan sounds remarkably like an ad for a home pregnancy test.

And just in case you aren't obsessively checking the NYTimes for the announcement, the campaign can send you a text as soon as the decision is made:

Barack is making his decision and will be announcing it any day now. If you haven't had a chance to text "VP" to 62262 pull out your phone and do it now! How cool will it be to know before it's announced by Wolf Blitzer, Katie Couric, or some other news outlet?

Um...I want to know too, and yes, before Katie reads it off the teleprompter. But is this how the campaign thinks we want to be spoken to? Barack, he's so cool! I agree, but please--I'd like a little substance with my exclamation points.

vaccumming the valley

This is Barry K-, president of the Plains District Memorial Museum. Here's a truncated version of an article I wrote for a local publication:

Barry King was plagued by a triad of problems. Or, rather, the old feed mill that he hoped would house the Plains District Memorial Museum suffered three afflictions. Asbestos. A leaking roof. And pigeons—or rather, piles of pigeon guano.

“In my mind, every time it rained, I could feel the raindrops on my head,” said King.

The building is a much-needed upgrade from the museum’s current location, a small garage brimming with Virginia artifacts from decades and centuries past. It took the dedication of dozens of volunteers, a number of fundraisers and generous donations, a few negotiations with the electricians, and a visit from a pigeon abatement company to ready the mill for moving day. Today, a few buckets still collect raindrops in the back section of the building, but the front room—a spacious area complete with museum-style lighting and climate controls—will open its doors in September.

Now King’s task is to fill the mill. “I’m in vacuum mode,” he said. “Do you have any old ledgers?”

Unlike a typical diviner, King sniffs out history, and is not afraid to ask his friends and neighbors about the contents of their attics, basements, and sheds. “Once you start to smell the ancient dust, it gets in your blood,” said King.

gonna look both ways

The funny thing about documenting sprawl is how the experience literally reinforces the very definition of suburban ooze: its utter inaccessibility to anything but a car. You want footage of the land where the Wal-Mart was supposed to go? Park on the slender shoulder, slog down the hot asphalt, past shrieking cars and belching trucks. Wade through the bracken in the ditch. The crickets will leap in fright. To get a shot of where the Wal-Mart ended up, tripod off bank ATMs and lean against street signs. Cross highway traffic with a prayer that if you get hit, your camera will survive. (Don't worry, mom: I'm gonna look both ways before I cross the street. Three times.)

What is most disturbing, in the end, is not the tireless uniformity or the men who yell out car windows but the anomaly of a footed figure. That what everything thinks is bizarre is not a girl with a camera, but a girl--if they notice you at all.

If I can't be a health teacher

...I can at least write about it.

When I think about statistics, it is often in the form of those textbook charts and graphs: HIV infection rates appear as progressively darker blots around the globe, scars on Haiti, Lesotho, Indonesia. A large dark circle surrounds New York City, where infection rates are the highest in the country. But there is a smaller, darker circle inside this one: take the train up to the Bronx, near Yankee Stadium, and walk north (beware, Dorothy, this isn't Manhattan anymore and your ruby reds may have a hard time on the steep hills).

This is Highbridge, where AIDS is the leading cause of premature death, where three in 100 people are HIV-positive. This may not sound like much, but what it means, on the ground, is that many of those people you walk past know someone--an aunt, a brother, a best friend--who is positive or even deceased. And this makes me think of other circles: the circles of privilege I tread in, where life can be lived at the extreme reaches of advantage, circles that are lightest or darkest based on the merit of their designation, whether it be infection rates or income or Internet access. I observe this not with overwhelming and impotent guilt--as Paul Farmer astutely notes, guilt can be an extremely productive emotion [pg. 93]--but certainly with a sense of guilt that demands justice, a guilt that insists we dive into other circles and blow their borders asunder.

And yes, please, please, please use condoms.

P.S.

Due to a somewhat nomadic childhood, I kept a fairly significant correspondence during my early years, much of which I have reviewed and culled during this past week.

When my family moved in third grade, my former classmates sent me letters, all in cursive, all in proper letter format on yellow and blue-lined wide ruled paper. The pedagogue in me appreciates my teacher's creativity: while the content of the letters is middling, it was the perfect thing to cheer up a homesick nine-year-old while practicing penmanship and letter writing.

The culling carnage was rather drastic (yellow and blue-lined wide ruled paper recycles well, I hope) but I couldn't resist recording the following from two of the letters:

Larry W- closes his letter by informing me that: "P.S. I have a hermit crab."

...and Chadd K- writes:

"Dear Sara,
Hey Sara! Guess what are [sic] class got a new student in are [Chadd dear, we need to work on homonyms] room. Her name is "Brenda." She still isn't as good as you."

If I recall correctly, "Brenda" was the daughter of the couple who bought our house (it was a very small town). After we moved, there was a rather unfortunate incident involving our homemade swing set: we left in the winter, and my father intended to return in the spring to extricate it from the frozen Pennsylvania ground. (My father has carpentry in the blood. Suffice to say it was a well-built swing set, involving post holes and cement.) Unfortunately, due to a miscommunication that remains nebulous to this day, Brenda's father and my father exchanged a series of heated words (an anomaly for my father; I can say nothing of Brenda's) and my siblings and I were never to swing on that swing set again.

In summation, despite the fact that my father spent this past Sunday's morning exhorting us to seek justice rather than revenge (he also has preaching in the blood), I have just taken my score-long revenge: Chadd K-, dear boy, I agree completely.

Say yes to Michigan!

There is a surprisingly extensive list of songs about Michigan. Where, one wonders, are the songs about Connecticut? Of course, this is the only state where residents can hold up the palms of their right hands and point to where they're from. Now I can say yes to that!

A few for your listening pleasure:

see all of Greetings from Michigan by Sufjan Stevens

Half Acre, by Hem (you'll know it from the Pay it Forward-esque insurance commercial, which, mercifully, is only one minute long and thus far less painful than the movie. You may decide how you feel about a company reminding you to do what your mama and papa taught you--not to mention anthropomorphizing itself as a paragon of responsibility. You know, in the great sellout debate, what I find most disturbing is not always the artist's willingness to sell their music to the Man, but the fact that the music I love also appears to be the Man's favorite too. While Andrew Bird's whistle really shouldn't fetch any price, I am glad he can make enough to keep himself in glockenspiels. It's just unnerving to hear his melodies trickling from the television. Or maybe it's the editorial hack job meted out on his music.)

Michigan, by the Red House Painters (I keep trying this band but they never take. They're one of those bands where the first 45 seconds of a song writhes with promise but by minute two you've memorized their three power chords and pasty lyrics and the incessantly nasal drone of the lead vocalist. In fact, your time would probably be better spent waiting for the seventeen-year cicadas to emerge. They'll be here, in Michigan, in 2021.)

one writer's beginnings

During the years 1999 through 2001, I had the following pieces published in a certain secondary school's literary magazine:

1999
a. a poem about a family returning from the beach (narrator: middle aged man)
b. a poem about the eating habits, or lack thereof, of girls from the West and girls from impoverished countries (and on her plates/are the remains of food she hates/sandwich crusts, broccoli stems)
c. a poem about 43-year-old man's nostalgia for childhood
d. a short story about an incarcerated woman giving birth*

2000
a. a poem about domestic abuse
b. a short story about a mentally unstable woman miscarrying her child and subsequently drowning herself**

2001
a. a poem about a poor mother trying to make a life for her son
b. a poem about a bi-racial relationship

I wonder that my family did not worry over me, but clearly they were not too concerned, as I never appeared to have a curfew and was mostly spared from what one of my siblings refers to as "Monologues with My Father."*** In fact, I may have been entirely too wholesome--I even cried over the only C I've ever received.**** Ultimately, I say that the mildly amusing list is evidence of the mind's potential for empathy and imagination (however maudlin)***** rather than that of a disturbed teenager.

*Rather than a product of my imagination, this one was inspired by a photograph.
**This one is the most painful one to reread. Did I actually write this? I'd like to blame it on reading bad fiction from The New Yorker but my mother refused to buy it during the Tina Brown days.
***If you know our father, you'll know who did the talking.
****Algebra, and in my defense it was not due to an inability to comprehend algebra, but a habit of wavering attention...sometimes due to writing the pieces listed above.
*****A final comment: while a rereading of the above pieces may find one turning certain shades of pink and/or crowing with laughter, my use of figurative language and experimentation does show a spark for the craft***** (although I promise to never ever again refer to the embrace of a bi-racial couple as like an Oreo cookie).
*****Two selections:

The handcuffs and shackles lie there in metal crumples like serpents...

and, in a variation on the serpentine theme:

Coming back from the beach
My wife and daughters burnt red,
Faces like shining Buddhas.
A week later
Their bodies emerging, snakes
From decaying skin.

so gallantly streaming

It is the last game at the old minor league baseball stadium (it will be torn down for a local university's expansion). Dear, dear L- agrees play tripod girl and accompany me to the last game--although we soon learn there is actually a make up game on Monday night (more about that later). We waltz across the field in search of Bobby W-, owner of the Turks and, coincidentally, my camera's first quarry. Unwittingly, he drives away in the golf cart; we make chase, as do the eyes of the baseball team.

Somebody yells at Bobby to stop. He flips the cart around and, taking our hands, asks which one of us is going out with him after the game. I smile sweetly and ask him to submit for the camera--considerate subject that he is, he whisks us off to the outfield and answers my questions against the backdrop of the stadium and the familiar tinging of baseballs and bats. (He played on this field in high school; later in the evening he gently grasps his son's neck as they prepare to bid farewell to the turf).

Back to the stadium go we, where we meet an older, even saltier gent whose name I can't recall, but who Bobby informs me is loaded--loaded, I tell you! They are astounded to learn I do not have a boyfriend, and equally aghast when they hear that L- is a married woman. Indeed, there is nothing quite like discussing one's love life with old men while at work. But in between compliments and flirtations, they give me some good tips for shooting the game, and I mainly laugh when they tell me later that I'm a young 26, although I remind them I'm but five and twenty.

L- waits patiently in the stands while I capture b-roll and interviews; it is my first time at the ball field and I am sad that it is going--there will be another ball field, but how can you reproduce the stains and dirt and scents of over sixty years of baseball games? I dread the sterility of the new diamond, the erased echoes of girls and boys flirting in the stands in the golden light of a dying summer day, the undamaged scoreboard. What words have smashed against these walls? asks Maya Angelou. For is it not comforting, endearing, hopeful to think of visiting a dear, dusty place and adding one more evening to the strata of memory?

But it seems there will one more memory to bring to the sod and discarded peanut shells: L- and I had an offer we could not refuse, an offer that involves warbling the national anthem at the final final make up game. I fear she will win the harmony argument, leaving me to that eyebrow-raising high A--or is it a C? Unpatriotic as I may appear, on Monday night, Veterans Stadium will indeed be the home of the brave.

where numbers fly like pigeons

the arithmetic of life as a quasi-unemployed graduate student (don't try this at home, kids):

interview a man about a historic museum. discuss annie dillard. forget to look at the KKK outfit--brother-in-law wants to know who made their outfits. their wives? or did they emasculate themselves with a needle and thread for such nefarious activity?

invite self over for dinner at friend's parents'. mother of friend's sister-in-law has made dinner--her family is indian, and they probably know my grandparents. dress in sister-in-law's saris (she is too tired and hot from cooking all day to do so herself). pray that won't drop briyani on glorious blue silk.

have pictures taken for anonymous software company. script includes line about unsuccessful pizza tossing: try to position head under flying pizza dough while maintaining correct angle for camera. learn a few tips about tossing a pizza (two fists!), share a few laughs with the Hispanic bakers at the Italian restaurant, leave with flour in eyebrows and hairline.

change niece's diapers (3 times in 20 minutes); act like a general fool (stick out tongue, make clicking noises, sing, dance, finally make baby laugh), visit baby aisles at Target (there were at least 5), fold diapers (too many to count).

lug camera and tripod around town, looking for elusive college students. why they aren't out getting drunk at 9 on a friday is beyond one journalist's imagination. the best college bar in town has a suspended liquor license. tell every acquaintance the news (in approximately 17 minutes, this totals 7 people, plus someone's new wife).

house sit for friends who go on real vacations. 2 cats, 1 dog, 2 messy houses; 18 hours hasta que vengan.

trollope: 1 down; edward abbey: 2 more chapters; nabokov (first name, for the record, almost rhymes with redeemer; last: hold the middle syllable on the tip of an arrow [bow] and then break into the edge of the final hard k): lolita, lolita, lolita.

He must marry money

There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony."-Anthony Trollope

Fortunately (I believe) we are no longer shackled to the demands of blood and money in marital matches, as Trollope's Frank Gresham is repeatedly reminded by his family. (I warn you that Trollope's wit is done a great disservice by such a dry synopsis, the sad fate of many a synopses, so dear reader, listen to Lavar Burton and read the book.) Of course, we have not cast of the bonds completely; our greedy tendencies have merely settled in deeper, darker spots: I ain't sayin she a gold digger but if she starts demanding a push present, you may have more to argue about than who changes the 4 a.m. diaper. (Coincidentally, I did write a piece on this topic before the NYTimes. There was just that niggling issue of publication.)

But if you do happen to find yourself blissfully ensconced in matrimony, regardless of money or blood, there remains at least one battleground: the in-laws--one I never really feared because my own relations were and are a source of joy and delight (and yes, the occasional annoyance). But I have found recently found myself, albeit in-law-less myself, dispensing two pieces of advice for the wedded:

• Write it all down. I'm not sure of Trollope's matrimonial relations, but such character sketches and plot lines come free of charge. (I must give credit to an anonymous acquaintance for this observation.)
• Read, and if needed, write to my guilty pleasure. All advice comes with a good serving of snark, which really is something our dear Abby could use.
  

sittin' on G at Marino's

My friend J– discovered Marino's a few months back, and I finally managed to slip down to Staunton for a visit. If you happen to find yourself in this corner of the world, you should aim to roll in on a Tuesday, about 8 p.m., if you'd like to find a seat. Last call is at 11, and if you have nice eyes someone might buy you a two-dollar beer. Keep drinking them, and you'll be feeling right and rosy—it may be the PBR, or it may be the twanging solo of a banjo in harmony with an upright bass and jagged voices that echo in from the Virginia hollers.

Marino's holds a bluegrass jam every week; you may wonder jealously why you spent all those years being a blandly predictable student, going to class, when you could have been learning to play the mandolin, or at least better rhythm on the guitar, because the woman in the corner of the room sounds like she maybe spent some time cavorting with the devil down in Georgia, and at this point you can't remember the content of those lectures, just the lines of that heartbreaking song, the boisterous man in the red suspenders, and the burning ache of cigarette smoke in your throat.

Overheard, above the guitar and harmonica:

a. Who was that Russian composer, who died 'bout forty years ago? Shostachovich.

b. They're sittin' on G a lot tonight.

c. (After a camera flash captures the side of one man's head) Damn! That's my deformed ear.

Only at Marino's. Walk past the lunch counter, settle yourself in a corner with a beer, and listen.

take me home

if the fireflies and Shenandoah Mountains aren't enough, the Green Valley Book Fair is always there to tip the balance in favor of a certain state south of the Mason-Dixie.

I submit as evidence this list:

No Other Book, Randall Jarrell (read at whim! read at whim!)
The Little Disturbances of Man, Grace Paley
The Broken Cord, Michael Dorris
The General in His Labyrinth, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorn
Murder In Amsterdam, Ian Buruma
and a Spanish English Dictionary.

Grand total: $23.35

oh country roads take me home (when the book fair is in session)

please forgive me

There certainly is something unnerving about posting photographs of newborn babies on the internet, but I'm a twitterpated aunt and she's too pretty not to. Of course, it's pictures like those below that she may have issues with. She's quite the raucous baby Baucchus.

border collies for Barack

A dapper and friendly Barack Obama was in my dream last night. We attended some church affair, the details of which I can only recall included large salami and men in wheelchairs. While I'd like to overlook the potentially Freudian twist, I must say: now that's campaigning.

Relatedly, my sister and brother-in-laws's dog (a somewhat expensive but exceptional wedding present) ran away last week after taking one sniff of their new baby. Many little Bo Peeps went looking, but the dog didn't show up until one of my brother-in-law's relatives ran into someone who'd seen a loose border collie--at a Democratic Party meeting (the someone, not the border collie). She (the border collie) is now back at home, eyeing the baby warily, and we are grateful. We are considering a donation to the Obama campaign--or, at the very least a new committee: Border Collies for Barack.

my favorite plant so far

we'll see what survives: one upside down tomato has already fallen prey to gravity. but the zucchini is looking lovely, and the pepper plants love to droop during the day and are back to their perky, hopeful selves by nighttime. the lettuce would make peter rabbit drool; thankfully he wouldn't dare wrassle with the likes of the puppies two.

story

one way of considering bootstraps...and community:
Sade Greene, Highbridge Horizon

Keep in a cool place to prevent hatching

Today I met the proprietor of this store: Frank Bee Costume. He tells us that a cotton candy machine costs $75 to rent, as does a popcorn machine, although one doesn't actually use the popcorn machine for popping corn--you buy it pre-popped. He also informs us that "any magician worth his soup" cannot be engaged for a Saturday in May, as they are booked months in advanced (and earn $225 an hour). But we are momentarily entertained by a magician who stopped by to pick up some money (Wayne, it turns out, is his agent) and the magician enthralls us with quarter tricks and a rubber bands. He and Wayne met when the magician took his watch during a trick. (Wayne knows a lot of people. He provided tents for a Barack Obama affair, and autographed photos of Obama, Martha Stewart, Donald Trump, Conan O'Brien, and a Yankee I do not know, hang on the walls around his desk).

There is a box of rattlesnake eggs near my feet. They look like this--I had not seen such since I was, oh, nine, and they remind me of the card sleeves from Clue. Wayne pulls one envelope out of the box, and begins fumbling with it under the desk. I smile at him. He hands the envelope to T-, and she opens it and shrieks. "I can see the smartness coming out of your eyes," he tells me, but it is not so much intelligence as a good memory.

The magician twists a balloon into Snoopy on a scooter, and Wayne gives each of us an envelope of rattlesnake eggs to take home.

we are the pirates!

9 a.m.

a high, persistent car horn shoves me out of sleep and over to the window. i am bleary-eyed and hung over, thanks to the brooklyn literati, who apparently don't mind if strangers crash their parties in search of jon-jon, the androgynous non-writer who just got a book deal. (a digression which is unfortunately off the record).

below my window, chattering loudly, march small herds of baseball teams—seven year-olds in matching uniforms and baseball caps. their parents walk demurely alongside. some teams walk in lines straight enough to please ms. clavel, but most scuttle forward in an awkward blob. the blobs are yellow, orange, red, green, and they keep coming, entering the frame of my window from the left, and marching north on la avenida de puerto rico. the blobs grow taller in each team; the prepubescent boys bring up the rear and shout, “we are the pirates” with full buccaneer boisterousness.

a man across the street comes to his window. the parents take pictures. no one else is watching, but the b-43 bus waits courteously at the curb until they have all passed by.

A hope as refreshing as air conditioning

My favorite quote from Sade, a lovely young woman who I interviewed this week, on her first job at age 14: "You feel big. You’re like, wow, I’m working in an office with air conditioning!"

Her friend tells me when he met her during their freshmen year of college, all she could talk about was running for President.

Oh, the press would gobble it up. (I like the disjuncture I'm making here regarding my supposed profession. I'm not one of them). She is the oldest child of a teenage mother who dropped out of high school. When Sade was 16, her family became homeless. Now she's waiting to hear on law school acceptances.

But her story, despite what bootstrap bindings one could force it into, is much richer than that.

Now if I could just write a story that would do her justice.

Breathing deeply

Don't ask me why, but I was seduced by a recent episode of one of those law and order shows...I don't know which one, and it doesn't really matter. The plot was a regular roller coaster: I missed the first part of the show, but when I began watching, a young woman, whose mother was in jail for dealing pot and other sundry drugs, was raped. The young woman did not see the man’s face, but she knows that it is a guard from the prison where her mother is incarcerated. The guard had been raping the mother (as well as other women), and I believe she had somehow been supplying him with drugs (or he was supplying her--the plot was quite convoluted). When the mother cut off his drug supply, he took his revenge by tracking down the daughter and raping her. Like a true Nancy Drew mystery, he lets the young woman in on this information.

So the show continues to loop the loop--one of the cops tries to ferret out the unidentified rapist by going undercover as a prison inmate. But the climax of the show depends on this medical detail: the young woman comes down with a case of multi-drug resistant TB. The police know that MDR TB is endemic to the prison (and, like, a lot of prisons--one point for Law and Order) and they suspect that she got it from the rapist. The prison goes on lock down because of the health threat, and all the officers are given tests to see who might test positive. This puts our undercover heroine at a grave risk: another cop has gone undercover as a prison guard, but he looses track of her during the lock down, and the rapist takes advantage of this isolation and attempts to rape her. (Of course, she isn't raped, although the show took plenty of time to act out our nation's penal sex fantasies, billy club and all. Don't ask). But the story isn’t over yet. It turns out that the rapist doesn’t have TB—there is no evidence linking him to the young woman. She contracted it from a group home a few months earlier (oh, those filthy, infectious group homes. Accessible health care, anyone?)

You don’t really need to know the rest of the plot, but I’ll humor you—the rapist makes the mistake of revealing certain body parts, parts which sport a noticeable mole. The young woman remembers this, and is able to provide enough evidence to book the prison guard. (Perhaps this is a lesson on the corrupting influence of our overeager and ineffective penal system?)

So why my tirade? (Despite the chance to slip in those annoying, left leaning critiques)? Ahem. Physiology, my dear sirs and madams. Thanks to contagious lawyers who honeymoon in Greece, and fly on multiple airplanes, MDR TB is indeed slipping into the American consciousness (thanks to antibiotics, Americans stopped being so worried about TB in the 20th century. It is curable--if treated). TB is a very frightening disease, and over a million die from it every year. Over a quarter of the world's population harbors TB bacilli in their lungs. But. The immune system is a lovely thing, and one does not generally contract TB from a single encounter, especially a swift one that occurs out of doors. It makes sense, then, that the unfortunate young woman (did I mention her mother gets murdered?) would contract it at the group home, and not during a rape.

Perhaps we should applaud the nation’s networks for bulking up their plot lines with medicine and science (since ER and Grey’s Anatomy are primarily interested in only reproduction). But bad science is just silly. We pride ourselves on our scientific advances, and giggle at the silliness of those old-fashioned quacks who entertained the bumpkins of the 19th century. Shows like Law and Order, or Eli Stone, a wretched waste of an hour which began its season by inflaming the debate over the dubious link between childhood vaccines and autism, demonstrate that while we have more knowledge, we choose to ignore it for the sake of a narrative. But narratives require a deep commitment to fact, or at least to consistency—if your characters fly, I’ll believe you, but if half your characters can’t fly, and you don’t give me a reason why, I won’t trust you. It’s dishonest and fraudulent. One hundred years ago, we may have listened too often to the quacks, but now it is the hacks who have our ears.

to wit

Simile of the week (if not all of April):

“You are a sky-high highbrow,” he wrote. “Me, I suspect highbrows (and low- and middle-) as I do all specialists, suspect them of making things too easy for themselves; and like women with a good figure who can afford to go bra-less, I go about brow-less.”

...the words of Jacques Barzun

...and the chapter title in a book I would like to read (circa 1875, full title: The Intellectual Life):

To a Young Man of Intellectual Tastes, Who, Without Having as Yet Any Particular Lady In View, Had Expressed, In a General Way, His Determination To Get Married

Big Apple

After almost seventy two hours in the city, my brother and his friends have managed to do more than I in six months. Guggenheim, Central Park, Coney Island, aquarium, Times Square, off-Broadway show, Chinatown, Strand Bookstore...don't think I'm entirely derelict: I've made it to at least a slice of those things. But I remain in my pajamas, my brain muddled by working ineffectively and sllllooooowwlllly. This is not how I intend to spend my days, but this is what happens to me when trying to decide exactly what to say about education, or farmers markets, or whatever the writing topic may be. My body grows restless, but at least my mind runs all about.

Thank goodness oh best beloved and spring break are arriving soon. I do vacation heartily. At least that is the consolation.

I have five jewels...

A poem my mother wrote about us years ago. She sends it for our Valentine wishes.

Jewels

The ocher sun spreads glitter everywhere.
The turquoise sea provides a priceless mine.
I have five jewels in a family chest.
They sparkle sapphire eyes and topaz hair.
So beautiful and valuable--I'm blest.
They form a precious crown for me to wear.
These children ornament a mother queen.
I watch them glisten, shimmer, shine. I know
This wealth grows richer, fuller though unseen.
True treasure lies in lives that give and grow.
Such gems come from a Jeweler above
Who cherishes and treasures stones with love.


--J.E.V.

one giant leap...

10:02 p.m. I do believe, thanks to the loud roar from someone's apartment down the street and the ringing churchbell, that the Giants have just won the Superbrawl. Oh thank you, thank you. My fellow New Yorkers will not be so grumpy tomorrow.

Landed gentry...

The only problem is we all want to be Miss Elizabeth Bennett.


The "head cook" operates under a ruse. Potato rolls and cookies are merely a cover; the brunette slaved hard for Christmas dinner while the blond sat pretty.