a walk around Zuccotti Park

On all corners, and throughout the crowd, police in full regalia, with zip ties of the protester-detaining kind clipped to their belts.

A sign that reads "Water Board Wall Street." Later, three men turn these words into a chant. Which means that at least four protesters had little concern for the ethical twists contained in such an idea.

One block north, the belongings a person without a home. Blankets, shoes, and bags are stacked against an unoccupied wall, and keep mum as to if they sit there in protest or in simple statement of the facts.

my head is shaking, but the ground is not

Eighteen-year-old Genevieve Blain says that after the earthquake, she prayed every day for New York. She left Haiti a few weeks after the January 12 earthquake—her family had tourist visas to the United States—but there are still times when she feels like the earth is shaking. “My head is shaking, but the ground is not,” she says.

I met Genevieve at the Haiti Earthquake Family Support Center, an operation supported by a triad of church-based programs in New York City. The center, which opened just six days after the devastating earthquake hit Haiti, offers a variety of legal and social services to Haitians throughout the city.

Genevieve and her parents visited the center to continue their application for deferred action status, which essentially guarantees a stay from deportation while petitioners file for residency, work, or citizenship benefits in the United States. While this program is generally restricted to extreme cases, in July, US Citizen & Immigration Control announced that it would consider applications from Haitians who arrived in the country after the January 12 earthquake. Temporary protected status (TPS), a separate program granting temporary immigration status, is limited to Haitians living in the United States prior to the earthquake.

There are many, like the Blains, who arrived on tourist visas or as a guardian for a U.S. citizen child. Unable to work or, in some cases, attend school legally, they often rely on friends and family for lodging and financial support—a difficultly compounded by the challenges of life in New York and its small apartments, thin paychecks, and $2.25 bus and subway fares.

Genevieve wants to study medicine, maybe at The King’s College, but she first needs to study English so she can pass her TOFEL exam. She spent her last semester of high school in Miami, where she got her first C. She was bored, she said—the classes were so much easier than in Haiti, so she stopped paying attention. Equally astounding was that many of her classmates knew Creole—“my Creole!” she exclaims.

“I wasn’t like this in Haiti,” she says, looking down at her jeans, which are tighter than she would like. Her mother and father go out, but she doesn’t have a key to the house they share with her uncle and his family, so she mainly just sits inside, “watching SpongeBob.”

In Haiti, Genevieve’s father taught music at the National School of Art. He plays violin and piano, and was joyfully reunited with his violin after a friend brought it from Port-au-Prince earlier this summer. “For days, it was, ‘Oh, my violin! My violin!’” says Genevieve. Still, says her father, he cannot play. “I am not ready,” he tells me. “I feel too bad.”

day laborer

in memory of last year's labors...

Konstantinos found me before I found him; that is, his camera lens captured the sky above my profile as I leaned against the Coney Island pier. He was, he told me a few minutes later, testing out the capabilities of his new camera, a Nikon whose exact model now eludes me—an unfortunate fact, since its night-light capability was surprisingly superior for such a small camera. He’d just picked up the camera at a flea shop and he made me guess how much he paid. I overestimated.

I suspect that the $300 camera held some pictures of me; I had watched out the corner of my eye as he captured the Coney Island skyline: the languid Ferris wheel, spooling on its endless spindle, the lights, blinking and burning, the Cyclone as it shrieked and rattled its wooden slats. The lens tilted slightly in my direction, and, while flattered, I wondered at a man, alone, slightly plump, with hair glistening and receding like a coastline, who would take pictures of anonymous women. He smiled and asked me to take his picture.

pandemic

the phrase "swine flu!" (shouted loudly and often) appears to be in vogue among the Bushwick, Brooklyn high school set.

we sure wish you were moving home

B- has lived in New York for six years. She’s from T-, Texas—“population 2,000” [a generous overestimation]—a predominately Lutheran town forty miles northeast of Austin. Seven generations ago, her mother’s ancestors emigrated from Germany to Galveston. They traveled inland and established a farming community on the Texas plains. “It’s very rare for anyone to leave,” said B-. “I’m an anomaly. And I didn’t even leave the state until I was eighteen!”

B- has light brown hair, green eyes and self-described “big boobs and linebacker shoulders.” Up until last week, she worked in a millinery shop in midtown, making hats for Broadway shows—Wicked, The Little Mermaid, Legally Blonde. “I get to make little works of art every day,” she said. But the aftershocks of the stagehands’ strike and the economic crisis were halting orders and shuttering suppliers. “The first thing that goes in the costume is the hat,” she said. B- studied technical theater at Southwestern, a university 30 miles from Thorndale, and went on for her master’s at UT—it’s one of the country’s top technical theater schools. New York was the next step. “It was the thing to do. It’s the top for the field.”

B- will spend the summer working in a seasonal theater up in Massachusetts, but she was scrambling to put together a portfolio for job applications. She’s not sure what she’ll find when she returns to the city in the fall. “I just can’t afford to live here anymore,” she said. Many of her friends have moved away, and she’s tired of living in a cramped apartment. She’s ready to settle down. “I’m in my early thirties, and I have a roommate. I really don’t want to have a roommate unless I’m sleeping with them.”

study on a seventeen-year-old boy

The conversation begins with six envelopes filled with a single letter of recommendation, one incomplete essay, and sealed high school transcripts. Contact information is indistinguishable.

I think you've missed the deadline.
Well, the difference is that you'd be eligible for scholarships for Africans, whereas someone not born in Africa wouldn't.
Do you have your financial aid document?
I hope you chose the school based on more than distance from your mother.
What do you think your mother's going through, with her baby graduating and moving out?
There's probably not a fridge in your dorm.
There is cable, but you have to bring your own tv.
Do you know the racial demographic at the college?
I'm not saying people will "go racial on you."
I'm just saying a school that is 88% white will be different from where you are now.
If your roommate is gay, he isn't going to rape you.
On that note, rapists are not synonymous with gays.
Starbucks is a type of coffee.
No, you don't have to drink coffee.
Yes, you have to buy a meal plan.
I don't know if they have Chinese.
But I'm pretty sure they'll have rice.
No, you can't have my number.
My email?
Yes.

Sunday best

A Sunday morning rises slowly, regally, distinct from weary weekdays and worldly Saturdays. Perhaps it is the thud of the thick Sunday Times on cement stoops, or the velvet suspension of alarm clocks. Perhaps it is the emptiness of mailboxes and agenda books, the luxury of champagne brunches and “and that’s a first down at the 30-yard-line.”

Or perhaps it is the rustle of shampooed hair laid damp across the pillow on Saturday night. Perhaps it is the sheen of patent leather, the rigid crease in a starched shirt, the stretch of dark nylons and the murmur of slips. Perhaps it is the rhythm of eight, or ten, or twelve Miss Mary Mack buttons climbing up a dress’s back.

This is the whisper of Sunday best: arms bent into long winter coats, hair tucked under brims and bows, hands clutching cracked leather Bibles, hearts bound for the sweeping harmonies of the cloaked and clapping Brooklyn Tabernacle choir. The songs may speak of miracles, as may the parishioners—they number 10,000—a seemingly prodigious tree of prayer and passion, for what was once a handful of churchgoers has blossomed into one of the city’s largest churches, home to a Grammy-winning choir and a stone-facade building that fills the better part of the block. Tourists, whether religious or curious or both, ask for their pictures to be taken at the church’s entrance: THE BROOKLYN TABERNACLE is chiseled in the wall behind their heads.

“The sermon was about light—how Jesus brings light into our lives,” says a girl from Korea. “And boy do I need that light.”

Perhaps a Sunday wakes separately from the rest of the week because she laden with ritual and religion—centuries of Hail Marys and Hallelujahs and wine sipped from communal cups. Perhaps things are different because, as is oft observed, Sunday mornings are our most segregated moments, our most divisive hours, where we, believers and non-believers, practice our respective vocabularies: heretics and heathens, puritans and posers.

After Sunday services, the doors open on two streets, smiles and laughter vaulting against the interior halls. The churchgoers speckle the sidewalks of downtown Brooklyn, crowding into the restaurant around the corner for a late lunch or wandering the Fulton Street Mall in their furs and heels. A man in a blue plaid jacket and blue pants and blue shoes [not suede] and a blue hat and—of course—a blue handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket leans against the building. He grins at a group of ladies who walk by, swishing, in their Sunday best.

overheard at the met

A girl of eight, in coral jeans and boots, walks from one room to another. "Oh, here's that guy again!" she exclaims, pointing to thick paint and swirls.

Farther down the gallery, the straw-hatted man is a glimpse of blue and gold--too far away to confirm if that was a smile hovering around his lips.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.