Suicide, Jews and Savannah

What I've been reading: 

The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes:  At first, Barnes' slim, Booker-prize winning novel seems like a thematic rumination on memory, nostalgia and personal history.  The  narrator, Tony--captured with equal precision in youth and age--looks back on his life and recounts the story of his first love, Veronica, consistently spiraling back to the same set of uncertain memories.  After an odd weekend with Veronica's family and a subsequent break-up, Veronica ends up dating Tony's boyhood friend, Adrian, much to Tony's childish dismay.  Adrian later commits suicide, but the reader is unclear why until the very last page of the book--brilliantly, at the exact same time Tony understands the weight of what happened 40 years earlier.  As the reader gets enmeshed in Tony's churning psyche, and as Tony uncovers more and more information, the narrative darkens with intrigue, but remains faithful to its initial thematic focus.  Keep at this book; the ending is worth it.

What We Talk About When We Talk about Anne Frank, by Nathan Englander:  Englander's latest book of short stories came out the same week as his modern Haggadah (compiled with Jonathon Safran Foer), and it's hard to say which text is more Jewish.  The stories are diverse, but all come back to an enduring Jewish backdrop: antisemitism on Long Island, settlers in war-torn Israel, drug-induced recreations of the Holocaust.  The stories are dark and complex, but infiltrated with bits of humor and compassion.   My favorite of the eight told the story of a secular Jewish man who finds himself in a seedy Manhattan peep show before returning home to his suburban family.  As he battles between guilt and desire, the women in the show morph into his family members and finally his boyhood rabbi, and the readers gets sucked deep into his neurotic fantasy. Though inconsistent in quality, the stories merge Jewish history and modern Judaism in inventive, surprising ways that definitely warrant a read.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt: This book was the perfect companion for a recent trip to South Carolina.  During a weekend in Savannah, GA, New York editor, Berendt, falls in love with this sleepy Southern city and takes up semi-residency.  As a trained journalist, Berendt begins poking around, asking questions, meeting people and learning about the city's complex social network, twisted inner workings, racist history, long-standing grudges and sultry underbelly. Although the book centers on a drawn-out murder mystery, its real focus is the amazing cast of characters Berendt meets while living in Savannah.  Through rich and evocative language, Berendt introduces readers to a drug-addled gigolo, a fly-keeper in possession of a deadly poison, a voodoo princess, a sexy black drag queen and the seedy founder of the historic preservation society.  This book is hilarious and dramatic, and one of the few non-fiction books I've had a hard time putting down. 

What We Read

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/nyregion/nonfiction-curriculum-enhanced-reading-skills-in-new-york-city-schools.html?_r=1&ref=education

This recent New York Times article hits close to home.  The article discusses the familiar push toward more non-fiction reading in the classroom through the use of a study on the Core Knowledge Curriculum. The article says:

"Reading nonfiction writing is the key component of the Core Knowledge curriculum, which is based on the theory that children raised reading storybooks will lack the necessary background and vocabulary to understand history and science texts. While the curriculum allows children to read fiction, it also calls on them to knowledgeably discuss weather patterns, the solar system, and how ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia compare." 

Despite a personal bias toward everything literary, I know reading non-fiction is important.  As a result, I have probably doubled the amount of non-fiction we read in my class, and I feel good about my students' overall comprehension.  The majority of information for which people are held accountable in daily life comes from a variety of non-fiction sources: newspapers, the internet, magazines, work emails, even restaurant menus.  Kids must be exposed to non-fiction in order to discuss, compete, analyze, synthesize and, of course, meet pesky benchmarks. Unless you are an illustrious English major, success in college depends on the ability to read and process a wide variety of informational texts. The new national standards for Language Arts (The Common Core) emphasize non-fiction reading skills and, as such, states are pushing their evaluations in that direction.  In an effort to remain at the forefront of urban education and see our students become better readers, there's an increased focus on non-fiction in the reading department at my school.  How can we best use non-fiction in the classroom, and what specific skills can we teach kids to be successful when reading dense, informational text?

I support the non-fiction focus 98%, but a few things in the article made me bristle, like the mild insinuation that "children raised reading storybooks will lack the necessary background and vocabulary to understand history and science text."  The lack of nuance in this statement devalues storybooks, a child's earliest exposure to literature.  This undermining of picture books subtly devalues story, voice, imagery and figurative language--the stuff, the beauty, of fiction.  Of course, kids must be exposed to non-fiction texts early in order to process harder ones later, but the statement suggests we discard storybooks entirely, replacing them instead with cold hard facts, graphs and history. This is sad.  I also bristle at the verb allow: "While the curriculum allows children to read fiction..."  This simple turn of phrase makes fiction out to be a child's guilty pleasure--one that grownups will allow as long as its secondary to things like weather, Egypt and planets. A reading curriculum should not allow fiction; a reading curriculum should uphold, teach and treasure fiction.

I don't think anyone's actually suggesting we remove literature from reading and English curricula, but I do worry about slippery slopes and subtle messaging.  With increased emphasis on how to teach non-fiction, I worry we're losing sight of how to teach and read fiction.  I'm concerned literature will gradually depreciate in value until novels, stories and poems become an afterthought, secondary to more important pursuits in the classroom.  Fiction and non-fiction exist in concert.  Good readers must know how to process and appreciate both genres with equal aptitude.  In the past, perhaps English curricula has favored fiction, leaving non-fiction in the dust.  This new focus could be compensating for lost time, but as we reinvigorate non-fiction in the reading classroom, we have to be extra cognizant that we continue to elevate and teach literature.

Number Crunching

I'm consistently surprised that I'm a teacher, but even more surprised that I'm a teacher at a school that spends one day every quarter analyzing data and crunching numbers--just the things I'd been trying to circumvent since wading through my math credit in college. I like words because they're malleable and nuanced and tap nicely on my tongue.  I get words and words get me.  Numbers, on the other hand, stare me in the face, mocking my inability to see the way they work.  My own fear convinces me numbers are only useful when calculating my 15% teacher discount at J.Crew or how many hours of sleep I'll get it if I stay for one more drink. 

But I'm starting to think numbers aren't all bad; maybe even I can hang with digits and data. Once a quarter, my students take an interim assessment from which we gather and assess data on their performance and overall readiness. The data is meant to target certain deficiencies and inform our instruction for the next quarter. While this makes good sense, it goes without saying that my pals on the left coast probably cringe at the idea of so much testing.  But what about the child?  How can you reduce seventy children to a blinding Excel spreadsheet? Have you no heart?

The fact of the matter is that I'm a teacher, and my job is to teach children to read better.   When I open up my Excel spreadsheet full of data, I get to see something concrete. I get to see percentages, broken down by class, by passage, by skill, by standard. I get to see who's rocking it and who needs tutoring.  I have numerical evidence that lends credence to hastily-conceived inferences I've made about proficiency and ability.  I can create plans that make sense and avoid ones based on nothing.  I've come to really like Data Day even if it forces numbers on me.  Data doesn't reduce students to percentages, but it does help ensure they're getting the instruction they need at school every day.  That's something I can geek out about.

Have You Read?

 Last week, I proctored tests for three days straight.  This means hours of time when I can’t get work done because kids have questions and kids need tissues, but I also can’t possibly circulate purposefully for two hours straight without freaking the kids out.  These stretches of undirected time beg the perennial question: What did people do before Al Gore invented the internet? Were they more productive? Happier and more focused? Bored and less informed?  

After I binge on Facebook for a while, I get deep into internet territory—from the very lowbrow to the very highbrow.   At first I’m looking at a list of where to get the best fries in the city, then suddenly I’m reading up on controversial teacher evaluations, letting my favorite sites take me to other sites in a manic whirlwind of Tweets and hyperlinks. Part of me feels guilty.  My eyes scan across hundreds of pages, and my fingers scroll errantly, while my saturated brain tries to synthesize more information in less time. As a product of my generation, does my mind only function if I’m clicking fast and skimming as I scroll? Have I lost the ability to enjoy the long-form, the deliciously dull, the arduously good?  The way I obtain and process information is fast and schizophrenic.  I wonder if it’s really taking me higher, or if I’m just reveling in the cache of having “read”the right things.  And by read, of course I mean skimming quickly and then gchatting links to (non)interested friends in order to prove I've done my reading. But, would our grandparents call this reading?

   

One of the only Portlandia skits I liked was called “Have You Read?” The camera panned over a coffee shop conversation of three twenty-somethings competing over who’d read the most from a pre-approved list of pretentious publications. They don’t discuss ideas or news, but merely trade titles and names, ensuring a certain communal level of intellect while sipping Stumptown coffee.  But with the internet, the competition is endless and irrelevant; we can all read everything at warp speed with very little focus required.  Where is it getting us? 

While part of me feels guilty about my internet dependency, another part feels happy.  I’m amazed by the quantity and accessibility of high quality journalism, photos, news and jokes.  It’s only 8:45, and I’ve read an archived New Yorker expose about the LRA from 1998 and a funny piece by an unknown about the downfall of PBS’s much-loved pup, Wishbone. The internet makes the world feel smaller and more available.  It gives us every possible bit of information at the tips of our fingers.  The internet confirms good journalism, but also allows us guilty pleasures.  Last week, when I was bored stiff during proctoring, the internet was welcome relief.  I’ll suffer the consequences later in life, I’m sure, but for now: Bring on that delicious guilt.

Worthy

I haven't been blogging much, and everyone's  noticing.  People across the nation have sunk into deep depressions without weekly entries, and Obama fears we may have a national mental health crisis on our hands. I feel equal parts guilty, elated and relieved about this new development--or rather, lack of development. I told myself when I started that if blog entries turned from folly to burden, I'd stop.  The thing is, I really don't want to join the disheartened masses of blog quitters, promising ideas so quickly lost to the labyrinth-like Interwebs. Rather than wasting time on my self-indulgent blogging crisis, though, let me share two things.

I was at the gym last night doing a pretty half-assed workout, but I still felt good about myself and even better that I was rocking Nike shorts in early March.  As I was leaving the YMCA--a bastion for hipsters and low-income families alike--I noticed a woman moving slowly up and down on the stationary bike.  Ever-so-slowly because she was daintily pulling shoestring French fries out of a McDonald's bag.  And suddenly, I felt even better about myself.

That's blog-worthy, and so is this:http://gothamist.com/2012/03/08/spotted_goat_eating_pizza_in_midtow.php

I Like my Bike

The Top Ten Reasons Why I Like my New Bike:

1. The prime acquisition. Ever since I moved to Brooklyn, I've wanted a bike. I come from the bike capital of the country, bikes make the world feel smaller, and all cool girls have bikes. However, I'd made very little headway in terms of putting my money where my mouth is. Majken, who is more of a doer, bought a cute little vintage silver bike on Craig's List that turned out to be a few inches too small for her.  So, although I feel guilty, I got a sweet bike by doing absolutely nothing.  Rest easy: Majken got a matching blue one from a man in Queens the next day AND I paid her back.

2. It has those cool vintage gears and curved handlebars.

3. I have a new friend at the Bike Shop on Atlantic Ave: a short guy with a buzz cut in grimy jeans who knows about gears and brakes and that I'd want a helmet to match my bike. 

4. I biked around Prospect Park in February with a boy who also has a bike and, even though my hands were freezing, my body got a little sweaty.

5.  My bike turns 45-minute sedentary subway rides into 20-minute bursts of exercise.

6. I like my bike because I know that once I get a white basket, a bell and a clip-on light, it's going to be that much cooler.

7. My bike cost only $100, which is an amount of money I have also thrown down for less useful things like designer jeans, an impromptu trip to Target, an overpriced dinner in Manhattan and red shoes I never wore.

8. I can bike across bridges, which reminds me of the Portland Bridge Pedal, the Willamette River and my family.

9.  I can run red lights on my bike and sometimes even go faster than cars, but I'm outside and haven't spent any money on gas.

10. When I put my bike in my living room, It transforms the space into instant urban-cool.

Flop Like a Champion

There are few things I do better than flop.

Webster defines flop in two ways. 1. To fall or plump down suddenly, especially with noise; drop or turn with a sudden bump or thud; and 2. To be a complete failure. In Of Mice and Men, brothel workers charge a pretty penny for a nice flop.  Recent headlines tell me that Newt Gingrich is flip-flopping on his position on the Middle East.  My definition of flopping is more nuanced, more personal, though not entirely divorced from any of these connotations. Flopping is something I've been perfecting from cradle to college, but I've only recently come up with the semantics necessary to precisely capture the art of flopping.


Humans have flopped since we were primates.  Cavemen flopped and so did the Victorians; the hippies flopped with an unrivaled precision and grace. Flopping is an intensely lazy, but also necessary, form of relaxation.  You may flop in your bed or on your couch, on your floor or in your roommate/boyfriend/best friend's bed.  You may flop alone or with other, like-minded floppers.  Flopping is best done after a long day of work, on a rainy Saturday or hung-over Sunday. A snow-day flop is an experience of pure beauty.  Flopping may be accompanied by food (mostly of the take-in, pre-made variety), alcohol, books and movies, or it may be free of props. Flopping can last hours, but the craving can be satiated in mere minutes.  Flopping attire is important and must be comfortable--real experts flop in something stretchy.  Flopping is a highly personal and fluid art form, but it hinges on a deep desire to do very little in a comfortable setting.  Though flopping takes almost no skill, it does require genuine dedication to the practice.  You must recognize and take pride in the fact that you're going to be a lazy, worthless human being for the duration of your flop. There is no room for judgment in flopping.


I am a productive person in most areas of life, but I cannot deny myself a good flop.  On a particularly difficult day at work I might text one of my flopping partners: "all I wanna do right now is flop," and the message comes across loud and clear.  People who deny themselves a flop on the basis of self-improvement or productivity are denying themselves one of life's simplest, most rejuvenating pleasures.  Take it from a modest master: To flop is to live, and to live is to flop. 

Family Flashback

When my family got in a fight over winter break, my mom threatened, only half-joking:  you better not write in your blog about this.  While a revealing family feud narrative is far from my intention, the yearly—the unavoidable, the predictable—family fight is an experience common to those who travel long distances to see our kin. We do so with a mix of eager anticipation and mild trepidation because, for so many of us, visiting family has big highs and big lows.  Lofty ideals of familial perfection often lead to unmet expectations, and we find ourselves falling into the same old patterns. Despite a grass-is-always-greener mentality, no family is more perfect than the next.  An argument may be as traditional as your honey baked ham or grandmother's menorah. 

At a quarter-century, my life is mostly on track in terms of development and maturity, yet when I go home I’m met with a steep and instantaneous regression to a moody former self. This reverting back manifests in big, small and varied ways, but it always happens.

While I mostly clean up after myself in Brooklyn, I haphazardly discard clothes and dishes around my Portland home—a throwback to the teenage years of battleground bedroom.  Maybe it’s muscle memory or maybe it’s dependency on parents who still retrieve stray mugs from my nightstand. Whatever the reason, it’s still happening seven years and three states after I moved out.  In my adult life, I spend 50 hours a week mediating adolescent arguments, but when I’m in Portland I find myself enmeshed in similar debates myself. Feuding with my brother over things that don’t matter or things that still matter just a little bit too much.  Two grown-up people split up in the mini-van because proximity provokes argument. When I get irritated, I elongate my syllables like a preteen and, just like that, the mature rationality I work to maintain is shattered.  I might as well put my braces back on.

So, of course we had a family fight.  We each play the same roles as we argue about the same things.  We make up in the same ways and eat the same take-in when it’s all said and done. Each fight is like an uncanny flashback, a melancholy song left on repeat.  We say things to family members we would not say to others. Because we love more deeply, we judge and critique with more severity. We express and emote with an abandon reserved for only those closest to us.  Shortcomings are amplified, made enormous through microscopic lenses we turn only on our own.  This winter, just like every winter, everything was okay in the end. It really always is. Family seems to have a unique ability to bounce back. 

I flew back to NYC with three of my close friends.  In the airport, each casually mentioned a fight, an annoyance, a spat, an argument--all involving moms, dads, brothers, sisters. We commiserated knowingly.  Despite these minor or major difficulties, everyone had a great trip home; we agreed it was hard to say goodbye to our families.  Fighting is part of what sets family apart from the rest of the people we interact with everyday.  Maybe we fight because we can't help it, but maybe fighting reinforces bonds that need a little fine tuning.  

Seeds and Ramen

There are countless reasons New York is worth the price, but if you’re not taking advantage of those reasons you might as well move to a city with a few reasons for being cheap.  

When I used to visit New York—as a kid with my nostalgic parents and then as a college student enviously visiting friends—I packed every minute full.  The city shone with culture and people, fashion and food. I wanted to see and shop and eat and sniff until I was soggy with the weight of a place that lacks for nothing but quiet.   So saturated I needed to wring myself out before coming back for more.   I should have known better than to think life as full-time resident would be so action-packed, but still I hoped.    

Now that my full-time bed is in New York, it’s harder to make the time.  I suppose this is both obvious and counter intuitive.  As a person with a packed schedule and groceries to buy, it’s harder to take advantage of the dynamism surrounding me.  Being here should make me do more, but somehow I find myself doing less.  The temptation to order Thai food and eat it on the floor can be difficult to overcome on many Friday nights, but wasn’t I doing the same thing in Suburban California?  I’ve fallen into routines.  I go to the same restaurants, visit museums infrequently and go to shows even less.  I submit to Starbucks because it’s on the corner.  In a way, the routines reflect the comfort of reality over the illusion of vacation, but sink too far into routine and the reasons for living here are diminished.  Someone once told me: do things.   

Last weekend, I was proud of two things I did that were distinctly New York.  On a bizarrely warm Saturday morning, my girlfriends and I trekked from Huevos Rancheros in the East Village to a gallery in Chelsea where we took in one million hand-painted ceramic sunflower seeds spread out across the floor of a sky blue room.  They were pushed into a perfect rectangle.  If you squinted, the individual seeds became a flat gray island. I knelt down and resisted the temptation to push a stray seed back into formation.  I didn’t know if I could touch, but maybe also the stray was art. The next day, a boy and I resisted the temptation of the familiar and went to Chinatown for ramen.  The tiny restaurant was lit with neon and featured a few dingy tables, economy-sized bottles of Sriracha and a menu with the English in parenthesis.  We walked up to the kitchen and ordered two bowls of ramen and pork dumplings.   Standing in the doorway of the open kitchen, we watched a young man thwack a giant piece of dough onto the counter until it became skinny shoe lace noodles threaded expertly between his floury fingers .  I sacrificed vegetarianism for experience and had a bite of the best dumpling ever.  

A sustainable life in New York relies on balance. I love that life here seems normal every day. I change my sheets and clean my bathroom; I rely on the same delivery and spend weekends never leaving my neighborhood.  The banality of life can make it seem more livable, but this year I want to complement that with a little more New York.

Good Things Come in Threes

On New Year's Eve, we hosted a 4-course dinner party featuring a double dose of parsnips, chocolate mousse and unlimited seltzer from our new eco-friendly machine (apparently, either the key to sobriety if you're alternating or the ultimate downfall if you're mixing).  Our group of friends has a penchant for going-around-the-table -- an awkwardly meaningful tradition in which everyone's gently required to speak on some topic.  On birthdays, we sing praises; on Thanksgiving, we give thanks.  On New Year's Eve, of course, it's resolutions.  One way or another, people feel strongly about resolutions.  The introspective among us spend December contemplating the best path to self-improvement while the hedonistic spurn the idea of resolving to do much of anything. The optimistic consider the possibilities while the pessimistic wonder: Why make a resolution I'm only bound to break?

Historically, I don't take resolutions very seriously. After vowing to leave my fingernails alone for close to 20 years, I'm starting to wonder about my ability to stick with it.  Needless to say, I hadn't thought much about resolutions until the round robin got going.  I sipped my seltzer, half listening to the speaker and half thinking of a passable resolution.  I was impressed by my friends' thoughtful vows--to spend a summer abroad, to clean up a foul mouth and to eat more fresh produce.  When the time came for me to speak, I mumbled something ill-conceived and washed it down with parsnip. 

When the proverbial talking stick reached my friend Zoe, she mentioned a coworker's resolution formula: resolve to stop doing three things, start doing three things and continue doing three things.  At first I thought this was trite and overly complex--a three-part cocktail for guaranteed failure come February--but later in the night I became less cynical and realized the formula makes good sense. It recognizes that you're doing things right, while leaving room for stops and starts in the new year.  So, here's my cocktail:

Continue Doing...

1. Continue taking long NYC walks with or without destination.
2. Continue having dinner parties with good friends, food and drink.
3. Continue teaching vocabulary because kids really use it.

Start Doing... 

1. Start trying a new recipe every week.
2. Start writing more fiction.
3. Start making phone calls to parents when their students do good things. On the topic of phone calls, call my grandparents because it makes them insanely happy (that was 3.5).

Stop Doing...

1. Stop buying things on sale for no reason except that they're on sale
2. Stop losing credit cards
3. And because maybe someday I will succeed: Stop picking my fingernails