Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Driving to Work at Dawn

Fingernail sliver of crescent moon,
Lone star lambent in the distance,
Ghost-fingers of leafless trees
Emerge from darkness
In silent supplication.

Cloaking the horizon,
Murky fog seamlessly
Flows from mauve
To midnight blue.
Another day begins.

Friday, January 20, 2006

Google in the Trenches

While the President and the other Tricky Dick Cheney would have us believe that our soldiers are killing and dying in Iraq to defend democracy, an unlikely defender of Freedom and the American Way has stepped forward. Attorney General González apparently issued an edict demanding that internet companies provide a list of all searches made in a given week by a random list of users – could be you or me. America On Line and Yahoo submitted those names – maybe yours or mine. Google refused to rat out its users.

4th Amendment:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Legal scholars out there – is it the 4th amendment González just trod upon?
Thank you, Google, for standing firm in defense of the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, democracy, freedom and the American Way against “all enemies...domestic”!

Google, you are and will continue to be my search engine of choice.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Odds and Ends

Politics of fear

Shortly after the President is accused of warrantless wiretapping, we suddenly are told that "chatter" suggests that Bin Laden is planning another attack on the U.S. Coincidence, we ask? We learn that Supreme Court nominee Alito believes that extraordinary powers should be granted the Executive branch during war time. Sounds like as long as a president chooses to start a war and then has the power to declare whether or not it is over, we can expect to live in a monarchy in the United States. What happened to a balance of power? Is this the type of "democracy" King George is planning for Iraq?

Thank God for Diversity

Too many these days seem to be complaining about diversity. I once heard a credential candidate (probably in her late 40's) complaining about the requirement of a class on ethnic diversity. "Why can't we just go back to the old days when we all got along? Why are we forced to use this ethnic literature? Why can't we just teach the literature we used to read?", she bemoaned. As a matter of fact, I can remember that classic reader, Dick and Jane. Dick and Jane had brown hair, as I recall, and little sister Sally had blonde, but all three were lily white. They lived in a nice house with a picket fence, Mom wore heels and and apron and stayed home and Dad wore a suit and a hat and supported the family. Doesn't sound like most families I know! I once saw a history text on early California purportedly used in classrooms in San Joaquin county sometime in the 20th century. In this text, Mexicans living in the state at that time were characterized either as knife-slinging horse thieves or prostitutes, depending on their gender. Here in Modesto, decades ago, I attended a high school with no African American students. One student enrolled but didn't last long. Her locker was defaced with racial epithets. In those days, de facto segregation in my fair city meant that African American students attended only Modesto High School where I now teach. Fortunately, much has changed about the racial and ethnic demographics in Modesto since then.

So on to the present. Today, driving through a town thick with January fog, in a mood darker than the weather, I decided to stop by the Asian market for some condiments not available in the supermarket - pickled ginger for my brine fix and Sriracha Vietnamese sauce for the picante lover in me. This market is located in a run-down strip mall that also houses Sam's Food City, and a variety of other hole-in-the wall establishments. I did pick up my jars of ginger and bottles of sauce, but also vicariously enjoyed the other delicacies - the whole fish on ice and newspaper in boxes on the side walk, the crabs crawling in a plastic tub and all kinds of other foods I couldn't name or recognize. I had plenty of time to hear two or three languages I don't understood while waiting in line, as the little store was packed. (Last summer, after fruitlessly waiting for flor de calabaza to appear in the local farmer's market, I stopped by this Asian Market for ginger and found virtually tons of that delicate blossom of the squash plant. The owner told me that customer grew it in his backyard). Leaving the market, other store fronts caught my eye. This dusty, run-down strip mall is proof positive that the homogeneous, boring, ethnocentric Modesto of my childhood is not what it once was. On this one street corner, in addition to the supermarket, the liquor stores, a storage shed, mortgage company and a wireless store, I noticed other establishments: Shiva's selections: Indian and Western Fashionwear, Gifts and Imitation Jewelry, Samakhon Medical Clinic, Tzu Chi Foundation, Heng's Accupuncture, Ly Ly Beauty Salon, Pho 7 Vietnamese Restaurant, Ron's Barber Shop, Dee Von's Hair Styles, Fijian Market: Groceries and Videos, Seng's Chinese Restaurant and four religious establishments: Evangelical Prayer Band of Love Church, Sanctuary of Peace Church, The Baha'i Faith Modesto Community Center, and Iglesia de Dios vivo columna y apoyo de la verdad, la luz del mundo. As to the last Spanish Speaking congregation, with a name that long, I'd hate to think how long the sermons might run! The fog lifted as did my spirits.

A Married Woman is not quite 3/5ths of a Man

After many years of marriage, I find myself not exactly single, but no longer with a husband in this country. Imagine my surprise when my car insurance agent tells me that they will not remove the absent husband from my policy without his written permission even though I purchased the only car on the policy and it is in my name alone! After decades of making sure to pay the bills, I find that I am not of sufficient worth to be called head of household. A state law, so the agent tells me.

The last word is that another agent is going to allow me to apply for a new policy in my name alone; I can only hope it goes through. Apparently the gender war has not yet been won.

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Emancipation Birthday

Looking at pictures MsABCMom posted on her blog, I was struck with the passage of time. I realized that after my youngest child graduates from law school in June and takes the bar exam in July, a monumental change will take place in my life. For the first time in 37 years, that is, for the first time in my adult life, a major chunk of my monthly earnings will not be allocated to raising children or paying for their college expenses. Please understand that in no way do I wish to be emotionally emancipated from my three wonderful children and amazing granddaughter, but financial independence will be nice. It also signals an opportunity to look at some goals for the coming year.

Work:

For too long I have identified who I am with what I do. For next year I need to plan how I can cut back to full-time work and cut back on club advising. I need to find a way to do the job without spending most nights and most of my week ends grading papers and worrying about lesson planning. I want to keep the energy and enthusiasm for work without letting it dominate all else.

The Body:

Yes, it does need some work. That means I need to decrease what I eat and increase how often I work out.

The Spirit:

I haven’t figured this one out yet, but it includes some fun, some travel, some music, some personal growth, and, I am hoping, new opportunities at my place of worship.

Family:

Continue to enjoy every moment I have with my children and grandchildren, spend more time with my mother, keep in touch with my sister and family, as well as my cousins. Hopefully, take a trip back east to see the cousins.

The Mind:

Include a few more non-fiction books among the fiction I read, spend some time on re-acquiring Norwegian and perhaps study Hebrew, consider whether I want to take that final stab at a masters in Spanish or E.L.D.

Tikkun Olam:

Think of a meaningful way to engage in “healing the world” through some volunteer activities.

Accountability:

Re-read this journal periodically during the year to see if I’m working on the goals

Saturday, January 07, 2006

On Learning and Teaching

Beating Time - by Barbara Kingsolver

Commemorating the removal of poetry as a requirement in Arizona's schools, August 1997

The Governor interdicted: poetry is evicted
from our curricula,
for metaphor and rhyme take time
from science. Our children's self-reliance rests
upon the things we count on. The laws
of engineering. Poeteering squanders time, and time
is money. He said: let the chips fall where they may.

The Governor's voice fell down through quicksilver
microchip song hummed along and the law
was delivered to its hearing. The students
of engineering bent to their numbers in silent
classrooms, where the fans overhead
whispered "I am I am" in iambic pentameter.
Unruly and fractious numbers were discarded at the bell.
In the crumpled, cast-off equations,
small black figures shaped like tadpoles
formed a nation, unobserved, in the wastepaper basket.

Outside, a storm is about to crack the sky.
Lightning will score dry riverbeds, peeling back the mud
like a plow, bellowing, taking out bridges,
completely unexpectedly.

The children too young to have heard
of poetry's demise turn their eyes
to the windows, to see what they can count on.
They will rise and dance to the iamb of the fans,
whispering illicit rhymes, watching the sky for a sign
while the rain beats time.

****

Not far behind, California is working hard to beat the magic and the mystery out of learning, victim of the pseudo-science of standardized testing. Five of the six items on the agenda for our next department chair meeting are related to standards and standardized testing. We are told that during observations, we should be seen identifying the standards we are addressing in the lesson and that students should be able to parrot back the name and number of the standard. What happened to relating lessons to real life; to students taking the lesson and letting their imaginations run with it? I've heard it said that a high level administrator observes that teaching novels is not an efficient use of class time as it does not directly improve test scores. What happened to the joy, the mystery, the magic of literature?

Granted, the lock-step is not as evident yet in the teaching of foreign language. There is as yet, no state or national Spanish test required for our students. And I would welcome such a test if it were proficiency based. I am grateful that my students take I.B. and A.P. exams because it gives us a bar to shoot for. I also find value in standards, as long as they lead to transparency in teaching. Realistic standards keep us focused on the same goal and help us communicate to students what that goal is. However, restricting teaching to preparation for multiple choice tests is not a worthwhile outcome.

INCIDENTE DOMESTICO - Miguel de Unamuno

Traza la niña toscos garrapatos,
de escritura remedo, me los presenta y dice
con un mohín de inteligente gesto:

"¿Qué dice aquí, papá?"

Miro unas líneas que parecen versos.
"¿Aquí ?" "Si, aquí; lo he escrito yo; ¿qué dice?
porque yo no sé leerlo..."
Aquí no dice nada!", le contesté al momento.

"¿Nada ?", y se queda un rato pensativa
o así me lo parece, por lo menos,
pues ¿está en los demás o está en nosotros
eso a que damos en llamar talento?

Luego, reflexionando, me decía:
¿Hice bien revelándole el secreto?
-no el suyo ni el de aquellas toscas líneas,
mío, por supuesto-.

¿Sé yo si alguna musa misteriosa,
un subterráneo genio,
un espíritu errante que a la espera
para encarnar está de humano cuerpo,
no le dictó esas líneas
de enigmáticos versos?

¿Sé yo si son la gráfica envoltura
de un idioma de siglos venideros?
¿Sé yo si dicen algo?
¿He vivido yo acaso de ellas dentro?

No dicen mas los arboles, las nubes
los pájaros, los ríos, los luceros ...
¡No dicen más y nos lo dicen todo!
¿Quién sabe de secretos?
***
The child scribbles roughly across the page
and presents it too me with an intelligent glance:
What does it say here, papa?

I look at the verse-like lines.
"Here?" "Yes, here; I wrote it myself.
What does it say because I don't know how to read it."
"It says nothing here!" I answer after a moment.

"Nothing?" She is silent a moment, pensive,
-or so it seems to me at least,
but is it through us or through others
that we call that which is talent?

Later, reflecting, I say to myself:
Did I do right by revealing the secret to her?
-Not hers, nor that of those rough scribbles,
mine, of course-.

Do I know if some mysterious muse,
some subterranean genius,
a wandering spirit awaiting human form
dictated those lines of enigmatic verse?

Do I know whether they are the graphic form
of some language of future centuries?
Do I know if they say anything?
Have I perhaps lived within them?

Don't the trees say more, the clouds,
the birds, the rivers, the stars...
They say no more and they tell us everything!
Who knows about secrets?

*****

Skill practice and development are important strategies and goals. However, what is teaching and learning if it is not also about spontaneity, joy, magic and mystery!

Religion

I was raised in a social gospel tradition. My understanding was that being a Christian meant acting the faith through good deeds, i.e. treating others with justice and compassion. I'd heard all the other "stuff", the dogma, but thought that it was not central to Christianity, which I viewed as a religion of social justice. I remember, for example, a sermon in which a minister posited that the true miracle was not that Jesus, the founder of the faith, was born to a virgin, but that he was born to a poor, unwed mother, a member of an oppressed people. Furthermore, that the miracle of the fishes and the loaves didn't imply that Jesus could magically reproduce the food, but that the act of compassion of one child who shared one small fish and one small loaf compelled many others to share what they had.

When I was in Norway at age 17, I encountered religious Christians from Lutheran and Mission Covenant backgrounds who saw Christianity very differently, emphasizing faith, i.e. salvation through Christ's sacrifice, rather than social justice and good deeds. Christianity through that frame of reference didn't work for me. If G-d were all-powerful, why would he have allowed humans to partake of knowledge, then caste them from the Garden of Eden, punishing them with misery and suffering throughout eternity? Why would mess up so much that he had to send an emissary (Jesus) to fix it up? What is wrong with seeking knowledge?

For some years, I attended a U.C.C. church that was oriented toward social justice in those days, with little emphasis on creed or profession of faith. When we lived in South America, I again encountered traditional Christians whose core belief centered around salvation through Christ's sacrifice. I started to re-read the New Testament and began to feel that I couldn't ignore that the core message, what was new in the New Testament was indeed, was this very theory of salvation. I felt that identifying myself as a Christian was insincere, since I didn't accept, couldn't belief in the core concept of Christianity - Christ's divinity. The message of social justice - the Golden Rule, etc., was already evident in Judaism.

I began taking Judaism classes in South America and continued when I returned to the U.S. I found Judaism to be, historically, an evolving and growing religion. The emphasis on natural consequences made sense to me. Social justice is key as is the emphasis on ethical action - mitzvot. The prohibition of saying G-d's name also made much sense - because in my view, there is no way to define G-d and to express the ineffable name is inevitably to diminish what G-d is. How can we, with our human capacities, define something which is far beyond our scope?

There is much to Judaism that I don't accept or practice. There is much to other religions, including Christianity, that I respect and admire. There are many ways to wholeness, I chose one, and in its way, it works for me.

Monday, January 02, 2006

New Year; new blog

Having read my children's blogs and following the links through some of their blogging world, my fingers began to itch for the keyboard and I decided to enter the blogging world. Given that I am a generation away from most of the bloggers I read, and considering where I often seem to stand on the issues, I chose the moniker, Kjerringa mot strømmen, a character from an old Norwegian folk tale. Kjerringa, the crone who swims against the current. Crone, in the best sense, as wise woman, is a goal, rather than a current description; something to work for. Which, I guess, would make me a searcher, a seeker of wisdom.