In the 1942 film "Casablanca", Captain Renault closes up Rick's Cafe. "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" he exclaims as the croupier hands him his winnings. Today, after years of excessive testing and numerical targets that actually widen the "achievement gap" they are supposed to close, we have no more right to be shocked by the perverse incentives of so-called "data-driven decision-making" in schools than Renault had to hypocritically hyperventilate at finding gambling in Rick's.
Beverly Hall was already a star when she was made superintendent of Atlanta schools in 1999. She had been head of NY high schools under Chancellor Ray Cortines, and then Newark Superintendent after the State of New Jersey took over those schools. She was named Superintendent of the Year in 2009 before the whole thing came crashing down in a massive cheating scandal. People were "shocked, shocked" to discover that teachers and principals faced with enormous pressures to produce score increases might find alternate means of producing those results. Superintendent Hall was fired and indicted.
Reform superstar Michelle Rhee has a similar scandal in her past. She still pretends to be "shocked, shocked" by the revelation that her intense insistence on test score improvement might have led to cheating by teachers and principals. But investigators with subpoena powers discovered a memo to her from an outside consultant she hired to look into cheating. That consultant was clear that this wasn't about kids copying: "191 teachers representing 70 schools." And the report points to principals, too: "Could the erasures in some cases have been done by someone other than the students and the teachers?" But Michelle Rhee is a golden child with the corporate reformers. She had already been removed -- by a new mayor, which enhanced her "non-political" credentials -- and there has, to date, been no indictment. I will not dwell on the most obvious difference between Michelle Rhee and Beverly Hall.
These perverse incentives act at all levels. When I was a high school principal in the Bronx, two of my colleagues in Brooklyn informed me that they had mandated a 90% passing rate for all classes. I said I thought that was a reasonable target. They each gave me a look, and then one stressed that this was no target, it was a mandate. I asked what would happen if there were more than 10% with excessive absences, or inadequate work. I wondered how the cooperative kids would react when they discovered that their classmates who were blowing off classwork and homework received passing grades. I asked what would be the eventual effect on Regents' scores. They told me not to worry. They were going to improve their data by increasing the proportion of kids receiving enough credits to be promoted to the next grade. That is data-driven decision-making, too.
We see it in fields other than education. The entire Enron scandal came from accountants who were driven to make the balance sheets look more attractive to investors. The "friendly-fire" shooting of NFL linebacker Pat Tilman by his fellow Army Rangers in Afghanistan was finally due to officers who had to check off a certain number of villages entered by their men, regardless of whether that meant towing a broken Humvee through a rocky path after discussing their itinerary in front of Taliban sympathizers!
But there are still times when I am "shocked, shocked." Today's BBC world news revealed that the Chinese government is trying to get its citizens to stop burying their dead and to cremate them instead. This means setting quotas for cremations that local Party functionaries have to meet. So (I suppose I should insert an "of course" but this case beggars my imagination) some local officials have contracted with grave robbers! The thieves dig up corpses from cemeteries in other districts and these corpses can be cremated in order to meet the quotas. I would call these extremely perverse incentives.
Except. Except that, as grisly as this case is, I don't think that abusing the dead is worse than abusing our children. I spoke to a friend today who has a young son getting ready to start kindergarten. They live two blocks from a well-regarded public school. He could have the autonomy to get to school and have friends in the neighborhood. But she is a public school teacher herself. She sees herself driven to test prep instead of teaching. She sees herself driving kids instead of allowing them to develop intellectually. And she is starting to think that in the current climate of data-driven decision-making, both public and charter schools are becoming torture chambers for kids. Desecrating graves to meet cremation quotas may be extremely perverse. But so is the constant testing and preparation for testing that we do to our children, who are -- after all -- still alive.
Monday, November 3, 2014
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Land Dispossession
Land dispossession is a recurring theme in the short stories making up Stones from the Creek. Alchesay keeps the Apache land together by insisting that logging and cattle ranching make more sense than farming on the White Mountain reservation. Creighton Foraker actively seeks to dispossess the Mexican farmers of New Mexico and is opposed by the Herrera brothers. Smedley Butler finds himself working for local banana planters who want to seize GarÃfuna lands for plantations. And the Creek Indians struggle to find a way around the Dawes Commission's mandate to privatize all the land in Indian Territory.
For me, though, one of the most painful tales of dispossession is in the second Mingo Sanders story, "Scars," which finds him imprisoned and leased to work mining phosphates in the South Carolina Low Country. I wrote:
I am quite certain that I had already thought about this tragic irony before I visited Viet Nam in March 2009. But on our third day of visits to rural communes in the Red River Delta south of Hanoi I saw this same thing myself. My journal entry for March 11 tells the story:
I remember hearing these stories from Tam and thinking immediately of convict laborers in South Carolina forced to dig underneath their own families' soil to mine phosphate for fertilizing other families' soil elsewhere. (And here I must thank Tam again. Had it not been for his empathy in questioning the people visiting our medical mission, and had it not been for his generosity in sharing the stories he heard with me, I would have been standing around doing crowd control and completely missing everything that was in front of my face.)
Now the cement industry of Viet Nam is privately owned but subordinate to the "Socialist" government which has decided that the rich limestone resources of the country are now a greater asset than one commune's rice, especially since Viet Nam is the world's second largest rice exporter. So all these people can be dispossessed in the name of a larger "socialist" good.
South Carolina, on its face, looks like a totally different story. An explicitly racist regime dispossessed Black landowners to deny them any home, security or power. The convict lease system ensured a continuing supply of low-cost labor to white "planters" and industrialists alike.
So if the circumstances appear different, why are the outcomes identical? I will just say -- again -- that we have to stop looking at "allies" and "enemies", "left" and "right", and start by assessing effects on regular people.
For me, though, one of the most painful tales of dispossession is in the second Mingo Sanders story, "Scars," which finds him imprisoned and leased to work mining phosphates in the South Carolina Low Country. I wrote:Hundreds of mostly young, Black men stood up to their chests in cold water, digging the valuable phosphates from under the soil for the Edisto Phosphate Company, which leased the land from the state. Some of the prisoners were actually children of the land’s former owners, incarcerated and removing the topsoil of their parents’ own land in order to mine the precious mineral beneath. (Emphasis added for this posting.)
I am quite certain that I had already thought about this tragic irony before I visited Viet Nam in March 2009. But on our third day of visits to rural communes in the Red River Delta south of Hanoi I saw this same thing myself. My journal entry for March 11 tells the story:Today's commune was crowded with people who were given this visit as a sop to accommodate their anger and frustration. They are being displaced from their paddies to make the land available for cement quarrying. Many are breaking stones all day for pennies instead of raising rice, etc. It is now one of the poorest communes in the country.
Tam spoke to a woman who had walked 15 km and arrived at 6 am and wasn't getting an appointment. Her son left the district to get a job (which he hasn't -- he is probably living in an alley somewhere.) She moved to the mountain where she really doesn't know how to make a living. The district health officer said they are seeing profound health and nutrition issues as a result.
He also said many people have moved to the mountains and are trying every crop available. But they don't really know about raising crops in this unfamiliar environment. They are trying whatever they can, but in order to buy rice, which is, after all the only real food. This year the experiment with potatoes failed and the government had to distribute rice.
I remember hearing these stories from Tam and thinking immediately of convict laborers in South Carolina forced to dig underneath their own families' soil to mine phosphate for fertilizing other families' soil elsewhere. (And here I must thank Tam again. Had it not been for his empathy in questioning the people visiting our medical mission, and had it not been for his generosity in sharing the stories he heard with me, I would have been standing around doing crowd control and completely missing everything that was in front of my face.)Now the cement industry of Viet Nam is privately owned but subordinate to the "Socialist" government which has decided that the rich limestone resources of the country are now a greater asset than one commune's rice, especially since Viet Nam is the world's second largest rice exporter. So all these people can be dispossessed in the name of a larger "socialist" good.
South Carolina, on its face, looks like a totally different story. An explicitly racist regime dispossessed Black landowners to deny them any home, security or power. The convict lease system ensured a continuing supply of low-cost labor to white "planters" and industrialists alike.
So if the circumstances appear different, why are the outcomes identical? I will just say -- again -- that we have to stop looking at "allies" and "enemies", "left" and "right", and start by assessing effects on regular people.
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
The Vergara Decision and Teacher Tenure
The Vergara decision yesterday made teacher tenure unconstitutional in California. The teacher feeds I subscribe to on Twitter are howling about it... and howling about Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's enthusiastic response. But it reminds me that tenure is not well understood outside teacher circles. It sounds like some bizarre union work rule designed to protect the jobs of coal shovelers on diesel locomotives. It sounds as though a teacher who sneaks through the first few years of employment can then have a free ride in perpetuity. Teacher tenure sounds to outsiders like what the plaintiffs in Vergara claim it is: a way to protect grossly incompetent teachers at the expense of their students.
First it is best to say that teachers with tenure are not invulnerable. As a New York City public high school principal I could (and did) fire and take the licenses of tenured teachers who weren't doing their jobs or who were otherwise hurting kids. It took a little longer than I liked, but that is often the nature of due process. Hell, it took me longer than I liked to fire untenured teachers.
But as you read this you should be wondering to yourself: "Why trust this guy about who should and should not be teaching our kids? He says they're incompetent; why should I believe him?"
I know of teachers who have been falsely accused of heinous offenses because their principals didn't like them. And I mean, just personally didn't like them. There are principals who have thrown away any notion of fairness. Teachers who speak up against that get accused of incompetence, too.
But look at the current larger political climate. New York -- like many other states -- has adopted commercial tests as a way of evaluating teacher work. It's a big profit center for the publishing companies and there have already been financial scandals and grotesque incompetence in both writing and grading the exams. More importantly, the entire enterprise has been proven incapable of successfully identifying weak and strong teachers. Results fluctuate wildly from year to year. Outstanding teachers are marked as failing. The tests simply fail to do what they purport to. And so tenure is a protection from politicians introducing a statistically invalid system to fire teachers.
Then there is evolution. And climate change. A science teacher who actually teaches science (as opposed to something cooked up by an oil industry lobbyist) needs tenure to protect their students from the junk "knowledge" that circulates in political circles.
Good principals can always get bad teachers out. Tenure protects good teachers from craven politicians and from corrupt principals. So why the big push against tenure now?
Well, as I noted at the outset, tenure doesn't sound right to outsiders, so it is a weak spot in the defenses of our system of public education. Getting rid of tenure is also a way to get rid of the best and most experienced teachers, career teachers, in favor of temps who come and go every two years. Newbies without tenure certainly cost less. But would you pick all rookies for your own child? People who are going on to their "real" careers just as they are beginning to gather clues about how to do the job?
Experienced tenured teachers are the ones who understand how to teach. They are also strong advocated for our system of public education. So if you are a Koch brother, or an Eli Broad, or a Michael Bloomberg or a Rupert Murdoch... in other words if you eliminate all public schools and replace them with something you can profit from, then you need to FIRE all those experienced teachers. They're already doing it in Philly and Chicago. New Orleans just closed its last public schools. Getting rid of tenure is how you fire your GOOD teachers, not your bad ones. It's how you privatize schools. It's how you destroy our democracy.
First it is best to say that teachers with tenure are not invulnerable. As a New York City public high school principal I could (and did) fire and take the licenses of tenured teachers who weren't doing their jobs or who were otherwise hurting kids. It took a little longer than I liked, but that is often the nature of due process. Hell, it took me longer than I liked to fire untenured teachers.
But as you read this you should be wondering to yourself: "Why trust this guy about who should and should not be teaching our kids? He says they're incompetent; why should I believe him?"
I know of teachers who have been falsely accused of heinous offenses because their principals didn't like them. And I mean, just personally didn't like them. There are principals who have thrown away any notion of fairness. Teachers who speak up against that get accused of incompetence, too.
But look at the current larger political climate. New York -- like many other states -- has adopted commercial tests as a way of evaluating teacher work. It's a big profit center for the publishing companies and there have already been financial scandals and grotesque incompetence in both writing and grading the exams. More importantly, the entire enterprise has been proven incapable of successfully identifying weak and strong teachers. Results fluctuate wildly from year to year. Outstanding teachers are marked as failing. The tests simply fail to do what they purport to. And so tenure is a protection from politicians introducing a statistically invalid system to fire teachers.
Then there is evolution. And climate change. A science teacher who actually teaches science (as opposed to something cooked up by an oil industry lobbyist) needs tenure to protect their students from the junk "knowledge" that circulates in political circles.
Good principals can always get bad teachers out. Tenure protects good teachers from craven politicians and from corrupt principals. So why the big push against tenure now?
Well, as I noted at the outset, tenure doesn't sound right to outsiders, so it is a weak spot in the defenses of our system of public education. Getting rid of tenure is also a way to get rid of the best and most experienced teachers, career teachers, in favor of temps who come and go every two years. Newbies without tenure certainly cost less. But would you pick all rookies for your own child? People who are going on to their "real" careers just as they are beginning to gather clues about how to do the job?
Experienced tenured teachers are the ones who understand how to teach. They are also strong advocated for our system of public education. So if you are a Koch brother, or an Eli Broad, or a Michael Bloomberg or a Rupert Murdoch... in other words if you eliminate all public schools and replace them with something you can profit from, then you need to FIRE all those experienced teachers. They're already doing it in Philly and Chicago. New Orleans just closed its last public schools. Getting rid of tenure is how you fire your GOOD teachers, not your bad ones. It's how you privatize schools. It's how you destroy our democracy.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Fifty-Degree Morning
In January I said that there was nothing like a windy, five-degree morning to make a still, ten-degree morning feel tropical by comparison. Today, after two sunny, eighty-five degree days that reduced me to torpor, I really enjoyed a cloudy, fifty-degree morning.
My parents are 86 and 87. They are falling a lot. Right now my dad is recovering from a broken shoulder and my mom is recovering from a broken pelvis. Right now they require 24 help in the house. We had to encourage my mom to recognize the increasingly untenable situation they are in, living in a split-level home: stairs to the bedroom, stairs to the front-door, no shopping within walking distance. Negotiating those stairs with the assistance of a home health care aide puts those aides in physical jeopardy.
So yesterday my mom calls me to say they will be moving to an assisted-living facility sooner rather than later. And -- apparently because I am not steeling myself to make the argument that this is a necessary change -- this hits me really hard. I don't really mind them giving up the house. True, I barely remember any other place (they moved there when I was four) but they rearranged everything long ago. The bedroom my brother and I shared no longer exists; it is an office for my parents' desks and computers. My sister's bedroom had its walls knocked out; it is a loft for the living room. Our playroom? The front two-thirds are an entryway, with the door to the house where the window used to be; the back third is part of the utility room, along with the original utility room and part of the original garage.
No, it's not the house. It is my parents themselves. For several years I have had to look closely to actually see their age and frailty instead of just habitually seeing the robust strength of their former selves. But this? This inability to even remain in their own house? That is something new and very frightening.
It frightens me that I will have to visit them in some other kind of place. It frightens me that their strength may be irrevocably past. It frightens me that my grandson will only ever know them as elderly. And, truthfully, it frightens me that this is my future, too. How will I be able to live out of a vehicle if it is hard for me to stand, unsafe for me to drive, dangerous for me to walk? Who will care for me?
Today is cloudy and still (1:30 pm) in the fifties, so my optimism is back and the world feels better. But I need to be strong when it's in the nineties, too. I am still capable in MY sixties. Who can say what MY eighties and nineties will bring?
My parents are 86 and 87. They are falling a lot. Right now my dad is recovering from a broken shoulder and my mom is recovering from a broken pelvis. Right now they require 24 help in the house. We had to encourage my mom to recognize the increasingly untenable situation they are in, living in a split-level home: stairs to the bedroom, stairs to the front-door, no shopping within walking distance. Negotiating those stairs with the assistance of a home health care aide puts those aides in physical jeopardy.
So yesterday my mom calls me to say they will be moving to an assisted-living facility sooner rather than later. And -- apparently because I am not steeling myself to make the argument that this is a necessary change -- this hits me really hard. I don't really mind them giving up the house. True, I barely remember any other place (they moved there when I was four) but they rearranged everything long ago. The bedroom my brother and I shared no longer exists; it is an office for my parents' desks and computers. My sister's bedroom had its walls knocked out; it is a loft for the living room. Our playroom? The front two-thirds are an entryway, with the door to the house where the window used to be; the back third is part of the utility room, along with the original utility room and part of the original garage.
No, it's not the house. It is my parents themselves. For several years I have had to look closely to actually see their age and frailty instead of just habitually seeing the robust strength of their former selves. But this? This inability to even remain in their own house? That is something new and very frightening.
It frightens me that I will have to visit them in some other kind of place. It frightens me that their strength may be irrevocably past. It frightens me that my grandson will only ever know them as elderly. And, truthfully, it frightens me that this is my future, too. How will I be able to live out of a vehicle if it is hard for me to stand, unsafe for me to drive, dangerous for me to walk? Who will care for me?
Today is cloudy and still (1:30 pm) in the fifties, so my optimism is back and the world feels better. But I need to be strong when it's in the nineties, too. I am still capable in MY sixties. Who can say what MY eighties and nineties will bring?
Thursday, May 8, 2014
"Hashtag Activism"
People describe "hashtag activism" as cheap. And, yes, when there is the ability to do more, and all you do is express your sentiments on Twitter, that can be construed as cheap. But this last week that "hashtag activism" has brought the attention of the world to the 200+ girls from Chibok Government Secondary School who were kidnapped en masse by Boko Haram. The Federal Government of Nigeria was choosing to ignore this, or to pretend that it had never happened, or to claim that they had already freed the girls. The world's media outlets were interested in Ukraine and the LA Clippers and a deadbeat rancher in Nevada.
The #BringBackOurGirls campaign was successful first in bringing the kidnapping to the attention of all Nigeria and then to the rest of the world. Goodluck Jonathan stopped "investigating" after three weeks. Patience Jonathan stopped arresting the girls' advocates in the capital. Who knows? Perhaps the news media might pool their resources and send an actual reporter to Maiduguri in Borno State, or even to Chibok itself, where the kidnapping took place.
There are several ways to view all this, but I want to address two. In one view, the FGN and Boko Haram are adversaries. They exist at opposite ends of an axis on which the Federal Government of Nigeria sees itself as the defender of order and sees Boko Haram as a force for chaos and lawlessness. Boko Haram apparently see themselves as defenders of northern culture and the FGN as a vicious occupier. In this view, everybody who gets in between the two deserves to be chewed up and destroyed, because they should have chosen the "right" side... "right" being defined by Boko Haram and the FGN.
There is another view. In this second view, both Boko Haram and President Goodluck Jonathan are forces of callousness and inhumanity. They regard the lives of individual humans and their families as a matter of less import than some "big" question, like "who gets to rule?" There are people supporting #BringBackOurGirls who are in this camp as well. They view the protests as an opportunity to attack the Jonathans and advance their own political careers. When Patience and Goodluck accuse the movement of this, they are seeing their own self interest, but they are also accurately seeing some of their opponents. The problem is, they are so lost in this way of seeing the world that they will not (and maybe can not) see the majority of the Nigerian protesters.
Because the other end of this second axis is people. First, the girls who have been enduring the unimaginable for over three weeks for the crime of wanting to take their exams and go on to university and -- honestly -- for the crime of being female. Then, the families and friends of these girls. Again, I retreat from trying to imagine what they must be going through. And finally, the people of Nigeria and the world who are outraged by both the kidnapping and the delays by the military in going to bring back the girls.
Today I found another group who have chosen to join the BK/Jonathan camp. They are chatterers on the cable news channels who want to make political hay, not out of the crisis, but out of the response, out of so-called "hashtag activism." Instead of trying to get actual news out of Nigeria, they want to sit in their studios and denounce people sitting at home and publicizing the kidnapping.
It is now three years since my last Global Enterprise freshmen graduated. I told them at their commencement to beware any "big ideas" that ignore their impact on actual individual people. I was speaking then about the Bloomberg "reforms" that had doctored data to make GEA look like a mediocre school, then declare it a failing school and move to close it. I told them that there is a wolf right outside that feeds on doubt and hatred and greed, and that the wolf is always hungry. But I told them the wolf is not the only one there, that there is also our love and our care and our support for each other. In our moments of doubt, we have to reach out for the one and not for the other.
#BringBackOurGirls
The #BringBackOurGirls campaign was successful first in bringing the kidnapping to the attention of all Nigeria and then to the rest of the world. Goodluck Jonathan stopped "investigating" after three weeks. Patience Jonathan stopped arresting the girls' advocates in the capital. Who knows? Perhaps the news media might pool their resources and send an actual reporter to Maiduguri in Borno State, or even to Chibok itself, where the kidnapping took place.
There are several ways to view all this, but I want to address two. In one view, the FGN and Boko Haram are adversaries. They exist at opposite ends of an axis on which the Federal Government of Nigeria sees itself as the defender of order and sees Boko Haram as a force for chaos and lawlessness. Boko Haram apparently see themselves as defenders of northern culture and the FGN as a vicious occupier. In this view, everybody who gets in between the two deserves to be chewed up and destroyed, because they should have chosen the "right" side... "right" being defined by Boko Haram and the FGN.
There is another view. In this second view, both Boko Haram and President Goodluck Jonathan are forces of callousness and inhumanity. They regard the lives of individual humans and their families as a matter of less import than some "big" question, like "who gets to rule?" There are people supporting #BringBackOurGirls who are in this camp as well. They view the protests as an opportunity to attack the Jonathans and advance their own political careers. When Patience and Goodluck accuse the movement of this, they are seeing their own self interest, but they are also accurately seeing some of their opponents. The problem is, they are so lost in this way of seeing the world that they will not (and maybe can not) see the majority of the Nigerian protesters.
Because the other end of this second axis is people. First, the girls who have been enduring the unimaginable for over three weeks for the crime of wanting to take their exams and go on to university and -- honestly -- for the crime of being female. Then, the families and friends of these girls. Again, I retreat from trying to imagine what they must be going through. And finally, the people of Nigeria and the world who are outraged by both the kidnapping and the delays by the military in going to bring back the girls.
Today I found another group who have chosen to join the BK/Jonathan camp. They are chatterers on the cable news channels who want to make political hay, not out of the crisis, but out of the response, out of so-called "hashtag activism." Instead of trying to get actual news out of Nigeria, they want to sit in their studios and denounce people sitting at home and publicizing the kidnapping.
It is now three years since my last Global Enterprise freshmen graduated. I told them at their commencement to beware any "big ideas" that ignore their impact on actual individual people. I was speaking then about the Bloomberg "reforms" that had doctored data to make GEA look like a mediocre school, then declare it a failing school and move to close it. I told them that there is a wolf right outside that feeds on doubt and hatred and greed, and that the wolf is always hungry. But I told them the wolf is not the only one there, that there is also our love and our care and our support for each other. In our moments of doubt, we have to reach out for the one and not for the other.
#BringBackOurGirls
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Orioles
Today the orioles appeared to me. Last year I spent all of March and April wondering where they were. In May they appeared one day everywhere I looked, and I realized that they simply hadn't returned from Central America yet. This year I didn't start worrying about my failure to see any until last week. My son-in-law saw some this weekend in Brooklyn. I hope I showed him that I was excited. I am certain I revealed my envy.
We were on Hunter Island in Pelham Bay Park, way up on the northwest corner near the peninsula that I think of as blueberry island. There were three of them, way up high in the oaks, and they were hopping from branch to branch and dancing in the air. I stood watching them and appreciating this blessing for a good long time. Prophet eventually got bored and signaled his desire to move on.
Baltimore Orioles are by no means rare. But my sightings of them seem to be. They are not especially showy or grand, but they make me very happy. Smaller than robins, they have similar markings except that their red is much more vivid. They make me really happy. Today I was reminded again that I have to appreciate everything that comes my way instead of looking for things -- like orioles -- that really amaze me.
On the west side of Hunter Island is a path through a marsh to a rocky point that was a smaller island before the construction of Orchard Beach shut down the tidal flushing. I think of it as Strawberry Island because I used to go there to pick wild strawberries, starting when I was in my late twenties. I gathered so many that I made strawberry corn bread. Maya and I went there every June when she was small. I read her a picture book (which is on my shelf above me now) called The First Strawberries. I tracked down my own copy of Roger Williams's (founder of Rhode Island) A Key into the Language of America largely because of his observations about strawberries, including a quote from Dr. William Butler: "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did." One of our best trips out there was with Maya's grade school friends, the twins Makeda and Samori.
Prophet and I walked out to the edge of Strawberry Island and I looked at the sad remains of the strawberry patch, overgrown with briars and poison ivy, few strawberry plants visible. Then I heard a bird call, looked up, and saw another oriole! I had a lot of years enjoying those little wild strawberries. Why am I bemoaning their loss when I have a smiling GSD at my side who gives me a reason for a long walk in the woods every day!
Hammering home that point is a fallen oak further down the west side of Hunter Island. It used to tower over the marsh right next to the trail. Maya and I sat on a rock near it with sketch books more than once to try and convey it. I got a pretty good drawing once, which I should still have somewhere in the house. I can miss that tree, just like I miss sitting and drawing it with my eight-year old daughter. But that daughter is 32 now, and a mother. I am a grandpa and retired from the schools. And that oak is lying on its side in a marsh.
It is hard work for me to remember to appreciate my blessings. Occasionally I am struck dumb by that realization and then the old glass-half-empty habits return. At least I am no longer angry at myself for this.
We were on Hunter Island in Pelham Bay Park, way up on the northwest corner near the peninsula that I think of as blueberry island. There were three of them, way up high in the oaks, and they were hopping from branch to branch and dancing in the air. I stood watching them and appreciating this blessing for a good long time. Prophet eventually got bored and signaled his desire to move on.
Baltimore Orioles are by no means rare. But my sightings of them seem to be. They are not especially showy or grand, but they make me very happy. Smaller than robins, they have similar markings except that their red is much more vivid. They make me really happy. Today I was reminded again that I have to appreciate everything that comes my way instead of looking for things -- like orioles -- that really amaze me.
On the west side of Hunter Island is a path through a marsh to a rocky point that was a smaller island before the construction of Orchard Beach shut down the tidal flushing. I think of it as Strawberry Island because I used to go there to pick wild strawberries, starting when I was in my late twenties. I gathered so many that I made strawberry corn bread. Maya and I went there every June when she was small. I read her a picture book (which is on my shelf above me now) called The First Strawberries. I tracked down my own copy of Roger Williams's (founder of Rhode Island) A Key into the Language of America largely because of his observations about strawberries, including a quote from Dr. William Butler: "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did." One of our best trips out there was with Maya's grade school friends, the twins Makeda and Samori.
Prophet and I walked out to the edge of Strawberry Island and I looked at the sad remains of the strawberry patch, overgrown with briars and poison ivy, few strawberry plants visible. Then I heard a bird call, looked up, and saw another oriole! I had a lot of years enjoying those little wild strawberries. Why am I bemoaning their loss when I have a smiling GSD at my side who gives me a reason for a long walk in the woods every day!
Hammering home that point is a fallen oak further down the west side of Hunter Island. It used to tower over the marsh right next to the trail. Maya and I sat on a rock near it with sketch books more than once to try and convey it. I got a pretty good drawing once, which I should still have somewhere in the house. I can miss that tree, just like I miss sitting and drawing it with my eight-year old daughter. But that daughter is 32 now, and a mother. I am a grandpa and retired from the schools. And that oak is lying on its side in a marsh.
It is hard work for me to remember to appreciate my blessings. Occasionally I am struck dumb by that realization and then the old glass-half-empty habits return. At least I am no longer angry at myself for this.
Monday, May 5, 2014
#BringBackOurGirls
It is now three weeks since a terror gang that opposes education broke into a girls school Borno State, Chibok Government Secondary School, and kidnapped over 250 students. The school had been closed because of attacks by "Boko Haram," but it was reopened for the girls to take their Senior School Certificate Exams, and despite the dangers, these girls showed up because they want to go on to university. Most of them are still missing. The international press seems more interested in Russia's machinations in Ukraine and the comic stylings of President Obama at the White House Press gala.
This is a time when a social media campaign that only requires of its participants that they retweet and share postings may actually make sense. How are people even supposed to know what's going on when the racist ravings of NBA owners and deadbeat Nevada ranchers take precedence in the news?
But I am not choosing to write about the horrors of misogyny or of fundamentalism here. I am, instead, wondering why it took me two weeks to get agitated about this story. The entire outrage here is a world that allowed this horror to take place and then did not respond to it. That is precisely what I did. I chose to believe that the Nigerian military would get right on this. I didn't see the need for 24/7 reporting on an absence of news, a la Malaysian Air Flight 370. It wasn't some other person who knew about this for two weeks without totally freaking out. It was me.
In the Nigerian press I have read recent stories that US Secretary of State John Kerry has promised our help in finding the girls. I have seen nothing similar in the US press; only assurances by Kerry that we will continue training the FGN army in counter-insurgency tactics. When I read the stories in the Nigerian press through to the bottom, I find the same quotes from Kerry, but apparently with a different interpretation.
In the US press I read that the Nigerian first lady, Madame Patience Jonathan is promising to go to Borno herself to coordinate the search for the girls. In the Nigerian press I read that she accused the girls' mothers of being Boko Haram and ordered two of them arrested.
Last Friday, almost three weeks after the kidnappings, I read that FGN President Goodluck Jonathan was about to "investigate" them, despite the "lack of cooperation" by parents. Today I read that he is going to find the girls.
All of this is unconscionable, but so is my delayed reaction. Two years ago, when she was 12, Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head, pointblank, while on her way to school in the Swat district of Pakistan. The Taliban also poisoned 150 girls at their school in Takhar Province, Afghanistan. I have not spoken out about these horrors. Now I am. But I cannot get exercised about the silence or ignorance of others when it took me two weeks to start worrying about this. I have no excuse.
This is a time when a social media campaign that only requires of its participants that they retweet and share postings may actually make sense. How are people even supposed to know what's going on when the racist ravings of NBA owners and deadbeat Nevada ranchers take precedence in the news?
But I am not choosing to write about the horrors of misogyny or of fundamentalism here. I am, instead, wondering why it took me two weeks to get agitated about this story. The entire outrage here is a world that allowed this horror to take place and then did not respond to it. That is precisely what I did. I chose to believe that the Nigerian military would get right on this. I didn't see the need for 24/7 reporting on an absence of news, a la Malaysian Air Flight 370. It wasn't some other person who knew about this for two weeks without totally freaking out. It was me.
In the Nigerian press I have read recent stories that US Secretary of State John Kerry has promised our help in finding the girls. I have seen nothing similar in the US press; only assurances by Kerry that we will continue training the FGN army in counter-insurgency tactics. When I read the stories in the Nigerian press through to the bottom, I find the same quotes from Kerry, but apparently with a different interpretation.
In the US press I read that the Nigerian first lady, Madame Patience Jonathan is promising to go to Borno herself to coordinate the search for the girls. In the Nigerian press I read that she accused the girls' mothers of being Boko Haram and ordered two of them arrested.
Last Friday, almost three weeks after the kidnappings, I read that FGN President Goodluck Jonathan was about to "investigate" them, despite the "lack of cooperation" by parents. Today I read that he is going to find the girls.
All of this is unconscionable, but so is my delayed reaction. Two years ago, when she was 12, Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head, pointblank, while on her way to school in the Swat district of Pakistan. The Taliban also poisoned 150 girls at their school in Takhar Province, Afghanistan. I have not spoken out about these horrors. Now I am. But I cannot get exercised about the silence or ignorance of others when it took me two weeks to start worrying about this. I have no excuse.
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