When the hurly-burly’s done

I suspect that December 31st is the day in the year when the most blog posts are written. There’s something about the end of a calendar year that makes people feel like they have an opportunity to stop, take stock, and leave some sort of a record of where their thinking is at. And it actually makes a bit of sense, I suppose, though I wish there were more days in the year when we are encouraged to do this. At least it’d make New Year’s a lot less intense.

So what was this year like? A year ago today–in fact a year ago this morning–I returned to the US from a trip to Mexico with our school’s Habitat for Humanity club. My decision to go on this trip was spontaneous. I regretted it about an hour after I agreed to go, but I’d given my word. So I was nervous as anything for the weeks leading up to our departure. I had no idea what to expect. Would the kids behave themselves, or at some point would I have to go to the Tecate central police station to bail a couple of them out? Would we be able to build a house? Would I prove, once and for all, my incompetence with power tools?

I’ll spare you the suspense. Everything was fine:

The trip was incredible. I’d never encountered the poverty of the developing world first-hand before, and living in it for three days really put a lot in perspective. Going from Tijuana to a nice New Year’s Eve party in Carroll Gardens was disorienting, to say the least.

A few months later, I returned to lead the same trip.  This one was even more fun than the first.  More importantly, it kicked off the best summer I’ve had my recent history of summers.

On the day I returned to the States, I moved into my own apartment.  There was nothing wrong with the old place–in fact, it was pretty much the best roommate situation I’d ever had.  Living with Kevin, a friend from back in high school, was easy.  Just two dudes in a townhouse with all of our basic needs covered, and then some.  But 2007 was the year when I decided I needed my own space and to make my own struggle and find my way.  So I moved seven exits down the highway into the first floor of an old two-family.  I’ve finally (like, as of last week) got everything set up the way I like it, though I’m still looking for someone to give me a really nice couch for free (or close to it).  I’ve got room here to work, to read, to watch TV, to have a couple of people over.  I wish I had a bigger kitchen, because I cook a lot, but I can deal.  It’s all good.

So I moved, then I started moving.  I headed over to Scotland on an ESU fellowship with a week of backpacking in the Highlands and three weeks studying Creative Writing in Edinburgh.The two trips to Mexico prepared me for this, the biggest challenge of my life: walking about 90 miles in a week with everything I needed on my back, then essentially functioning as a grad student in a foreign city.  When I look back on my year, and on my late 20s (they were fun when they lasted), this stands out as one of Those Moments, a Time When Everything Changed.

Other things changed, too.  I want to take a minute to remember three matriarchs of my family, all of whom passed this year.  My grandmother, Rose Reiss Wasserman, was the biggest loss I’ve ever suffered.  On the day she died, one of my students provided a nice distraction by presenting as both really high and really crazy, so I got to spend the majority of the day dealing with her, rather than my feelings.  But then I couldn’t get away from the loss of my grandmother, who was also my last grandparent.  This year has been one in which I’ve remembered her at odd moments–a smell, a taste, a song, all sorts of things can trigger a flood of reminiscences.  Grandma’s sister-in-law, Helen Reiss, was her opposite, but the love between them was immense.  Where Grandma was quiet and demure, Helen was a tornado of opinions and emotions.  Where Grandma cooked and cleaned, Helen made jewelry and hats.  To see the two of them together, though, was to see a friendship sealed by early hardship and graceful aging.  We used to make jokes about Helen, but it was out of love, respect, and admiration for a life well-lived.  Before she died, the last time she’d been in the hospital was when her younger daughter was born about 60 years prior.

I’m still not entirely clear on how I was related to Bertha Kalfus (I think she was a cousin of my maternal grandmother’s), but she was one of the only old people I met on my mom’s side.  She and her husband, Fischel, left Germany in the 30s and made their way over to New York.  Her brother, Josef Burg, was a force in Israeli politics.  It was through Bertha’s branch of our clan that I connected to Israel and the Holocaust.  Whenever I think of either of those two subjects, it is these people that come to my mind.  My mom and her sister wound up spending a lot of time with Bertha, especially after Fischel died a few years ago and she had to move to a nursing home because of her failing health.  I hadn’t seen her in over a year when she died, but I will always remember her as an extraordinarily feisty and pious woman who could swear with the best of them.

With Grandma Rose, Helen, and Bertha gone, I have no old people left.  Sure, there are some elderly relatives out there, and my dad, who turned 65 this year, has cousins in their mid-70s, but they aren’t my old people.  I guess this is how it works–families turn over, the old people leave and the babies arrive (hi, Jolie Rose!)–but it’s not easy.  And with the joy of new children arriving comes the hardship when they get sick.  We dealt with that this year, too–my cousin’s younger son has spent most of the year going through chemo- and other therapies.  I want to see more of him in the coming year.

A lot of friends welcomed new babies, too, so here’s a spot for a big hello (and appropriately funny baby-faces) to Jacob, Beatrice, and Charlotte.  I’m looking forward to meeting Laura and Chris’s first baby this spring, as well as Stephanie and Bob’s.  I’m a sucker for babies.

What else happened this year?  I played a lot of music.  Kovax is on hiatus, but we’ll be back later this winter.  Meanwhile, the Terryl Lee Band is in full effect.  I brought Clark and Pete into the mix, and the five of us have been working hard on making this thing a success.  We’re playing out once or twice a month between NYC and New Haven and are starting to get some fans.  Not a bad thing.

It’s also been a year for meeting new people.  Shouts to Michelle and Jen for keeping Pete and Clark in line, to Heather and Alek and Matt and Bettina and Amir and Ioanna and Dawn and Sarah and Swetha and Carly for making Edinburgh even more awesome than I could’ve imagined, and to Erica for keeping me busy as the winter doldrums have set in around these parts.  I can’t imagine my life without any of you.

Peace and love for 2008, all.

My Creative Writing students spent the last few minutes of our class before break decorating the board with their own additions to E.B. White’s “Christmas Greeting.” The “Holiday Season” annoys me to no end, but every once in a while, I find something I like about it.  This piece is one of those things.

Merry Christmas to uncertified accountants, to tellers who have made a mistake in addition, to girls who have made a mistake in judgment, to grounded airline passengers, and to all those who can’t eat clams! We greet with particular warmth people who wake and smell smoke. To captains of river boats on snowy mornings we send an answering toot at this holiday time. Merry Christmas to intellectuals and other despised minorities!

Enjoy your time off, students and teachers!  Enjoy your higher salaries, businesspeople and lawyers!

I’ve been looking through my old del.icio.us bookmarks recently, pruning away the ones tagged “toread” that I’ve already read, eliminating stuff that’s no longer useful to me, and generally trying to simplify the list. I’ve been doing something similar with my iTunes library as well, jettisoning music I haven’t listened to in a while, freeing up hard drive space for more photos and Garageband recordings. I’ve brought four boxes of books to the used book dropoff place since the summer, have brought three garbage bags full of old clothes to Goodwill in the same timeframe, have been working to simplify my life and eliminate the unnecessary. Middle-school health teachers from the late 80s, I am afraid, will assume that I am suicidal.

I am not. I am just trying to get to the essence.

There’s something about accumulation of items that is both amazingly enjoyable and horribly depressing. We live in a society in which things are bought, sold, acquired, given, desired, and forgotten. And maybe it’s just the time of year–I have yet to find a magazine that doesn’t include a “Holiday Gift Guide”–but I’m noticing it more and more.

Last week, my Essay Writing students watched Say Anything. There were several reasons for this activity. For starters, I wanted them to write a movie review, so they’re comparing and contrasting it with The Graduate. But beyond that, it’s a great movie for anyone who is directionless and a bit worried about it. Lloyd Dobler, the sort of Everyman protagonist, spends most of the movie floating. The only thing he is sure about is his love for Diane Court.

I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.

This is a quote that I’m sure strikes horror into the hearts of high-powered suburban parents everywhere. Lloyd is a likeable character with no future, and you know what? Things work out for him. That’s not the way it’s supposed to go. He’s supposed to be miserable until he gets into a Top 40 college, gets a job, and retires at 50. That’s how things work. That’s what we do.

But no. I say the disconnection, the dislocation, it’s okay. Not just okay, but part of modern life, and something we need to embrace. In the del.icio.us sweep I mentioned at the start of this post, I came across Chris Lehmann’s “Connection and Disconnection in the Digital Age” reading list and course syllabus. The note I left for myself (and for my colleague and friend Jill, with whom I have managed to make del.icio.us for:tagging into a communications tool to rival Twitter with its simplicity and seeming inanity), says this: “How much do I want to teach this course?”

We’re in a disconnected and decentralized world, and that’s okay. It’s fine. It’s got to be fine, as there’s no choice. What do I mean by “disconnected and decentralized”? Wars on non-state-based military organizations. The rise of Twitter. Outsourcing. $300 laptops. Pico Iyer.

So look at Chris’s reading list. The books and stories and poems he’s selected all deal with the uneasiness of living in rapidly shifting times. The shifts that we think are so new–decentralization and mechanization of the workplace! faster communication with far-flung correspondents! the decline and fall of Western civilization as we know it, as evinced by loosening moral standards!–are not new. They’re all in Joyce, Dos Passos, Eliot, and Beckett. On the Road was shocking 50 years ago, with its depiction of young people without direction who want to do nothing more than travel the nation, get eyeball kicks and other kicks, listen to bop and talk all night with friends, making every night a reunion of sorts, and a celebration of other sorts.

And then came Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan: No Direction Home is about nothing but dissociation, decentralization, floating. The film takes as its central idea the animosity between Dylan and the folk-music scene that developed as Dylan’s sound and lyrics evolved. The folkies felt that Dylan was one of them, and that he turned Judas when his music turned “commercial” (not entirely sure how “Desolation Row” could be considered a sell-out move, but that’s just me). Dylan, meanwhile, felt that he had been unfairly pigeonholed and ought not to have been claimed by any particular scene to begin with. It’s in his lyrics. Relationships change quickly. Listen to the last verse of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and try not to imagine Dylan justifying his “unfriending” of a former lover:

I’m walkin’ down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I’m bound, I can’t tell
But goodbye’s too good a word, gal
So I’ll just say fare thee well
I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

Tenuous relationships, tenuous existence. We’ve got technology today that both exacerbates and tries to ease the transience of our modern lives. Is using Facebook to keep in touch with friends in Israel, Iran, Australia, Greece, Canada, Indiana, etc. encouraging this disconnect? Today I had a lunchtime conversation with some colleagues about social networking, the decline of face-to-face communication, the fact that kids don’t play outside as much as they used to. The room was pretty much split between those who praised Facebook for being a relatively safe way for people to stay in touch with others in faraway places and those who thought it was bringing about the end of human interaction. I fall firmly on the side that says it’s not doing away with human interaction, but it is making possible a new kind of human interaction. The fact that I can leave a note on the Facebook wall of my friend Alek in Serbia letting him know that I’m okay, that I’ve recovered from Nasal Death, that I played a good gig with my band, is not the end of a way of life.

Or isn’t it?

Ken Rodoff:

Teachers are people too, and we are an adroit lot when it comes to the art of instructional separation.

Preamble: Things are generally good in my life at the moment.  I’ve got a couple of creative outlets, I’m in touch with a couple of dozen new friends from the summer Scotland trip, and as of Thursday, I’ll have the best brakes in the county, if not the state*.

However, I find myself driving home from school in a stressed-out state.  I’m annoyed at the immaturity of a few of my students, who insist on ruining it for everyone.  I’m annoyed at the endless staffings at which I find out that the student being discussed is “a good kid,” “easily distracted,”and “wants to do well,” with no suggestions from the guidance counselor or special ed teacher as to how to help the kid.  I’m annoyed at insulting staff development events that assume we’re incompetent and/or illiterate.

Therefore, I resolve to focus on the good parts of my job: the students who want to learn, who are looking for feedback on their writing, who have ideas and can share them without insulting people or boosting their own egos.  Students like the two who came to see me at the end of the day, two boys who are sick and tired of having their time wasted.  One wants a recommendation to move up to the honors level for next semester; he’s a shoo-in unless he completely falls apart and/or kills a classmate.  The other asked about moving to my other section so that he can concentrate on improving his skills (he’s in the much louder of my two sections). It’s sad to me that it’s come down to requests for a move, but talking to these two students today made me realize that there are plenty of students, even mid-level sophomores (our school’s forgotten caste), who are looking for an education and aren’t impressed by juvenalia.

On Thursday, we’re starting a digital storytelling project about slavery in both the antebellum South and in the modern world.  It is going to take maturity and independence on the part of my students as they create their PowerPoints (influences on this project are here,  here, and here), limited to one sentence of text per slide, and including images, music, and voiceovers.  It’ll take maturity to read modern slave narratives, maturity to look through image banks for runaway slave ads, independence to create meaning out of all of it.   I’m a little concerned, but I am going to focus on the students who are trying to do the right thing.  I can help them.

Download Video: Posted by jcwasserman at TeacherTube.com.

Progress reports are due tomorrow, and though I have fewer students failing at the moment, some of the grades are going to be ugly.  Participation counts for a lot in my classes, especially the writing classes, and those who waste my oxygen will not like what they get.

Wish me luck.

* Or at least I hope to, as I’ll be spending a lot of money on them.