Notes from Summer School

Please … if next year I start talking about teaching summer school again … if I say, "I'll be in a library, it will be fun" … do me a favor and ask me if I'm out of my mind. I just finished my 3rd straight day of working in a 97˚ library. Humidity was at 56%. I've been uncomfortable, but I make a point of staying hydrated and moving as little as possible. The kids however, are miserable which does nothing for their behavior. To me it's veered over into the realm of ludicrous. For the kids it seems criminal.

Which brings me to another point about our summer school program: MMSD thinks it's a good idea to take all of the kids who were not "proficient" in reading by spring -- who for whatever reason, were not particularly engaged in or struggled with learning during the school year -- and give them more of the same (aka MOTS) for 6 weeks in buildings without air conditioning. Recipe for success? No, I don't think so either.

It's particularly sad for me when so many kids come to the library and can't find anything to read. The most popular books are Sponge Bob, Spiderman, Pokémon, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. There are limited numbers of those books and when they are all checked out, the kids are frequently at a loss. They frequently go and search for them in the online catalog, as if the act of typing the desired book will conjure it up. They can't hear me when I say "It's not here," and they frequently get angry.

I do what a good librarian is supposed to do. I've been going to the shelves and pulling a lot of books that I know they will never look at otherwise. I give book talks. I pay attention to what they're interested in, and try to find similar titles. I look for movie tie-ins. Occasionally it works. Tintin books were flying off the shelves today, after 5 weeks of plugging them. My first class was all over Neil Gaimann and checked out Coraline, The Wolves in the Wall, and The Graveyard Book -- and proceeded to lay down on the floor and actually read them! With few exceptions my next four classes were testy and unwilling to try anything. (Maybe it was the 97˚.)

I drove home, musing on the whole summer school experience, feeling kind of frustrated. Then I remembered a situation from yesterday. I had one kid -- an upcoming 2nd grader -- who was mad that I was out of Pokémon books. After 20 minutes of a slow motion tantrum (him, not me) I finally got him to tell me that he wanted a book about "hot air" (Appropriate, right?) which I took to mean hot air balloons. We went to nonfiction. No, he didn't want that book or that one either. No, not that one. (As you can imagine, the selection is somewhat limited.) He's frustrated. I'm frustrated. He finally says, "I'll SHOW you what I want!" and goes and gets the book that I had set aside as a read aloud for the next class: Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade. (A WONDERFUL picture book biography of Tony Sarg.)

I tightened my bun, sucked in my girdled abdomen, pushed my glasses further down on my nose and hissed, "No, you can't have that one. I'm reading it aloud!" Just kidding. I said, "You want THAT ONE? COOL!!" and let him take it. There are lots of books in the library, I could always find something else to read.

I think that the educator Susan Ohanian was correct when she observed that teachers ultimately teach themselves, or to put it another way, it's a lot about the relationship that you build with kids. Why should they listen to me when I say a book is good? They don't know me. They're only just starting to know their summer school teachers.

Well, 6 hot days remaining.

Head couple rip and snort …

Social dancing -- it's one of my soapbox topics. As in, we as a society don't do enough dancing just for fun, as a way to socialize with our fellow human beings, anymore. Oh yeah, "young people" go out to clubs and dance, and sometimes "women of a certain age" might drag their spouses to a mini course on ballroom dancing. But just to go to a dance for fun doesn't seem to happen all that often.

So, when I got an email from some listserv or other that I am on, announcing a square dance with a visiting caller and LIVE MUSIC on Friday night at our wonderfully funky WilMar Neighborhood Center, I had to go. (And I dragged my spouse, though it wasn't really much of a drag. He feels much like I do about social dancing. We were even joined by our 16 year old daughter later on in the evening.)

My main experiences with square dancing were, first in elementary school gym class in 6th grade ( a surprisingly happy memory, actually) and then at my alternative high school, where the only dances we had were square dances with a caller named Vern Weisensel from Sun Prairie. (I often wonder what he thought of calling square dances for a bunch of stoned wannabe-hippie kids in thrift shop finery … Who knows? Maybe he wasn't nearly so straight-laced as I remember him.) It was a great way to dance and socialize … you could be flirtatious, touch the other lust-filled adolescents, maybe even snuggle a bit, and then "Cab driver, once more round the block …" and you'd move on to the next person.

The caller last night was T-Claw from Nashville, TN. He takes the tradition of calling dances seriously, but he was anything but straight-laced. I knew I was going to like him when I opened up a copy of his square dance calling 'zine (!) Dare To Be Square and found this variation on the Virginia Reel:

All join hands, up and back 

Let's get our troops out of Iraq 

 Allemande right if it takes all night 

Allemande left, this war is theft …

As the evening progressed he was lounging back in his chair, a microphone in one hand and a beer in the other, calling out "Same old gent with a brand new girl, down the center and divide the world!" He was clearly having a good time. He seems passionate about getting people to participate. (Isn't that one of our great societal ills in the U.S.? People will pay big money to be consumers of lots of things, but it's harder to get them to participate -- not just in the arts, but in things like VOTING, for instance. But I digress.)

He was accompanied by Can I Get An Amen!, a really rocking quartet of old timey musicians (but definitely not old!) out of Chicago. I urge you to check them out. Not only did they play a good reel, but they threw in a couple of achingly beautiful waltzes (the most romantic of dances, in my opinion) and sang in glorious Louvin Brothers-type harmonies. Sigh.

Which leads me to another point. In recent years when I have attended folk events, it's been disconcerting to look around at the audience and realize that I am the youngest person there. (Although I still regard myself as 27 or 28, I'm nearly 53 years old, hardly qualified to be called "young", for Pete's sake.) I have frequently wondered what the future is of a lot of traditions which I hold dear, if the card-carrying young people aren't carrying them on. Well I'm happy (sort of) to report that at last night's dance Ed and I were maybe not the oldest, but among the oldest people there and there were an awful lot of youngsters ("dirty hipsters," my daughter informed me, and that's a good thing) dancing away. It did my heart good, it really did. Even when the sweet young man I was talking to asked me if I was retired.

So … meet your partner, pat 'em on the head, if they don't like biscuits, feed 'em cornbread, promenade across the floor, that's all there is, there ain't no more.

T-Claw "Breaking Up Winter" w/ the Georgia Crackers

What's in a Name?

For the last 17 years, the first Saturday in December has been set aside for a remembrance service held by the Bereaved Parent Group of Madison. The first year after Sophie's death we simply attended. Then we started contributing a song to the service: The Water Lily by Australian poet Henry Lawson, set to music by Priscilla Herdmann. We've missed just one service since Sophie died, the year I ended up in the hospital with pulmonary embolism (yuck.) I love it; it's a chance to catch up with friends whom we know only in this context and see once a year. People who speak the same language we do, so to speak. Members of the same club.

The most powerful part of the evening is when somebody reads off all of the babies' names. To hear someone else say your baby's name means so much. Last year, the people compiling the list made a mistake and got Sophie's middle name wrong, and I felt terrible. This year I checked the list to make sure it was correct. I hope I didn't seem too obnoxious.

Today brought a strange coincidence: Ed was at work and Sophie's cardiologist came in. We run into him from time to time around town, but today of all days? The world works in mysterious ways. And another year is past.

The Impossible Will Take a Little While

I have an admission to make: I had a hand in Scott Walker's victory last November. No, I didn't vote for him and I did vote for Tom Barrett, the Democratic candidate. But voting was all I did last fall. An act that added up to about 10 minutes of my time -- walking the one block to my neighborhood polling place, filling in my ballot, and walking home. Walker won, and I went around saying, "How bad can he be?" In reality, I was despondent and had disengaged from the process. 8 years of GeeDubya compounded with the disappointment in Obama. (YES, I AM disappointed, and I'm not afraid to lose friends on Face Book for stating that. Obama is a big disappointment to me.)

Well, February came and we learned very quickly how bad Walker could be. All of a sudden virtually everything that I had taken for granted here in my beloved home state of Wisconsin was in danger. Much has changed, and it is uncertain that we will be able to get it back. The recalls did not gain a majority of Senate Democrats, though they did slim down the margin enough for one Republican who shows signs of retaining a sliver of his humanity (all the rest have sold their souls to the corporate devil, as far as I can tell) to perhaps be able to step across the breach.

Like many of my fellow Wisconsinites, what our state's "Arab spring" did was to shake me out of my despondent stupor, and get me to put my shoulder to the wheel of change. You see, for 10 years I've been singing, "Come back Woody Guthrie …" and wondering where the leaders were. Where were the charismatic and eloquent people who would lead us Americans out of the wilderness? I was waiting … and waiting … and nobody was stepping up. I am a child of the sixties who grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, one of the hotbeds of anti-Vietnam War protests. I knew what my leaders should look and sound like, and they just weren't forthcoming. And I was losing hope.

The protests of February and March were exhilarating, galvanizing, and inspiring. What I realized was,
We the People are the leaders, the agents of change. "Be the change you want to see" is more than just words. We are the ones who must turn the wheels of change. And it's not easy. It takes work. It takes time. It takes you out of your comfort zone perhaps. Puts you in danger of arrest (or in some places, worse.) But it is the only thing that makes things better. And those rights that we hold so dear? They can, will, indeed have disappeared in the blink of an eye, because the powers that be -- all of the powers other than the power of We the People -- don't really believe we should have those rights. They have always been precarious. We were lulled into thinking that they were a given, but they're not … unless we fight for them.

There are leaders -- politicians and whatnot -- who will help us fight for our rights, but it is my responsibility as a citizen to be out there being a leader. What can I do? I am required to teach my students social studies … civics! Sure, I teach the larvae, the kindergartners, but there are appropriate ways to teach them important concepts that lay the groundwork for being good citizens. Ta dah!

We've got the big recall coming up -- the puppet himself, Scott Walker. With the gerrymandering and the voter suppression (yup, I believe that's what it is) getting voters to the polls is more important than ever, and it is a tangible place to put energy.

I'm not asleep anymore. I am not despondent. I've made me some hope. It was civil rights activist Bayard Rustin -- look him up if you don't know him -- who said that hope wasn't something you find, you have to make it.

Today my dear friend Chuck sent me this article -- the inspiration for my post. I hope that it inspires you the way it did me.

It's ALL About Love

I went to a memorial service this week for a long-time family friend, Louise Uphoff. She was an ardent progressive Democrat (with Socialist leanings). My parents were married on her in-law's farm 65 years ago, I used to babysit her firstborn child, and our paths crossed many times over the years, though as usual, not as often as I would have liked. At the service I learned that she was a passionate knitter who took her knitting to every meeting (including the Democratic National Convention, where she was a delegate); I never knew that we had that in common. I also learned that she loved Broadway show tunes (not me) and was an employee and proud member of the state teachers' union.

With the recall elections of 6 Republican state senators just days away, it was no surprise that amidst the tears and the funny stories, the service was really a rallying of We the People to renew our commitment to Democracy, to not give up the struggle because in the end, we on the Left are on the right side. Louise's husband, Charlie, wore a "Stand With Wisconsin" t-shirt to the service. The final eulogy was delivered by John Nichols, our Wisconsin-grown, progressive, Socialist journalist, and I don't think I was the only one to walk out feeling inspired and heartened.

When I was younger I avoided going to funerals. That was something the grown-ups -- i.e. my parents -- did. My parents have been gone a good many years now, and somehow I have become the person who goes to the funerals and memorial services of my parents' friends and associates, the representative of our family. (My oldest brother always goes too; the oldest and the youngest kids in the family -- I wonder if that fits some pattern in family psychology.) I started to do it because it felt like I should, to honor the interwoven threads that made up my parents', and thus, my history.

Along the way something funny happened. I started to like, no, love going to these services. Not in a Harold and Maude kind of way; funerals of strangers hold no attraction. I am a person who savors connections, and funerals are great places to reconnect, even for just a short time. When I see old friends of my parents I often feel like I've gotten in touch with a little piece of my parents whom I miss so much. And they're cathartic; a good cry is a good thing.

Maybe it's an age thing, but I have come to like funerals more than weddings. At the recent weddings I've attended, I often feel as if I have little in common with the bride and groom or their friends. In fact, it's often as if we middle-agéd people are invisible to them. (I suspect that will be different at my own kids' weddings, should they choose a state-sanctioned route.) Besides, 3 out of 4 weddings are destined to end in divorce. Call me cynical, but sometimes that pops into my head when I see all of the money being spent on wedding celebrations!

So I've become a fan of the well-thought-out goodbye.

Steppin' Out

Of my comfort zone, that is.

After months of deliberating back and forth, should I or shouldn't I? -- I registered for a weekend-long songwriting workshop at the end of this month. I realized that the only thing holding me back (except for the money, and what's money anyway? After all of the shit ScottWalkerCo is pulling in our state, I've developed something of a devil-may-care attitude toward my hard-earned, easily-stolen pay) was my inhibitions. But the thing is -- as I get better on the guitar, I really don't want to just play other people's great songs. I want to write my own, possibly mediocre, songs.

What is the worst case scenario? As with my guitar playing, I fear that I will channel the couple from A Mighty Wind. I will write verses not even worthy of a Hallmark™ card, be like Rod McKuen's younger and much less talented sister, be defined as part of the Sylvia Plath group (that's a high school reference.) And the best case? I will learn and grow, just as I have with my playing. I am much more comfortable on my instrument than I was even 6 months ago. The lesson is, old dogs can learn new tricks.

I preach to my student teachers what a good thing it is for us teachers to put ourselves in the role of being a beginner at something. It really makes you think about what we're asking our young students to do, how they go out on a limb every single day …

So I mailed my registration in and I'll be trucking off to Dodgeville, Wisconsin in a couple of weeks, notebook and guitar in hand, ready to learn songwriting. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Hmmm. A Question

Is there a male equivalent of being a "crone"? Something that implies the wisdom of years? Is it "gaffer"?