Politic worms

Stand By Me...and Me...and Me

2009-01-02T12:21:00.000-08:00

You've probably heard that there are few cultural universals...behaviors, beliefs, character traits that are perceived in the same way by all the various peoples on the planet. Smiles are universally perceived as a show of happiness, for instance, but spiders and snakes are not seen as evil or "icky" by everybody.

Here's a sign that music is one of those transcendent practices. The video shows people from all over the world playing one song...and while all play differently with various intonations, affectations, and so on everybody is in the same key. The song chosen was "Stand By Me" (which barely beat out Tone Loc's "Wild Thing" and "Paradise By the Dashboard Lights" by Meatloaf).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM

Creativity=lots of drek

2008-12-30T09:26:00.000-08:00

Ira Glass (from NPR's This American Life) is a pretty cool dude. Here, he talks about the act of creativity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE One point he makes is that you have to create a lot of crap on the road to the good stuff.

His opinions jive with lots of other successful artists. In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott tells us we have to write shitty drafts. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell reports that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something--anything--before you can achieve mastery.

In conclusion, I have the best chance of becoming a master guitarist on Rockband. But all of you should keep slugging it out.

Your tax dollars NOT at work

2008-02-25T12:56:00.000-08:00

The governor of California has declared a fiscal emergency that requires a 10% trimming in all areas--including education, social services--everything. At the same time, our government failed to close a loophole that allows the rich to buy yachts and not pay sales tax.

Lots of argument about the topics with mostly the predictable split between Democrats and Republicans. One comment which sums up the debate, for me: "How closing off an avenue so that the rich can avoid paying taxes that the rest of us pay is a tax increase is beyond me—and even arch conservative Republican Senator Tom McClintock admitted when he spoke that it was not a tax increase."

Tobe fair, I don't think this is our Governor's handiwork at all. I believe the Governator wants to take care of the problem and actually called a special session to do so. This is our Senate at work; hopefully, with money such a dire issue some of these (ridiculous) benefit-the-rich "typos" in our law will be revealed--and fixed.

Hannity and Colmes (don't ) talk about racism

2008-01-28T10:29:00.000-08:00

You remember when Michael Richards (a.k.a. Kramer) had his comedy-club meltdown? I just caught this "dicussion" on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7Bj4fywCBo&feature=related

Patrice ONeal is a pretty smart (and funny) guy. He tries to have a real conversation with Hannity and Colmes which is totally stymied.

One of my favorite bits:

ONeil: "And another thing about race is that race has become a thing between you two guys."

Hannity or Colmes (hell, all these white guys look the same to me): "What do you mean you two guys?"

ONeal: "Meaning the perceived racist and the perceived not. But you're just two white guys to me."

Holmes/Cannity: "Can't help that, ha ha ha."

ONeal: "You should let black people run racism. When Mel Gibson said what he said, when the Godfather said what he said..."

H/C: "Let me ask you this...this is really, really, really...he-s-he's sick. I mean, that's a nutty and insane rant, c'mon."

ONeal: "All a you are sick! You're white! You're all racial. If white people don't admit that they are racial we can't have these conversations because you're always going 'Who me?' You never had that word in your head, ever, Sean?"

Hannity: "No. Do have that word in your head? Do you use that word on stage?"

ONeal: "I use it when I wake up."

Watching this conversation, you can't help but wonder if this is representative of our entire nation's disconnect and inability to discuss not just racism but just our flaws in general. A reporter asks President W what his administration's biggest mistake was--and he couldn't answer...because he can't answer (doesn't have the insight to do so) or he doesn't want to go there. A white dude is asked if he's racist...either he can't answer or he doesn't want to take that close of a look.

Thing is, if I can admit that I'm "racial" (which of course I am) then doesn't that allow me the room to strive to correct that flaw?

Educating the Fool out of Kids

2007-12-04T07:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66

Ironically, the link to this lecture came to me via a student. For years, I've been aware that the public educational system that I'm a part of is a large machine pumping out consumers--our high schools look like factories and we create citizens in assembly-line fashion (shove some Math in, next station is English and so on).

This lecturer describes it in as strip-mining our students...stripping them of creativity and the very faculties needed to solve the problems of our generation and, more importantly, those of the next generation.

Brains!

2007-10-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

Cool link that tells you whether you use the left or right side of your brain more often.

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22535838-5012895,00.html

Ayn Rand's Continuing Influence on our Language

2007-03-05T08:31:00.000-08:00

This summer my AP students had to read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Recently, one of my Ap students wrote in his journal:

"This weekend I was completely Dominiqued. In case I haven't told you what this means, it is from the Fountainhead. Dominique gets raped but she likes it and kinda wants it. When you get completely crushed but its kind of fun you are Dominiqued. As a side note, when you get completely and utterly screwed it is called Emillioed, and when you are performing the action of Dominiquing someone, you are Roarking them."

Democratic Process?

2007-02-28T07:54:00.000-08:00

The following is an e-mail from an ex-student who has dedictaed herself to making the world a better place through politics and writing. The following allegations are almost absurd. If true, then we all have some work to do:

So as some of you know, I've been co-editing (with Dave Eggers) a book of oral histories about voter disenfranchisement in American elections from the Civil Rights Movement to the present. Well, I've started doing interviews and today I interviewed a guy who is an expert on the Ohio 2004 election - he's been researching it since 10 days after the election. I found out some stuff that is absolutely astonishing...
1. In many counties throughout Ohio, ballots were pre-punched for 3rd party candidates before being sent out to the appropriate precincts, so that when people voted for Kerry (or Bush, although they were targeted at areas that voted 80%+ for Democrats), the presidential vote would be automatically discarded as a double vote. 2. In Clermont County (and possibly other areas as well), when people were counting the paper ballots, elections officials placed white oval stickers over Kerry votes and filled in the Bush vote instead (this was confirmed by elections workers). 3. On Election Day, right before the polls opened, employees of the companies that made voting machines entered the polling places and changed the vote tabulators. Can you say, suspicious?4. 55 of the 60 precincts in which there were the most voters per voting machine (and in turn, the longestlines) were 60% or more for Kerry. There was a direct positive correlation between having too few voting machines and a precinct having voted for Gore in 2000.
5. In areas in which the vote totals were highly unlikely (such as 60% of gay marriage supporters voting for Bush... not to criticize those who are against gay marriage and pro-Bush, but Bush-supporters and gay marriage supporters don't tend to go hand in hand), the unused ballots had been destroyed (which is against the law to do) and the elections officials refused to let people see the cast ballots even though they're technically public record. 6. Projected margin of victory: 118,500. Number of voters purged in Cuyahoga County (heavily African American and Democratic county) alone: 186,000, mostly targed by zip code based on political party affiliation.
So much for the democratic process... I thought you might find that information interesting and disconcerting (to say the least). I'm hoping that the book will be out this time next year, around the time of the New Hampshire primary (why is presidential campaigning starting so soon??? it's madness... if Hillary or Obama get the nomination, I'm switching parties... ). Hope all is well. Take care. :-)
Peace,Miranda

Why I'm Done With Lost

2007-02-15T08:01:00.000-08:00

Like you I am tired of being dragged along as writers try to milk this show for a few seasons more than it should be. But as a writer, I am frustrated with some particular techniques the show employs.

You know that sound that announces a flashback, that sort of rush of wind, sphincter-closing sound? That friggin sound produces this Pavlovian response in me now--I hear it and I get really angry, like somebody just insulted me. The flashback is a sort of insult. It says "Hey stupid...here's some filler for you to chew on."

Look, every decent writer knows that the flashback is a hackneyed technique used mostly by lazy writers who want to give background information. It's almost as lazy as a novelist having a character look into a mirror so a description of the character can be given. Some writers use the flashback well, and the technique was employed well for the first few episodes. But flashbacks are for EXPOSITION (introducing character and conflict).

Like you, I am done with exposition. I know what I need to know about the characters. I understand the conflict. I want to see the characters in the PRESENT work through their friggin conflicts. THIS IS WHAT YOU LEARN IN YOUR UNDERGRAD CREATIVE WRITING CLASS! I watched the season opener in which Jack helps Kate and Sawyer escape. It was a good episode, although I must admit I was hesitant to let myself fall back in love with the characters again. Why? Well, the answer came in the next episode in which we get the story of Desmond. I like his character, I like the conflict of him knowing Charlie is going to die. Do I care? No. I am done. An hour long show giving me exposition I don't need and cutting the momentum of the previous episode--it's everything Stephen King's THE STAND is not.

Suppossedly, these writers all have a copy of King's book in hand as they write. They need to read more carefully. King builds characters in a few pages, giving you just enough background information so you can get a feel for each of them. Then he puts them in motion. He flits back and forth between characters, true, but he keeps you in the character's present. And you always have the sense of building to some meaningful end. LOST has the feel of the X-FILES in which writers have some vague end in sight but, ultimately, even they know the end will be unsatisfying. Does anybody really care anymore whether these folks get off the island? Do we really want to see Kate cry anymore? Even Locke, who was the single most interesting character on television at one time, is looking more and more like a cliche. The charisma of the Scully/Mulder relationship is still present with Jack/Kate/Sawyer but we spend so little time with them it's hard to care--and we resent the time spent with characters we used to like.

At least with the X-Files, we enjoyed the journey if not the destination.

Yosemite

2007-02-13T07:33:00.000-08:00

The granite:
Climb, fall or fail to see
The stone is indifferent;
It stands its sentinel watch
Over you,
Your presence like a bear's scratch
On tree bark,
Slivers of shadow
On river water--
You are the shade
Of a future
The stones see past.

Sweat=Sex

2007-02-12T08:22:00.000-08:00

According to a news post, the sweat of men makes women lustful: http://cbs5.com/local/local_story_041192711.html

I will test this scientific study. On Friday mornings, I play basketball and I usually stuff my sweaty clothes into a bag which I leave in the car all day. When I get home I throw them in the dirty laundry or leave them in the bag until next week and just reuse them (they are a little crusty but mostly dry by then). This coming Friday, I will take my sweaty clothes and place them in discreet areas of the house to see if my wife is "turned on" by the aroma which according to this study is exactly what should happen.

I also plan to collect my sweat in 20 bottles and have my wife sniff them outside one of the undergraduate buildings at Cal Berkeley.

Finally, the next time I work out in the evening, instead of showering I will simply climb into bed with my wife and see if her "monkeys" are "chattering" in the "trees."

I will share the yielding of my data next week.

Mistake of the Union

2007-01-24T08:02:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, President Bush delivered his State of the Union. Here's what he said about education:

Five years ago, we rose above partisan differences to pass the No Child Left Behind Act -- preserving local control, raising standards in public schools, and holding those schools accountable for results. And because we acted, students are performing better in reading and math, and minority students are closing the achievement gap.

Students are performing better? Which ones? When I first heard this I had serious doubts. I would like to think that minority students are closing the gap, but this claim doesn't match up with the reality I see every day. Nor does it account for problems that are festering into lawsuits.

"Local" control does not really exist under this law, and many states and schools are suing the government. The problem: this Federal law is mandating expensive procedures (including yearly tests) and not providing adequate funding. Thus, this law is like the time my Mom set up a date between me and Henrietta Dudley (the pimply daughter of her best friend)...painful and I had to pay for it.

According to NPR, the President seems to be basing his claims of student achievement looking at a narrow field: a portion of 4th graders. Yet if you look at 8th grade, the performance gap between whites and minority students has actually been WIDENING over the last few years. No surprise for those educators who have seen all along that No Child Left Behind hurts students who need help the most. This law is whacked, and it needs to either be axed or be revamped and adequately funded. And our political leaders need to stop playing the statistical shell-game in order to hide the truth.

Intellectual Crapola

2007-01-15T07:47:00.000-08:00

Often I think about going back to graduate school to get my PhD or another Master's Degree. Luckily, I know people who are still in college and can remind why I left in the first place. The following written by a student studying at Oxford. Her one line rebuttal at the end is spot-on, I think.

fredric v. bogel has now spent 67 pages deconstructing the
relationship between satirist, satiric object, and the reader. he
obviously thinks he has something very important to say. i beg to
differ. everything he 'discovers' is so painfully obvious. the best
part is when he spent like 10 pages proving that when you're "here",
you're also simultaneously not "there". spectacular! let me break that
down for you. what he's saying is that since you're in oakland, you
are also (at the very same time no doubt) not in oxford. do you get it
now? i know, it took me a couple times too. it's pretty deep stuff.
one of his "analogies" may help: "This is why the Lele people, in the
Congo region of Africa, do not simply shun the scaly anteater called
the pangolin, an animal that is in many ways a kind of cultural
nightmare since it threatens so profoundly the classificatory system
on which that society is founded. The Lele hunt, cook, and eat the
creatuure, incorporating rather than evading its threatening
condition; in doing so, they seek to acknowledge, and to draw upon,
the power of the anomalous, the ambiguous, the self-contradictory".
NO. I'M PRETTY DAMN SURE THAT THE ONLY THING THAT THE LELE PEOPLE ARE
ACKNOWLEDGING IS THAT THEY'RE HUNGRY.

And Another Thing...

2007-01-14T08:10:00.000-08:00

My 11 year old walked past the new Rolling Stone featuring a cover of the late James Brown. He looked puzzled and asked "Why is Rolling Stone doing an issue on Condoleezza Rice?"

Smoking Grass Roots

2007-01-11T11:10:00.000-08:00

I've written about my frustrations about MoveOn.org elsewhere, but after yesterday's post it seems appropriate to talk about an e-mail I received from my (un)favorite grass roots organization this morning. Am I complaining? Sure. Am I being hypocrtical about complaining about complainers? Yeah, okay. But I'm a Democrat at heart, so what can I do?

MoveOn is urging me to join a rally to stop the escalation of troops going to Iraq. Why? Because "Stopping escalation is important because it will help us get out of Iraq faster. We voted against "Stay the Course" in November and if can show widespread opposition to escalation tonight the only other option is a responsible exit from Iraq."

Um, when did MoveOn change from "grass roots" to "military strategists"? Look, it's clear that our involvment in Iraq has been totally fucked up in so many ways that it makes me giddy. But what is MoveOn proposing? What if we need more troops there? What if getting out fast is not in the cards, that getting out quickly now means a bad, bad mess in the near future? I have no friggin clue what we need. I can only tell you what one of my ex-students who went there reported back to me: "Our guys are in deep trouble--that's why I am going back. Not for any other reason but to get our guys home safe." That could mean pulling everybody out...or it could mean putting more guys in to make it safer for our guys so they can all make it home later. I dunno.

But if somebody is going to tell me to stop something, that there is a problem, then he had better provide me a solution too. Otherwise, we the "liberals" sound like a bunch of English teachers bitching about the administration and not-very hot lunches.

Majority of Nothing

2007-01-10T17:23:00.000-08:00

So it's a new year, the Democrats hold power and they have a chance to rebuild our future. Why am I not optimistic? Why aren't I telling anti-Bush jokes and singing "Na-Na-Na, Hey-Hey-Hey Goodbye!" and blowing raspberries at the (finally) beaten Republicans?

Could it be that the Repubs actually had a plan? Sure, it was a crappy plan, full of lies and monkey-logic, but it was a plan. The Democrats? The party I find myself voting for each election with an increasing sense of dread? They have reactionaries. They have leaders who wag their finger and say "that's a bad plan!" and "liar!" and "We must fight corruption!"

If I were a Republican, I'd be feeling pretty good right now. Sure, you've lost the majority, but the responsibilty of fixing this mess falls to the Democrats...and the Democrats don't seem up for much more than pointing out problems. And if this mess isn't fixed, you can bet your sweet Bush you'll find a host of conservatives with a way to fix this mess come next election (they'll be full of lies, of course, but it will sound really, really insane enough to get votes).

The Democrats remind me of English teachers...they like to talk about things a lot. I was reminded by a drama teacher that, at some point, actors just get up and start trying things, moving about the stage; that's the way they find insight into a character. That's the way they get work done--by moving. English teachers can't seem to get off their butts until they have exhausted every avenue of analysis, picking at every opinion, scouring words for insight that probably isn't really that helpful anyway (so the cigar isn't a cigar, and you're a pervert, whoop-dee-do) and then it's past dinner-time and all the good sushi places have closed. Somewhere there's a balance, but I think most people want to watch a good show--even the Democrats. After all, the show gives them something to talk about.

Liars and Tigers and Bears

2006-09-21T18:51:00.000-07:00

I sent the story written by one of my freshman students (see Goldilocks Tastes like Stupid) to a friend, and she wrote back about another "myth" she actually made up. I'll let her tell it:

"Hopefully you never have my next door neighbor in your class. When he was about 4, I was babysitting him and we were watching a national geographic show about bears, and he wanted to know why some of the bears were white while others were brown or black, etc. I didn't really feel like explaining speciation to a 4 year old, so I just told him that if the mama bear fed the baby bear regular milk that he would be white. And if she fed the baby bear chocolate milk that he would be brown or black. He seemed content with the answer. Two weeks later his mom told me that griffin had only been drinking chocolate milk, even in his cereal. He refused white milk. So she asked him why, and he told her that he wanted to be black."

How to Sabotage your Local Voting Machine

2006-09-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

Follow this link (http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/) to see a video of what is wrong with Diebold voting machines (which will be widely used in the coming elections). The Princeton-based study found that a "malicious" virus can be used to steal votes--and a criminal can put his dastardly scheme into effect with only a minute's time with one of the machines. Interestingly, a criminal can corrupt one machine which can then corrupt many other machines (thus stealing a LOT of votes)--and the stolen votes will be undetected if new security measures aren't put in place.

It seems the study is begging for the voting machines' overhaul or removal, since the video is a hands-on demonstration of how to steal votes. That is, the video takes you through almost of the steps needed to actually pull the heist off; we're shown everything but the virus itself. Looks about as difficult as getting free games in the old arcade games with a quarter and piece of string...not that I ever did that.

BirthrightL a poem

2006-09-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

Birthright

Students in seats, sitting like kings,
Write words of wail and woeful deeds,
Of dreams and ideas. Each one doubts
That his word is wonderful, that her deed will be done.
No swords these silent few, only pencils and paper
And flesh and thoughts with which to find their way.
What meter will hold the measure of their hearts?
What poet’s tricks can capture these people?
No kenning for these folk. These kings and queens:
One day, each will find themselves in a fight ,
A moment of no mere misfortune but monstrous:
Each will falter and fall and fail:
They will see their strength slip when needed most.
And each will find the mettle to flee
From their fear, that which they find most dear:
To fall, to rise, to recover their birthright,
Their kinship and claim to their true calling:
Gods and goddesses of earth and air
They will talk thunder, and we will tremble.

Goldilocks tastes like stupid

2006-09-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

A freshman English students writes about his favorite childhood myth:

Goldilocks and the three bears was my favorite because the little girl deserved to get her face ripped off by the bears. If she's going to steal food from these most likely starving bears then the bears deserve to eat the uneducated girl. In fact, if I came home and someone had raided my fridge, sat in my chair, and was sleeping in my bed I'd probably eat her too. The story also taught that you should never piss off a family of bears and to not trespass in someone's house especially when they're 9 feet tall, have claws and could probably lift a car.

Superman Returns From the Video Store

2006-06-28T20:32:00.000-07:00

Spoiler Alert: Many things to be said about the new Superman movie.

Ah Bryan Singer, your Muse has departed you. I was excited for this one and it disappointed me in many ways--not all ways--but many. I'd give the entire film a "C" and it's one I won't be seeing again. As bad as it was, Fantastic Four might be worth another look just to see Alba and the Thing in a cool suit. But this film goes back on the shelf.

Here's why:

1. The plot: Most of the film we've seen before (in Superman I and II) and it was done better the first time. We've already seen Supes get shnookered by Lex Luthor weilding green kryptonite, and we've seen Lex try to build himself sea-side real estate. We've also see Supes and Lois do their fly-through-the-sky-oh-my-god-isn't-this-romantic thing. Better the first time.

2. The tile: Superman returns? Who cares? The film's treatment of Superman's journey to his home-planet (it took him FIVE YEARS) can be summed up in Lois' attitude to Clark about his "trip" to other parts of the world: "I want to hear all about it sometime." She clearly doesn't care where he's been, and neither does the movie. It feels like Superman was at the video store returning a movie...maybe Superman III? The scene in which Superman "reappears" by saving a plane in the middle of a baseball field is cool; everybody applauds. But we NEVER get any exploration about the impact of Superman's absence...what an amazing missed opportunity. Nor do we get ANY exploration about how Superman's journey has impacted him. In fact, the film relies solely on narration from Brando (from Superman I) to give us any sort of idea/feeling about this journey.

3. The pacing: Remember seeing Jurassic Park for the first time and thinking "COMO ON! GET TO THE FRIGGIN DINOSAURS!" We wanted so bad to see one. Speilberg played us, so by the time we finally saw the dinosaur 1) we already related to the characters and 2) we smiled, cheered or said "Wow! Cool effects!" In Singer's film, we get the title and then we get Superman found in a field. We should have been tantalized! We should have seen a world reeling from the absence of our moral giant! We should have wanted SO BAD to see Superman that we wanted to die!

4. Lois Lane: Her notes must have been 1) don't show any positive feelings towards the world, your job or living creatures 2) except for your husband who you will kiss a lot like he was your brother 3) except for your freaky Children-of-the-Corn son who you will say nice things to and then immediately ignore--also, you will take your son into any situation which might be incredibly dangerous.

5. The friggin music: I love the Theme from Superman march. It makes me feel like I can fly. You like it too...and you'd better. Because you will hear it FORTY-SEVEN TIMES. It plays for the opening credits. It plays while Superman saves a plane. It plays while Superman walks home from the video store. It plays while Lex Luthor is taking a shower.

6. Stupid Characters: 1) Lois Lane takes her son to interview Lex Luthor. She sneaks aboard his yacht. She decides she wants to leave. Lex catches her and she acts as if she's just been kidnapped. What about the interview, stupid? 2) Lois' hubby: he flies a plane out of almost certain destruction until Lois says "We've got to go back!" cuz she has silently put together that Supes has kryptonite in him. He says "What? We can't!" She says "Please!" and he says "Okay." Jackass!!

7. Stupid plot-twist: Superman has a son! He looks like the kid in Sixth-Sense but can't act beyond wide-eyed stares. When he opens his mouth all you can see is the Omen. Look out Mom! There is NO WAY Lois Lane has Supes' son. It is physcially impossible. More on that in a later post.

Okay, there were some fun bits. Posy Parker doing her Posy Parker thing was fun. I liked seeing one fluffy dog cannibalize another fluffy dog, and I liked Spacey doing his crazy Lex routine (you saw it in the previews). Sadly, that Lex wasn't present throughout the rest of the film; we get instead the bored evil genius.

Alas, the evil genius of Bryan Singer where are you?

Fear

2006-06-26T19:04:00.000-07:00

In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque has his narrator tell us "terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks;--but it kills if a man thinks about it."

I think he's probably right. Working with at risk-students, I had a kid take a swing at me. I remember thinking (as he pushed me and then reared back ready to throw a punch at my head) "Hey...he's going to hit me!" I was pretty amazed and a little frustrated because I didn't want to get hit in the face. So I ducked. Then I ran. Perhaps it was more of a brisk walk...outside so another staff member could intervene. It wasn't until about an hour later that the fear BEGAN. And it stayed with me for a long time. The fear didn't really have a focus; it was just this feeling, this emotional image of that moment of rage aimed at me...ME...a nice guy who likes comic books and playing burping games. The thinking about it just fed the feeling. It would have been far easier to stay in that moment and just DUCK. The thinking about it afterwards just about killed me.

I suppose I live there most of the time, thinking and not-ducking. I don't-duck when I get notified that I owe a crap load of money in back-taxes. I don't-duck when I hear a noise in the house, in the middle of the night, and my wife and my dog look at me (from either side of the bed) as if to say "It's your job to check, man...we ain't doing a damn thing." Well, in that latter case, I guess sometimes I duck under the covers, but usually I end up going through all the scenarios in which an intruder is about to dissect us.

Maybe the world would be better if we just all started ducking more.

An Inconvenient Truth?

2006-06-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

Or just a political film?

I saw Al Gore's "documentary" of the above title. Gore gives a lecture using the latest in Apple technology (his laptop may get an Academy nomination for best supporting actor) about the realities of global warming...the realities being global warming is here, it is having major effects on the environment and, if not addressed immediately, the effects will be catastrophic environmentally and economically. The film is not great; interspersed throughout the "lecture" are personal anecdotes, tidbits of traumas and challenges in Gore's life which are attempts to show why Gore is so invested in these environmental concerns. Probably they are meant to give the audience a break, to keep the "class" awake. I found these parts mostly hokey and off-focus; I found the "lecture" much more interesting.

Gore's claims (from the movie and from the film's web-site: http://www.climatecrisis.net/

The 14 hottest days in recorded history happened within the last 20 years. The hottest was 2005. The cause, Gore says, is global warming--which is caused by human beings.
The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.
If the warming continues, we can expect catastrophic consequences:
Deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years -- to 300,000 people a year.
Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide.
The Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050.
More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.

The bit about sea levels rising is pretty crazy; he shows how that could happen by explaining that if Greeland's ice OR a piece of Antarctica slides into the sea it would be like dumping a piece of ice into a glass of water--which would rise. His nifty Powerbook shows us what that would look like: Florida almost disappears; my house would probably be under water in the San Francisco Bay Area, India, Japan, Africa...and many more regions would sea their coast-lines completely transformed.

Even crazier is when he demonstrates what would happen if melting glacier water from Greenland fell into the Atlantic; basically, it would disrupt and then completely stop the oceanic current which cycles warm and cold water through the ocean. The ocean would cool, the surrounding land would cool and Europe would be throw into an Ice Age.

Is this sciene or science fiction? I don't have all the facts so I can't comment. If it is all true then I would agree with Gore that we have a moral responsibility to act because many people would suffer, become homeless and die in the next 50 years or so.

Now I don't hear Gore saying we have to "save the earth" which is nice because then I would have to bring up George Carlin's bit about how the earth doesn't need to be saved, that maybe the earth just needed plastic bags and created humans to make plastic bags and now that there are enough plastic bags the earth can get rid of humans. It's funny cuz that, too, is an inconvenient truth: we are expendable (and probably recyclable).

DNA is cool

2006-06-15T18:01:00.000-07:00

Stumbled upon this report about a DNA database which will help reunite families which have been separated because of wars like the one in El Salvador. It's pretty amazing to think that an adopted child, now an adult might be able to find a lost sibling or possibly even a parent.

I think of the evening I stopped by work to pick up some essays only to find one of the custodians (I'll call him Al) watching a movie on the television in my classroom. He was watching a film depicting young Central American youths marching through the rain in a rainforest. Al was crying, and he at first seemed taken aback that I had come upon him. But he soon told me to watch with him.

"That was me," he said, pointing to the children.

He is Salvadorian. He had been one of the children brutalized by the conflict. He had been on the children forced to brutalize others...or face death.

How amazing that somebody with a mind of numbers and symbols--a scientist--saw the potential of the double-helix, to see a tool not to cure disease or solve a crime but to unite two people. Maybe not as earth-shattering as curing cancer. Just to know that the man or woman sitting with you, watching a film, pointing at the screen, telling you everything...just to know that he's your brother.

The Patriot Ass

2006-06-12T15:30:00.000-07:00

So it only took a spamming jackass to get me blogging again.  
First the e-mail (an alleged anti-political correctness 
tirade by Andy Rooney) then my reply.

Andy Rooney said on "60 Minutes" a few weeks back:

I don't think being a minority makes you a victim of
anything except numbers. The only things I can think
of that are truly discriminatory are things like the
United Negro College Fund, Jet Magazine, Black
Entertainment Television, and Miss Black America. Try
to have things like the UnitedCaucasianCollege Fund,
Cloud Magazine, White Entertainment Television, or
Miss White America; and see what happens...Jesse
Jackson will be knocking down your door.

Guns do not make you a killer. I think killing makes
you a killer. You can kill someone with a baseball bat
or a car, but no one is trying to ban you from driving
to the ball game.

I believe they are called the Boy Scouts for a reason,
that is why there are no girls allowed. Girls belong
in the Girl Scouts! ARE YOU LISTENING MARTHA BURKE?

I think that if you feel homosexuality is wrong, it is
not a phobia, it is an opinion.

I have the right "NOT" to be tolerant of others
because they are different, weird, or tick me off.

When 70% of the people who get arrested are black, in
cities where 70% of the population is black, that is
not racial profiling, it is the Law of Probability.

I believe that if you are selling me a milkshake, a
pack of cigarettes, a newspaper or a hotel room, you
must do it in English! As a matter of fact, if you
want to be an American citizen, you should have to
speak English!

My father and grandfather didn't die in vain so you
can leave the countries you were born in to come over
and disrespect ours.

I think the police should have every right to shoot
your sorry ass if you threaten them after they tell
you to stop. If you can't understand the word "freeze"
or "stop" in English, see the above lines.

I don't think just because you were not born in this
country, you are qualified for any special loan
programs, government sponsored bank loans or tax
breaks, etc., so you can open a hotel, coffee shop,
trinket store, or any other business.

We did not go to the aid of certain foreign countries
and risk our lives in wars to defend their freedoms,
so that decades later they could come over here and
tell us our constitution is a living document; and
open to their interpretations.

I don't hate the rich I don't pity the poor.

I know pro wrestling is fake, but so are movies and
television. That doesn't stop you from watching them.

I think Bill Gates has every right to keep every penny
he made and continue to make more. If it ticks you
off, go and invent the next operating system that's
better, and put your name on the building.

It doesn't take a whole village to raise a child
right, but it does take a parent to stand up to the
kid; and smack their little behinds when necessary,
and say "NO!"

I think tattoos and piercing are fine if you want
them, but please don't pretend they are a political
statement. And, please, stay home until that new lip
ring heals. I don't want to look at your ugly infected
mouth as you serve me French fries!

I am sick of "Political Correctness." I know a lot of
black people, and not a single one of them was born in
Africa; so how can they be "African-Americans"?
Besides, Africa is a continent. I don't go around
saying I am a European-American because my great,
great, great, great, great, great grandfather was from
Europe. I am proud to be from America and nowhere else


And if you don't like my point of view, tough...

I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG, OF THE UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA, AND TO THE REPUBLIC, FOR WHICH IT STANDS,
ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, WITH LIBERTY AND
JUSTICE FOR ALL!  AMEN!

I was asked to send this on if I agree or delete if I
don't. It is said that 86% of Americans believe in
God. Therefore I have a very hard time understanding
why there is such a problem in having "In God We
Trust" on our money and having "God" in the Pledge of
Allegiance. Why don't we just tell the 14% to Shut Up
,lay down and BE QUIET!!!

If you agree, pass this on, if not delete. .

And here's my reply:

We already have White Entertainment Television.  It's
called ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX TV.

True, believing homosexuality is wrong is an opinion. 
It's just a stupid opinion.

I also have the right to NOT be tolerant of whoever
wrote this e-mail.  That doesn't mean I get to put
him/her in jail or even pull his car over simply
because I don't like the way he looks.

The Law of Probability?  If 70% of city-dwellers are
black then why aren't 70% of mayors, city officials,
police officers, CEOs and teachers black?  If
California is quickly becoming a white-minority state,
shouldn't this "Law" mean that English speakers be
expected to order cigarettes, porn and copies of
"Jackass Monthly" in Spanish?

By "giving aid" to other foreign countires, which
bombing are you referring to?

Bill Gates is choosing NOT to keep every penny he made
and is pumping money into education and fighting
disease in other countires (including Africa by the
way).

I doubt that 86% of Americans believe in God, but if
they do I am sure many would say that God, if he
exists, would say this e-mail writer is kind of
missing some major "themes" in the Old and New
Testament...say, like, tolerance...loving thy
neighbor...having faith...building a better
world...you know, little things like that.

To my students about to graduate

2006-05-24T08:55:00.000-07:00

Here’s the situation: In a few days, in a matter of hours, your 4-year journey comes to a close. And so do the friendships that you’ve formed in those 4 years.
The realization won’t set in at graduation or in the next few days. It will only occur to when you go to say goodbye, really say goodbye, to your best friend--and you suddenly realize that things are never going to be the same again. It may only occur to you when you’re off at college or wherever you are and you realize that your friend who has always been at your side, has always been there when needed, is now only a recorded message on voicemail telling you to wait for the beep or the cartoon image of a smiley face on instant messenger.
The person next to you may have been your friend for 2,3,4 years or longer—some of these friendships trail into the past as far as you can see. And the cliché is true: Never again will you have friends like these.
But, these friendships will remain here, in the landscape of your past, waiting, always waiting for your return. And you will return, when you need them—you’ll let your mind wander back here to laugh and hear the silly, stupid jokes.
To see the sun shining on familiar, loving faces in the quad
To laugh at the thought of that one party when really bad things happened
To feel the elation of winning that big game, seeing the thrill on your teammates faces as you jump around knowing you’re the best
To experience the taste of that first kiss
To listen to the perfect harmony of voices rising in song
To stay up all night again, crazy and silly and demented because you are so sleep-deprived.
To catch the smell of freshly baked zombies in the morning. Mmmm…zombies.
Just to see that one friend, teacher, counselor or parent who listened to you that one day, the day you were more lost than you’ve ever been. These memories will always be here.
But in a few months, they are just memories. Your friendships are over.

Sure, you will see these friends again, talk with them on the phone, e-mail them. Some you’ll even see on your very own college campus. You’ll have to wait for summers and vacations and long weekends to see the others. But you’ll see them. And slowly, other friendships will move their way in--and these will fade over time like old photographs.
A few may even become stronger; you may even find that one of these people sitting next to you becomes the person that is the most important friend in your life. But this friendship will be of a different tenor, an adult relationship—It may have roots here, but this “vegetable love”, to steal a phrase, will bloom into something far, far different from the here and now.
Again, your friendships are over.

This is not just a painful fact but a necessity.
Graduation is a time of rebirth. It’s the shedding of your adolescent self and embarking on a quest for knowledge and discovery. The end result is not to become an ivy-league graduate; it is not to become a star athlete or a doctor or a lawyer—or a teacher. It is not even to become successful because that word is inevitably tied to the type of car you drive, a skinny well-toned body, what size your house is and where you go for vacations.
Your quest is simply to find out what is true about yourself.
This quest is a journey of choice. From this point on you get to choose what your life looks like, and that means you choose what your friends are like. No longer are you simply stuffed into a school with faces you see every day.
And so you don’t get to whine about life being bad. Because your life, good or bad, will be of your own choosing.
You get to choose your friends. And you will choose wisely because of this simple definition: your friend will be somebody who 1) loves you unconditionally, 2) doesn’t buy your crap and 3) pushes you to discover who you truly are.
When you try to whine that life is unfair, that your professor doesn’t like you , that your boss is mean, that President Bush ruined everything, that you should just give up…this friend will (metaphorically of course) slap you in the face and tell you to knock it off. Go have a Slurpee or something and then get back to taking responsibility for your life.
This friend will judge you. This friend will judge you by the character of people you surround yourself with, your choice of dreams to pursue and what you do to your body. This friend will not judge you by grades, sleeping habits, body weight, hygiene (up to a point) or by your ability to tell jokes.

Now here’s the hard part. Do your parents fit that definition? If not, it’s time for you to let go. And don’t fool yourself by thinking “they won’t let me go”. It’s your dreams, your friends, your life. Let go. Make a life you are proud of and you are happy with. Your parents love you--and they’re reasonable people; when they see you’re happy, they’ll be happy too. Trust me on this one.

In fact, some time in the future, I’m betting most--if not all--of you will end up choosing your parents as some of your best friends. If you choose to live a life that is for you, you will be able to share it with them without bitterness and with great passion, honesty and gratitude. You will be able to see your parents as friends and not just as the people who pay for college and do the laundry and throw you the car keys as you scramble out the door. And you will be able to teach them who you really are. But that can’t happen yet…because to a great degree you will always be just a kid unless you show them the unbridled greatness of you. And most (if not all) of you have been hiding.

And so here’s a harder question. Are you a good friend?
The people sitting next to you would say yes. If I asked them they would say glorious things about you: that you are wonderfully kind and funny and smart and loving and beautiful. Your parents, depending on the day, would probably say the same thing (even Matt Costa’s Mom). But what would you say about yourself? I mentioned previously that your quest is to find out what is true about yourself. Well, that truth is there already; it’s just waiting to be discovered.

Nelson Mandela wrote about you all. He said “Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

He’s right you know. Every time you hide, every time you remain silent, every time you laugh at yourself when it really hurts, every time other people tell you your dreams are nice but not realistic and you listen, every time you tell yourself “no, that’s not possible”, you live a coward’s life. Every time you let somebody else’s expectations or standards rule your life, you live the life of a small, powerless individual.
Why do you do this? Mr. Mandela tells us—you’re scared. In the universe you’ve created for yourself, it’s better to believe that you are a coward—or powerless or small or ugly. It’s easier that way. In your universe, if you embrace insignificance then your life is out of your hands, dependent on others’ expectations and standards. You’re just along for the ride. And then it doesn’t matter who your friends are---because you will settle for scraps. And you will be the worst kind of friend anybody could ever have. The type that smiles while people are getting beat up—even if it’s just you who’s taking the beating.

But if you believe that you are powerful beyond measure—and you are—then you will live a hard, hard life—but a good life. It will be hard because you will have to make conscious choices every single day. You will probably not be counted as beautiful by the standards of magazines and movie stars—but you will be beautiful because you know you are. You may not be counted as successful or powerful by society’s standards, but that will be just fine with you. Your happiness will not be the kind that makes headlines. It will be simply the low-burning ground-fire which just burns and burns—and spreads slowly.

T.S. Eliot writes about a man who is afraid of his life, afraid of the eyes watching his every move. He is utterly afraid of making himself known. He asks “Dare I Disturb the Universe?” And so I leave you with this question. It is the only question that matters. Dare you disturb the universe? If the answer is no, I understand; your fear of yourself is understandable—for you are a godling and hold the fearsome power to change everything. If the answer is yes, then I will stand back and watch in awe, silently, as my silence is filled with the cadence of your voice. And I will wonder at this silence finally filled with the words that say just who you are. And I will listen for as long as you are willing to speak.

Boo! Oakland School District! BOOOO!

2006-01-29T16:12:00.000-08:00

I harass the new boss of our Oakland schools in the Tribune: http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/
letterstotheeditor/ci_3424633

I had more to say but there's a 250 word limit. If I was an Oakland school teacher, I would strike.

MoveOn fights the Legion of Doom!

2006-01-11T16:54:00.000-08:00

My first post of the new year comes a bit tardy with a message to all of you who are corrupt: the Democrats are coming for you.

I've been a member of MoveOn.org practically since its conception. I even volunteered some hours to help this grass roots movement. Lately, I've been wondering what kind of grass this organization is pushing.

The latest conquest has to do with fighting corruption because MoveOn has determined that corruption is a bad, bad thing. And YOU can help fight it simply by signing a petition! That's right, your voice will join with thousands of other voices (well, actually text messages) demanding that Congress do SOMETHING about corruption...more than SOMETHING; this petition demands the implementing of a fool-proof plan:

As the first order of business Congress should pass an anti-corruption law to rein in lobbyists, toughen ethics rules, create an independent entity to enforce the rules and get serious about public financing of elections.

Democrats are not playing around here, and I applaud their tenacity. Once we have laws against corruption, there will be no place for corruption to hide (except for the caves in the Middle East). And even if it DOES hide, the Democrats will have insured that an independent entity (possibly known as Superfly) will find corruption and get really serious. Well, actually the "really" was mine, but "serious" is still pretty strong. Rules will be enforced! Lobbyists will be reined! Business will be ordered first!

Once corruption has been taken care of MoveOn plans to fight evil, New Jersey, the greenhouse effect, rickets, and the color turquoise.

Here is the e-mail...enjoy.

Dear MoveOn member,

Every day we hear about new congressional scandals. Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleads guilty. Tom DeLay is removed as Republican Leader. But there is no real action by Congress to stop corruption. The bottom line is: Congress cannot be trusted to clean up Congress.

The scandals are slimy but an opportunity to push reform. While members of Congress are home for the January break, it's important they hear that Americans want a real plan to enforce ethics rules and rein in lobbyists. And, the business of Congress just can't go forward until there is real reform with teeth. Will you sign our petition urging Congress to Stop Corruption First?

http://political.moveon.org/stopcorruption/index.html

The recent scandals have opened a window of opportunity to pass a reform package. Leaders are going to try to pass something so they can say they've dealt with the problem. The question is, will it be tough or just business as usual? A real anti-corruption agenda with teeth would do something like:

Start enforcing ethics rules and punishing violators—Congress has proven they can't police themselves.

Rein in lobbyists—ban all gifts, free meals, free travel and cut lobbyists out of campaign fundraising.

Shine a light—real transparency and reporting. We want to know who is meeting with our leaders.

Get serious about public financing of elections.

These are just some of the ideas proposed by clean government advocates and some Democrats in Congress.

No Cheaters Left Behind, Only Children

2005-12-07T16:13:00.000-08:00

My friend Nina sent me this article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=
/chronicle/archive/2005/12/07/DDGQIF5MHO1.DTL

The author's tirade is a bit heavy-handed, but, mostly he's right. Having a meritocracy is not all bad; capitalism can reward those who work hard...it's just that the two do not always coincide. And those rich white guys who hold power and say that their success is due to the "system" working don't seem to be suffering from Post-Working My Ass Off Syndrome. Take me for instance; I'm a white male who is not rich but defintely living a comfortable life...and my success is not due to my work ethic. I see countless people around me working harder--and often for less (but I probably get out of the mansion more often than some of those higher-ups on the "food-chain").

No Child Left Behind is ridiculous, and here's what the author of this article doesn't tell you. This act is a nice thought, but it's a shot of Pepto-Bismol given to a cancer patient. It has a nice name, and it does absolutely nothing but leave a sour taste in it's victims' mouth. Before this act, some high school students graduated without being able to read or write at the appropriate level. This "social promotion" has been going on for many years and at all levels of schooling. Now, thanks to NCLB, if you fail a standardized test you may not move on to the next level. How does this help disadvantaged kids? The smart kids, even most of the middle-rung kids won't be hurt outright...only the lower end kids (the ones who are not passing). THE ONLY KIDS WHO CAN BE HURT BY THIS ACT, THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN BE LEFT BEHIND ARE THE DISADVTAGED KIDS. I put that in caps so you can see it clearly. If you don't get it yet, please re-read and say the words slowly: The only kids who can be left behind are the most disadvantaged kids.

Some folks may believe that this law will cause lazy teachers to finally get off their butts and do something...to actually teach these darn kids to read and write. These folks are the ones who made this law, and these folks have not been teachers...or if they were teachers they have somehow lost control of their ability to reason clearly. The teachers who teach the most disadvantaged kids (like Special Ed students) or the ones least proficient in langauge skills (like ESL students) are the ones who work the HARDEST. And their students are the ones who need additional resources and teaching strategies--and assessment strategies. There are countless examples I could give to illustrate these points, but I'll just end with the simple logic of the previous statement; these teachers are the most hard-working of the bunch.

As absurd an act as NCLB is, there is too much attention focused on just this one law, for it is just one example of how our educational system reflects our national set of values based on capitalism. It pays to put barriers in front of the lower class and to make it easier for those like us (I'm talking about rich white guys) to succeed. It doesn't pay to spend money on programs that help the disadvantaged because they are the weak links in our golden chain. If a rich white guy happens to have a kid with ADD, he will have the money to pay for all the tutors he needs to get his kid into Harvard. Why should I pay money for a system that would actually help those kids (and such a system, realistically, would cost a ton of money)? Screw the dumb kids who aren't able to pass their tests; they can either work harder or die. This attitude stems from the social Darwinism that is at the heart of American capitalism.

Theoretically, I suppose Darwinism and unrestrained capitalism aren't necessarily evils. If that is our national conclusion, that the strong should rise to power and stay there, then I wish we would just be up-front about it. It seems cruel to tell a child that if he just works hard he'll succeed or to tell a child that the meek will inherit the earth when we all know that the meek will be making minimum wage and that success will depend more upon your skin color, quality of education and finincial background than your work ethic.

Our educational system in California, for example, pushes cheating. Don't believe me? Ask any high school teen-ager. We teach kids to have good morals while at the same time tell them that only the strong survive. If you want to meet the right people, we tell them, and if you want to be successful, you naturally need to go to the right college, and to get to the right college you need to take multiple AP classes, earn a high GPA, participate in extracurricular activities, win the Nobel Peace Prize and get a photograph of you with the Pope, the President or Paris Hilton. Kids cheat because it is the most reasonable way to deal with this very real dilemma. And here's the thing: it's the higher-end kids who are learning how to cheat the best! Take an honest poll of all the students who attend our most prestigious universities and I bet 90% of them have cheated multiple times in high school. I bet most of them have cheated during college. Why wouldn't they cheat after college? Why not embezzle? Why not cheat on a spouse? Why not wag their finger at the United States and say "I did not have sexual relations..." or lie to cajole support for the invasion of another country? Cheating is survival skill; those who cheat the best are our most successful students and leaders.

And the author of this article is also right when he says that teachers should lie. Wheras he states it sardoncially, I state it seriously. The best teachers are the ones who cheat well and often. Teachers should cheat to get their lower-end students to pass standardize tests that could close doors to them. Teachers should cheat all laws or standardization that will leave children behind. Teachers should cheat by throwing out curriculum which makes it easier for administrators to do their jobs of sorting; instead, teachers should teach curriculum which is valuable to students and brings each of them towards learning to read and write. And the best of these teachers will show these students the Darwinism that is at work--and ways that they can take advantage of it. Some may even point out ways to take the system down.

Kids and Sex Surveys

2005-11-08T19:45:00.000-08:00

In recent news, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that parents, while entitled to make basic decisions about a child's upbringing, have no constitutional right to control what children are taught at school or what questions they are asked.

The trial ensued when a student was given a survey at school which he told his parents was offensive: "The survey, intended to measure children's exposure to early trauma, was designed by a district counselor who was studying for a master's degree in psychology. Parents had consented to the survey after being told of its overall nature but were not informed of specific questions. Students were asked 79 questions about how often they had certain thoughts, feelings and experiences, such as anger, bad dreams and suicidal impulses. Ten of the questions concerned sexual topics, including how often they thought about sex or whether they were 'touching ... private parts too much.'"

Amidst the recent national attention of evolutionists vs creationists in schools, this ruling sends a clear message as to where California stands: "Noting controversies over the teaching of such topics as racial equality, homosexuality and evolution, [Judge] Reinhardt said, 'Schools cannot be expected to accommodate the personal, moral or religious concerns of every parent.'"

This ruling presents some interesting options for teachers, and I'm taking full advantage of this situation before somebody overturns the decision. I have my own survey which I will pass this out to my students in my English Classes during the final exam.

Here are some of the questions:

1. How often do you read?
a) daily b) 1-2 times a week c) I read when I'm naked d) a few times a month
e) rarely or never

2. How often do you have sexual feelings?
a) daily b) 1-2 times a week c) I have sexual feelings when I read d) a few times a month e) rarely or never

6. What is the correct name for the male sexual organ?
a) my little pony b) pinky finger c) sin d) penis e) vulva

9. What color underwear are you wearing?
a) pink b) lavender c) ginger ale d) invisible colored e) white or muave

12. Would you like to make $12.00?
a) yes b) no

There are 250 questions on my survey, and I think the students will really learn a lot. I also ask them to provide a photograph and a home address with a schedule of times they will be alone. I also ask whether they have any known allergic reactions to chloryform.

Thank you Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals!

My, what great tentacles!

2005-11-01T12:50:00.000-08:00

I finally post and for what? GIANT SQUID! Japanese researchers have taken the first photographs of a living Giant Squid: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/photogalleries/giant_squid/index.html

I think everybody should have a Giant Squid.

Leather Pants

2005-10-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

I was going to write about this amazing student I have, but then I found this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8335653541

This bastard writes so much better than me that I'm thinking about buying his pants and sending him a picture of me wearing them.

Civil Plights

2005-10-16T07:48:00.000-07:00

On the Daily Show, George Clooney talks about why he decided to make "Good Night and Good Luck". His father was a journalist, he explained, but also he decided that the story about the erosion of civil liberties seemed to be a theme that kept coming back to him as an actor/filmmaker.

"I don't know why...it just did," he said with a sarcastic smile.

I haven't seen the movie yet but it's gotta be better than "The Corpse Bride" which is uninspired and a long way from Nightmare Before X-mas. But i digress.

I wanted to share this story with you: http://www.alternet.org/walmart/26503/#thumbtack. It's one example of how the erosion of civil liberties is affecting us...and it's not something we can throw on Bush (though his administration is certainly a part of it). Many Americans (like the Wal-Mart employee, like the local police department in the story) are ASKING for more stringent controls on what is said and done.

The issue of Homeland Security has been a long-standing one, and it's involved more than military and terrorist threats. It's been a fight against prostitution and pornography, against violent video games and movies, against the integration of schools and communities, against raising the minimum wage, and so on. Americans do not feel secure for many, many reasons. And one of those reasons is that too many people are doing and saying things that make others uncomfortable. The fix? Turn them in...and hopefully they will be silenced.

Maybe George Clooney's son will make a movie in fifty years about our generation...but the bad guy won't be Bush...it will be us.

Clan Bake: Part 2

2005-10-04T19:39:00.000-07:00

It's been a few months since I joined my first clan (we play Call of Duty on-line--it's a WWII first person shooter). I have learned the following things:

"Team-speak" allows you to hear the voices of your fellow clan-members, and it allows you to speak through your head-set so long as it has a mouth-piece--like the head-sets Britney Spears wears...though I'm pretty sure she's not in my clan.

Once you get team-speak, you will be "surrounded by more talent"--that is the exact phrase one of my clan-mates used once I got teamspeak.

If you purchase the right software, you can disguise your voice. You can become a 32 year old woman with a 15 year old daughter which is exactly what a former clan-mate did. However, something happened with his software and his voice modulater misfunctioned and he gave herself away. Nobody really cared, but he didn't come back. Off to join another clan perhaps? The moral is: chicks with names like SniperWolf are probably not chicks.

Being able to hear your fellow clan-mates allows you to know them a lot better. You can hear the twang of the Southern old guy, the perpetually stoned sounding voice of the teenager, the always irritated voice of the twenty something guy who obviously doesn't have a girlfriend OR a good enough porn collection. You come up with catch phrases to use like "Boo-yah!" and "Spoon!".

There are some web-sites which host team competitions. One such well-known site is TeamWarefare.com. They use a "ladder" system which means you can challenge anybody in the rungs above you and BE challenged by teams below you. If you win, you move up the ladder and if you lose you drop some rungs. Currently, in one category we are #1 in THE WORLD. Is it wrong that I actually take some pride in saying that?

As part of this clan, you are "promoted" for doing certain things...like showing up for practices and matches and basically just being a good clan-mate. I've been promoted from lowly Private to Private First Class. I also got a badge for being a good rifle-man. I think 16 year olds are responsible for my promotions.

I must say it is enjoyable to log-on and hear the voices of my clan-mates as I shoot them. It's a bit like showing up at the local basketball court on the weekend to play pick-up games with the same regular guys. Except of course I can't see them. I don't ever want to see them...especially since I might find out that one of them is in my freshman English class.

The Governator is in Lafayette this Wednesday

2005-09-23T12:46:00.000-07:00

I just got this e-mail from my teacher's union president. For all you living in Nor-Cal who might be interested in protesting the Governor's fundraiser, here's the information. If you aren't interested in protesting, we could dress in costumes for some early Trick or Treating. I bet they have good candy.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28TH
3796 HAPPY VALLEY ROAD, LAFAYETTE

THIS IS IN OUR OWN BACKYARD!

HERE ARE THE SPECIFICS FOR THE ALLIANCE PROTEST OF THE GOVERNOR....

WHERE: William and Janet Cronk live at 3796 Happy Valley Road in Lafayette. We will be amassing beginning at 5 PM at the Lafayette Bart Station to carpool up to the site as there is limited parking.

GENERAL DIRECTIONS TO THE PROTEST SITE: Take CA-24 West from I-680.
Take the exit toward CENTRAL LAFAYETTE/MORAGA. Keep left at the fork in the ramp. Turn left onto Deer Hill Road, which ends on Happy Valley Road. Turn right onto Happy Valley Road. 3796 Happy Valley Road is marked by a set of 4 mailboxes.
THE LAFAYETTE BART STATION: Where Deer Hill Road ends on Happy Valley Road, you will find the Lafayette BART Station, which has three tiers of parking. The picketing will go from about 5:30-7:00 PM.
There is very limited space to park on either side of Happy Valley Road, but there are a few spots one could squeeze a vehicle. There is, however, one road that is wide enough for folks to park that is within 100' of 3796. Heading west (uphill) away from Highway 24 on Happy Valley, you will find Franklin Lane to your right. Cars can park into and out of this Lane. And where Franklin intersects Happy Valley Road, there is a bus stop next to a graveled lot that might hold a dozen cars.
DON'T COUNT ON SPACE BEING AVAILABLE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. It will be best to carpool from the BART Station!

Untitled Poem until my wife forces me to come up with something

2005-09-17T08:11:00.000-07:00

My wife distrusts silence.
She fills it
covers it like a Band-aid
Wills it away
"It's alright. It's okay."
She urges me to sing.

While I sing songs here
You can hear
her
In the margins:
"No, sing to me"
Like a child
with endless impatience

After the last syllable sung
You can find her tugging
At the corner of this page
Like a Band-aid

It’s alright. Just sing.

Sing to me.

Stupid Governator!

2005-09-16T15:17:00.000-07:00

Okay fellow bloggers, I need you to help spread the word:

Governor Arnold is going to hold a special election this November to try and pass some propositions and we need to vote NO on all of them.

Here's why:

Each of these special elections cost around $60 million dollars of California taxpayers money. If you live in California, YOUR money is going to this election instead of places like schools, hospitals, police, etc. Whether you like the propositions or not you should vote NO because each time one of these propositions passes it lets the Governor know that he can hold a special election whenever he wants (to get what HE wants) at OUR expense!

Having said that, let's look at three of the propositions on the ballot. Then I'll tell you why you should vote NO on each of them beyond the aforementioned reasons.

Proposition 74: Currently, once teachers have worked in a district for two years they receive permanent status (they can still be fired but due process must be enacted). Prop 74 would extend the probationary period to five years and allow schools to fire permanent teachers after two unsatisfactory evaluations.
Why you should vote NO: As a teacher, I'm in favor of changing the current system. Clearly, some bad teachers are working with kids. But Prop 74 will hurt much more than it will help. For every bad teacher in California, there's bound to be a bad administrator. We desparately need teachers who are smart, visionary and brave enough to do what is right for students (i.e not teachers, administrators or parents). This Proposition would strip teachers of their protection. I have had my share of parent conflicts, and some have taken their cases to the principal. If had a weak boss (luckily I don't) I would be out of a job under Prop 74. Our schools will become filled with teachers who will fold in any conflict--which will NOT help our students. Report powerful parents who are abusing their kid? That would be tougher to do. Tell an abusive administrator to knock it off? Doubtful. Take a stand on a student's grade? Forget it. I would be passing out A's like they were beers (and maybe passing out beers too) in my class. Or, more likely, I'd quit. And talented young minds would look elsewhere for jobs at a time when California is desperate for teachers.

Proposition 75: This would force the union to ask it's members each year, in writing, whether they wanted their union dues used for political purposes (lobbying, campaign ads, getting this type of infotmation to voters, etc).
Why you should vote NO: We already have a system which accomplishes this task. When union members first join they are asked to do declare whether they want their dues to go towards political actions or not. So this Proposition is a clever ploy of the Governor to weaken the teacher's union through overloading them with time-consuming and money-consuming work. This Proposition looks good in print; in fact, it is simply the needless creation of paperwork.

Proposition 76: This will allow the Governor to unilaterally decide where money will be spent and where it will be cut.
Why you should vote NO: Because one man will be able to decide what to do with almost ALL of your money. This Proposition is polling very very low because, obviously, most people do not want Governor Arnold to become Emperor Arnold.

So what you can do to help: spread the word. Send e-mails. Contact everybody you know and tell them to spread the word. By voting NO on every Proposition in every one of these darn special elections, we can stop this waste of our tax-dollars. If we vote NO, he'll have to try a different tactic--and hopefully it won't involve our money.

And Back to the Bleakness

2005-09-14T18:33:00.000-07:00

I caught part of Saturday's "This American Life" in which one woman was recounting events in New Orleans. She claimed that policemen from a neighboring town prevented people from crossing a bridge allowing them to escape New Orleans in the midst of the flooding to what is known as the West Bank. She claimed the police fired shots into the crowd of people trying to cross the bridge until they turned back

At first I thought this HAS to be an exaggeration. Maybe she wasn't really there and this was a second-hand account. Then the story turns to another woman who WAS there, on the bridge--and she confirms that the crowd was turned back by policemen.

You can listen for yourself at http://www.thislife.org. The segment is called After the Flood.

Why isn't there more discussion of this specific incident? Why isn't there more discussion about how this specific incident exemplifies much of what is wrong with our entire governement...not just in its response to this crisis but the crisis of poverty and social inequity that happens EVERY DAY in America?

A Break from the Bleakness

2005-09-08T11:14:00.000-07:00

My students are busy composing original tragedies in the Greek tradition. One of my students has his protagonist say to his beloved:

"My love for you is like diarrhea; I just can't hold it in."

Students Discussing Katrina

2005-09-03T18:05:00.000-07:00

On my class Web-site, a student posted this two days ago:

So I wanted to pose a question to everyone out there. First, allow me to give a background story. So today in Government Class we are learning about the media. In relation to the media, we are getting daily updates about Katrina. Ones of the issues is not that the govrnment does not know what to do with the situation, most of the problem is that the entire thing is not in the budget. We are spending too much money on the war, for example. You all know that already though. The scary thing is that if you look to the core of each individual problem, everything comes down to money some how. So my question is, why do we need/have money? Most of you will probably respond "because goats are hard to lug around in bulk everytime I want a Jamba Juice." And I understand that, so I guess I am really asking why we need to get something from everyone? Take Katrina, no one is volunteering to rebuild New Orleans. It is going to cost "billions of dollars." So people are saying, "Well, I want to help and I sympathize greatly. But, I won't help unless I get something in return." How did human nature come to this, or is it just our capitalistic society? Money, technically, does not exist, and yet it is the religion of humans. Money implies stature and hierarchy. This all kind of relates to The Fountainhead I guess, and everything else we have talked about. Why do we value material things? Why does money have to exist, why can't people just do things becaue they need to be done? I am interested in anything that anyone has to say.

Here's my reply:

Katie--your questions are important. I think buried in your post (correct me if I'm off here) lies this core question: What the hell is wrong with us?

Or perhaps that's me projecting after witnessing days of footage from New Orleans. I'm assuming you've seen it too; hundreds of poor mostly black folks are dead and dying even as I write this, and our nation, full of money and resources, has been doing very little. Go here http://boingboing.net/2005_08_01_archive.html to see what our President was doing while people were dying.

You bring up human nature and the idea that people will sympathize/do something only when it benefits them. I agree. Those of us in this class are able to go about our lives because we are not affected, really, by this storm. We still have everything we need--and the people dying, mostly, do not look like us.

So what do we do? Do we CHANGE human nature? Or do we rise above it...try to live in a way that transcends our very nature of putting ourselves first. Either of those would be tough to do...but maybe it's possible. There is a third course, I think--but it's as tough as the other choices: we provide adequate resources (food, water, shelter, medicine) for every single person on this planet. It would be possible to do this--it could happen TOMORROW. Perhaps it would mean socialism across all societies or a LIVE-AID concert every single day...I don't know. But as a global community we do have the capabilities to do this.

Waterbones posts about how to volunteer for the Cross: http://waterbones.blogspot.com. I'm considering volunteering because I feel stupid and hypocritical sitting here typing a friggin blog while people are dying. But you know what's really sad? The major things keeping me from going right now: the time committment (6 months) and the fact I am in debt (I was planning on using the extra time to tutor/do some creative extra-work stuff to make more dough). So I guess I'm just one of those friggin Democrats that I loathe who whine about how the government is doing nothin while I sit here doing nothin.

Where's the Government when you need 'em

2005-09-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

All jokes aside, this headline is from today's New York Times: Storm Overwhelms Government’s Preparations.

No shit.

We've all seen the images of people, mostly black and mostly poor, suffering. It's been five days and still folks have inadequate food and water supplies. Medical attention is not reaching many who need it desperately. It's clear our government officials were not prepared--nor are they at this very moment doing an adequate job.

Why?

We are not unprepared because our leaders are bad people. And it's not because we are spending so much money on Iraq and foreign affairs, which many would have you believe. It's simply that protecting poor people, and in this case protecting poor black people, does not register on the government's list of priorities.

By now I'm sure you have all seen the picture of President Bush twiddling with a guitar juxtaposed with the picture of people suffering in New Orleans (check out http://boingboing.net/2005_08_01_archive.html if you haven't). The President is clearly not a bad man; the smile on his face as he plucks those strings is almost cherubic. The fact is the people suffering in New Orleans simply don't exist for this man; they are as far from him as dying folks in Africa (or dying soldiers in Iraq if you believe Cindy Sherman). And because nobody near the President thought to say "Hey, maybe we should postpone the whole country band jamboree" it's safe to say that the fates of the dying are far from many people in our administration.

Sadly, this disaster is a microcosm for our country. A few days ago John Stewart of the Daily Show reported that, in speaking about Cindy Sherman, President Bush said that he feels compassion for her but that he has to get on with his life. His words: "I have to get on with my life." A lot of people are criticizing the President for this remark and others like it. Truthfully, I am warming to our President; unlike many, many others, he does not have ability to lie well--and when he speaks, even blunderingly, you know exactly what he means. He says he must get on with his life; this is no lie. He means it. So do many of us--and the officials who govern us. Unfortunately for poor people and grieving mothers, getting on with our lives means giving up theirs.

Defend the Looters!

2005-09-01T11:41:00.000-07:00

So people in the Superdome are firing on helicopters trying to evacuate ill people, and we're very upset about it. I know I am. What the hell is that helicopter doing? It can't just fly in to the Superdome and then LEAVE. Has a constitution been ratified? Were all factions in the Superdome united--the ill, the looters, the Saints fans, the sleepy? I don't think we can order the helicopter (and the busses and trains) to leave New Orleans until it is a free and truly democratic place. Yes, the damage and destruction is horrible. But the people of the Superdome have survived one of the largest and most tyrannical storms to ever hit the U.S. and they are strong. Now is not the time to rush things. We must let the survivors form their own sense of security while supporting them. We can't just leave. We will leave. But not now. In a bit.

So, really, we should land our helicopters smack in the middle of the Superdome and teach the survivors to build their own helicoptors using their native resources...empty beer bottles and astro-turf. We can lead them towards a sense of independence by modeling good governance: we can set up a Superbowl congress with two houses (the House of the Near Goal-Post and the House of the Far Goal-Post) and a system with checks and balances and mutual funds.

I, for one, say our helicopters stay until every last person, from the ill to the looting, is free.

Truth

2005-08-30T17:34:00.000-07:00

Today in AP ENGLISH: A discussion about truth via ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE. Are there any fundamental truths?

Theroms are true, math is true: one plus one equals one. Except when it doesn't. Man and woman sometimes equals three when condoms are not appropriately used. One apple plue another apple doesn't equal two, really, if you count all the microscopic bacteria, atoms and molecules which are floating between them. One is always connected with one...which is connected with air which is connected with the lawn which is connected to me sleeping on the couch wishing I didn't have to mow the lawn.

One student offers this: Truth is committment. I like that. Our truths are consensual. We agree that I am here, sitting at keyboard typing. We agree that you are there, reading what I have written. This mutual contract allows us to NOT think about the fact that, while I writing this that I am not wearing pants, that I am not a robotic brain, that I am not seventy monkeys each hitting a key in turn, and that you are not dead or a figment of my imagination or a figment of a monkey's imagination or even a fig.

Truth is a committment. We commit ourselves; we take a leap of blind faith. I think therefore I am (not going to go crazy, at least for this moment...and if we both commit then YOU won't go crazy either).

Truth, then, is faith--it will always be faith. Pragmatically, when does faith lead to falsity? And when does falsity cease to become merely comfortable and congenial and become something more dark? Or is truth include embracing that which is destructive, that which strikes (proactively) our more vulnerable spots? Is racism truth? Is rape truth? We commit ourselves: incest is wrong. Is our faith misplaced? Truth: Children should not be kidnapped and killed. Does our adherence to this "truth" belie something we simply don't want to see ro accept (even if that is only the fact that this truth is not a "truth")? Is our committment merely one of security?

Interesting Article...

2005-08-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

I read the following article a few years ago in The Guardian (I think). The article discusses the impact of a publication by a black researcher who found that the poor performance of black students in affluent schools was due to the attitudes of these students and their families.

Here's the article (submitted by my teacher's assistant who was paid absolutely nothing for her work):

Rich, Black, Flunking.

The black parents wanted an explanation. Doctors, lawyers, judges, and insurance brokers, many had come to the upscale Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights specifically because of its stellar school district. They expected their children to succeed academically, but most were performing poorly. African-American students were lagging far behind their white classmates in every measure of academic success: grade-point average, standardized test scores, and enrollment in advanced-placement courses. On average, black students earned a 1.9 GPA while their white counterparts held down an average of a 3.45. Other indicators were equally dismal. It made no sense.

When these depressing statistics were published in a high school newspaper in mid-1997, black parents were troubled by the news and upset that the newspaper had exposed the problem in such a public way. Seeking guidance, one parent called a prominent authority on minority academic achievement.

UC Berkeley Anthropology Professor John Ogbu had spent decades studying how the members of different ethnic groups perform academically. He’d studied student coping strategies at inner-city schools in Washington, D.C. He’d looked at African Americans and Latinos in Oakland and Stockton and examined how they compared to racial and ethnic minorities in India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, and Britain. His research often focused on why some groups are more successful than others.

But Ogbu couldn’t help his caller. He explained that he was a researcher – not an educator – and that he had no ideas about how to increase the academic performance of students in a district he hadn’t yet studied. A few weeks later, he got his chance. A group of parents hungry for solutions convinced the school district to join with them and formally invite the black anthropologist to visit Shaker Heights. Their discussions prompted Ogbu to propose a research a research project to figure out just what was happening. The district agreed to finance the study, and parents offered him unlimited access to their children and their homes.

The professor and his research assistant moved to Shaker Heights for nine months in mid-1997. They reviewed data and test scores. The team observed 110 different classes, from kindergarten all the way through high school. They conducted exhaustive interviews with school personnel, black parents, and students. Their project yielded an unexpected conclusion: It wasn’t socioeconomics, school funding, or racism, that accounted for the students’ poor academic performance; it was their own attitudes, and those of their parents.

Ogbu concluded that the average black student in Shaker Heights put little effort into schoolwork and was part of a peer culture that looked down on academic success as “acting white.” Although he noted that other factors also play a role, and doesn’t deny that there may be anti-black sentiment in the district, he concluded that discrimination alone could not explain the gap.

“The black parents feel it is their role to move to Shaker Heights, pay the higher taxes so their kids could graduate from Shaker, and that’s where their role stops,” Ogbu says during an interview at his home in the Oakland hills. “They believe the school system should take care of the rest. They didn’t supervise their children that much. They didn’t make sure that their children did their homework. That’s not how our ethnic group thinks.”

It took a soft-spoken 63-year-old Nigerian immigrant several years to complete his book, Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement, which he wrote with assistance from his research aide Astrid Davis. Before publications, he gave parents and school officials one year to respond to his research, but no parents ever did. Then Ogbu met with district officials and parents to discuss the book, which was finally published in January.

The gatherings were cordial, but it was clear that his conclusions made some people quite uncomfortable. African-American parents worried that Ogbu’s work would further reinforce the stereotype that blacks are intellectually inadequate and lazy. School district officials, meanwhile, were concerned that it would look as if they were blaming black parents and students for their own academic failures.

But in the weeks following the meetings, it became apparent that the person with the greatest cause for worry may have been Ogbu himself. Soon after he left Ohio and returned to California, black parent from Shaker Heights went on TV and called him an “academic Clarence Thomas.” The National Urban League condemned him and his work in a press release that scoffed, “The League holds that it is useless to waste time and energy with those who blame the victims of racism.” The criticism eventually made it all the way to The New York Times, where an article published prior to the publication of Ogbu’s book quoted or referred to four separate academics who quarreled with his premise. It quoted a Shaker Heights school officially who took issue with the professor’s conclusions, and cited work by the Minority Achievement Network that suggested black students care as much about school as white and Asian students. In fact, the reporter failed to locate a single person in Shaker Heights or anywhere else with anything good to say about the book.

Other scholars have since come forward to take a few more swipes at the professor’s premise. “Ogbu is just flat-out wrong about the attitudes about learning by African Americans,” explains Asa Hilliard, an education professor at Georgia State University and one of the authors of Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement Among African-American Students. “Education is a very high value in the African-American community and in the African community. The fundamental problem is Dr. Ogbu is unfamiliar with the fact that there are thousands of African-American students who succeed. It doesn’t matter whether the students are in Shaker Heights or in an inner city. The achievement depends on what expectations the teacher has of the students.” Hilliard, who is black, believes Shaker Heights teachers must not expect enough from their black students.

To racial theorist Shelby Steele, the response to Ogbu’s work was sad but predictable. Steele, a black research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the author of The Content of our Character: A New Vision of Race in America, has weathered similar criticism for his own provocative theories about the gap between blacks and whites. He believes continual society difference to the victims of racial discrimination has permitted blacks “the license not to met the same standards that others must meet,” which has been detrimental to every aspect of African-American life. “To talk about black responsibility is ‘racist’ and ‘blaming the victim,’” he says. “They just keep refusing to acknowledge the elephant in the room – black responsibility. When anybody in this culture today talks about black responsibility for their problems, they are condemned and ignored.”

Ogbu knows that better than anybody. In the months since publications of his book, he’s been called a sellout with no heart for his people, and dismissed entirely by critics who say his theory is so outrageous it isn’t even worth debating. It is not surprising that Ogbu himself is now a bit uncomfortable discussing is own conclusions, although he has not backed down at all. After all, many scholars are eager to blame everything but black culture for the scholastic woes of African Americans. “I look below the surface,” he says, in response to his many critics. “They don’t like it.”

Parents in Shaker Heights began trying to explain the disquieting gap months before Ogbu arrived. A small group of black and white parents gathered in the mid-1990’s to study the issue months before the student newspaper at Shaker Heights High School published its article. Their preliminary explanations were divided into four broad categories: the school system, the community, black parents, and black students. The group concluded that the academic gap was an “unusually complex subject, involving the internal and external synergistic dynamics not only of the school system, but also of the parents and of students, collectively and individually, as well as out community as a whole.”

It was a diplomatic way of saying there was much blame to go around, some of it attributable to black parents or students. Although many black parents would later react negatively to Ogbu’s work, this biracial group had in fact beaten him to some of his conclusions. “Ogbu didn’t find anything new,” recalls Reuben Harris, an African-American who served on the subcommittee. “its just a community where you wouldn’t think this kind of gap would occur.”

Ogbu agreed. And because he had spent much of his prior career looking at inner-city schools, he was particularly intrigued by the idea of studying a relatively affluent minority group in an academically successful suburban district. This was an opportunity to do a new kind of research. Why were there such stark differences when the socioeconomic playing field was comparably level? How could you explain the achievement discrepancies when they couldn’t be dismissed with the traditional explanations of inadequate teachers or disparities in school funding?

Shaker Heights is an upper-middle-class city whose roughly 28,000 residents live on lovely tree-lined streets that run through neighborhoods of stately homes and manicured lawns. Years ago, both blacks and Jews were prohibited from living in the community by restrictive real-estate covenants, but the civil rights era brought a new attitude to the Cleveland suburb, which voluntarily integrated and actively discouraged white flight. Today, blacks make up about one third of the community, and many of them are academics, professionals, and corporate executives.

Ogbu worked from the 1990 census data, which showed that 32.6 percent of the black households and 58 percent of the white households in Shaker had incomes of $50,000 a year or more – a considerable sum in northeast Ohio. It also was a highly educated community, where 61 percent of the residents graduated from college, about four times the national average. The school district was a model of success, too: considered one of the best in the nation, it sent 85 percent of its students to college. Today, the district has approximately 5,000 students, of whom 52 percent are African American.

These were the kids of primarily well-educated middle- to upper-class parents, and yet they were not performing on a par with their white classmates in everything from grade-point average to college attendance. Although they did outperform other black students from across Ohio and around the country, neither school officials nor parents were celebrating.

Ogbu’s approach was to use ethnographic methods to study the problems in Shaker Heights. In ethnography, the point is to try and “get inside the heads of the natives,” he says. “You try to see the world as they see, and be with them- as one of my colleagues puts it in all sorts of moods.” An ethnographer lives in the community, talks to his subjects extensively, observes the environment, reviews data, but then derives his own conclusions about the situation.

Many of Ogbu’s academic critics take issue with his methods, which they say are way to subjective. Most of them are sociologists, who rely on their subjects’ own sense of the situation when studying something. It is the view of those being studied and not the view of the researcher that counts most. “They do surveys,” Ogbu says. “They ask questions. I live in the community and socialize. My research is not confined to schools. I tell you what I observe.”

Ogbu addresses this point in the introduction to his book: “The natives’ own account of their social reality is also a social construction rather than a reality that is out there.” He uses the example of racial attitudes in Shaker Heights to show why he believes this approach fails. Ask people there about race relation in the community and you will get wildly divergent opinions, depending on whom you ask. Whites, he found, say it is a racially harmonious and tolerant place. African Americans, meanwhile, describe the community as racially troubled and filled with tension between blacks and whites.

There are other differences between Ogbu’s approach and that of most other academics who study minorities and education. They focus their scrutiny on the academic system or society at large, pointing to factors such as socioeconomics, inadequate urban schools, or the legacy of racism in the United States. Such theorists often cite the 1994 publication of The Bell Curve, which argued that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites, as evidence that negative stereotyping of African American still exists.

Ogbu, however, trains his eye elsewhere. “I am interested in what kids bring from home to school,” he says. “And it seem to me there are different categories of students and they bring different things. I want to know what are those things.”
The question of what students in Shaker Heights brought to school from their homes turned out to be profound. Black homes and the black community both nurtured failure, he concluded.

When Obu asked the black students what it took to do well in the Shaker district, they had the right answers. They knew what to say about how to achieve academic success, but that knowledge wasn’t enough. “In spite of the fact that the students knew and asserted that one had to work hard to succeed in Shaker schools, black students did not generally work hard,” he wrote. “In fact, most appeared to be characterized by a low-effort syndrome. The amount of time and effort they invested was neither adequate nor impressive.”

Ogbu found a near-consensus among black students of every grade level that they and their peers did not work hard in school. The effort these students put into their schoolwork also decreased markedly from elementary school to high school. Students gave many reasons for the disinterest. Some said they simply didn’t want to do the work; others told Ogbu “it was not cool to be successful.” Some kids blamed school for their failures and said teachers did not motivate them, while others said they wanted to do well but didn’t know how to study. Some students evidently had internalized the belief that blacks are not as intelligent as whites, which gave rise to self-doubt and resignation. But almost all of the students admitted that they simply failed to put academic achievement before other pursuits such as TV, work, playing sports, or talking on the phone.

The anthropologist also looked at peer pressure among black students to determine just what effect that had on school performance. He concluded that there was a culture among black students to reject behaviors perceived to be “white,” which included making good grades, speaking Standard English, being overly involved in class, and enrolling in honor or advanced-placement courses. The students told Ogbu that engaging in these behaviors suggested one was renouncing his or her black identity. Ogbu concluded that the African-American peer culture, by and large, put pressure on students not to do well in school, as if it were an affront to blackness.

The professor says he discovered this sentiment even in middle- and upper- class homes where the parents were college-educated. “Black parents mistrusted the school system as a white institution,” he wrote. They did not supervise their children’s homework, didn’t show up at school events, and failed to motivate their children to engage in their work. This too was a cultural norm, Ogbu concluded. “They thought, or believed, that it was the responsibility of teachers and the schools to make their children lean and perform successfully; that is, they held the teachers, rather than themselves, accountable for their children’s academic success or failure,” he wrote.

Why black parents who mistrusted the school district as a white institution would leave it up to that same system to educate their children confounded Ogbu. “I’m still trying to understand it,” he conceded. “It’s a system you don’t trust, and yet you don’t take the education of your own kids into your hands.”

Ogbu’s critics find much to argue with in his Shaker Heights work. They believe his methods were shoddy, his research incomplete, and his assumptions about Shaker Heights outdated or wrong. They say the black community is far less affluent than Ogbu portrayed it and add that many of the black parents are first-generation college graduates with fewer family resources than their white counterparts. By and large, they blame the district and outside forces such as discrimination, stereotyping, and poor job opportunities as the cause of its academic problems. Talk to these critics and you also get a sense that they see Ogbu as a bit heartless.

“I find it useless to argue with people like Ogbu,” says Urban League educational fellow Ronald Ross, himself a former school superintendent. “We know what the major problems in this school system are: racism, lack of funding, and unqualified teachers.” Although Shaker Heights is in fact an integrated, well-funded, and well-staffed school district, Ross is nonetheless convinced that it suffers from other problems that contribute to the achievement disparities between the races.

Ronald Ferguson, a senior research associate as Harvard University’s Kennedy Scgool of Government who also is studying Shaker Heights, believes denial of equal education and socioeconomic opportunities is at the root of the gap. He argues that Ogbu didn’t pay enough attention to these essential differences which he blames for the achievement disparities. The key to those differences is the amount of preparation students receive for academic challenges. “The differences in homework completion are not necessarily signs of lower-level academic disengagement,” Ferguson says. “Instead, they’re signs of skill differences, and in family-background supports.”

Ferguson notes that even in affluent Shaker Heights, the rates of parental education are lower among African Americans than whites, and half the black students report living with one or no parent. “Ogbu writes as though the differences in family background are not very great, but infact, they’re substantial.”

Ogbu rejects this criticism in a way that suggests he’s sick of hearing it.

“Nonsense,” he says, dismissively. “What about other groups that come from one-parents families, like refugees, and they do better than the blacks? In Shaker Heights, 58 percent of the whites in 1990 made $50,000 to $100,000. Thirty-two percent of the black families made the same amount. The people who invited me are lawyers, real-estate agents; one was elected judge just last year. Over 65 percent of that community had at least four years of college education. It’s not a poor community.”

Ogbu points out that another recent study of fourteen communities around the United States found that the achievement gap between well-heeled whites and black is widespread, and not confined to Shaker Heights. “This is not unique,” he says.

Although it’s perhaps not surprising that Ogbu’s theory would by criticized by a competing researcher with his own explanation for what’s happening in Shaker Heights, even colleagues who have worked with Ogbu in the past are eager to put some distance between themselves and the anthropologist’s latest work. Signithia Fordham is a professor of anthropology at the University of Rochester in New York who did research with Ogbu in the 1980’s. It was that research that popularized the concept of “acting white,” the notion that black students avoid certain behaviors like doing well in school, or speaking Standard English, because it is considered “white.” The two researchers were criticized over that research, which has been attacked in at least ten doctoral dissertations. Ogbu is now writing a book about that work.

Although Fordham did not want to comment on Ogbu’s latest work, it is clear that her beliefs are almost exactly opposite from those of her former colleague. She believes school pressure to speak Standard English and “act white” is the very thing that makes black students fail. “What I found, the requirements in school compelled them to act in ways as if they weren’t living in black bodies but who were essentially white or mainstream Americans,” she says. “Kids found it difficult to deal with that and they found strategies to deal with it. They had to speak a certain variety of English in order to be successful. They had to buy into the ideas that dominate mainstream America… Black kids couldn’t just be who they were.”

In Ogbu’s work with other American minority groups, the anthropologist has identified a core distinction that he believes is central to academic success of failure. It is the idea of voluntary, versus involuntary, minorities. People who voluntarily immigrate to the United States always do better than the involuntary immigrants, he believes. “I call Chicanos and Native Americans and blacks ‘involuntary minorities,’” he says. “They joined American society against their will. They were enslaved or conquered.” Ogbu sees this distinction as critical for long-term success in and out of school.

“Blacks say Standard English is being imposed on them,” he says. “That’s not what the Chinese say, or the Ibo from Nigeria. You come from the outside and you know you have to learn Standard English, or you won’t do well in school. And you know you don’t say whites are imposing on you. The Indians and blacks say, ‘Whites took away our language and forced us to learn their own language and forced us to learn their language. They caused the problem.’”

Georgia State University’s Hilliard brushes all this attitude stuff aside. He is convinced that the way teachers approach students of difference races is key to understanding academic disparities. “It doesn’t matter whether the Students are in Shaker Heights or an inner city,” he says. “The achievement depends on what expectations the teacher has of the student. There are savage inequalities in the quality instruction offered to children… based on other things we do know , many teachers face students who are poor or wealthy and, because of their own background, make an assumption certain students can’t make it. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that would be the case in Shaker Heights.”

Ogbu did, in fact, note that teachers treated black and white students differently in 110 classes he observed. However, he doesn’t believe it was racism that accounted for the differences. “Yes, there was a problem of low teacher expectations of black students,” he explains, “But you have to ask why. Week after week the kids don’t turn in their homework. What do you expect teachers to do?”

Vincent Roscigno is not convinced by Ogbu’s Shaker Heights theory. A sociology professor at Ohio State University who studies race and class disadvantages in achievement, he says Ogbu’s latest premise descends from a long line of blame-the-victim research. “A problem in racial research historically has been to vilify the culture of the subordinate group,” Roscigno says. “In the 1960’s, a popular explanation for poverty was a culture-of-poverty thesis. That thesis argued the problems of urban poor people had to do with their culture and they were being guided the wrong way by their culture of white immigrants was blamed for their poverty and all the social conditions they faces.”

Roscigno also believes Ogbu’s research methods are flawed because he failed to do any comparative research on white families in Shaker Heights, substantially weakening his premise. “He’s drawing very big conclusions about black students and black families in a case where he doesn’t do much comparison,” Roscigno says. “We don’t know if white students would say anything different.”

Ogbu barks a bit defensively in response: “I was invited by black parents. If I had more money and more time, I could study everybody.”

John McWhorter, the author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, says Ogbu’s book roiled the waters of academia, which he believes is too invested in blaming whites for the problems plaguing black America. “There’s a shibboleth in the academic world and that is the only culture that has any negative traits in the white, middle-class West,” says McWhorter, a UC Berkeley professor of linguistics who is currently serving as a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a New York think tank.

McWhoreter’s own book, based largely on the author’s experiences as a black man and professor, blames a mentality of victim hood as the primary reason for most of the problems in the black communities – including educational underachievement. “There’s an idea in black culture that says Plato and hypotenuses are for other people,” he says. “There is an element of black identity today that sees doing well in school as being outside of the core of black identity. It’s a tacit sentiment, but powerful. As a result of that, some of what we see in the reluctance of many parents, administrators, and black academics to quite confront the ‘acting white’ syndrome is that deep down many of them harbor a feeling that it would be unhealthy for black kids to embrace school culture too wholeheartedly.”

Nor is Steele, who’s also been dismissed as a sellout in his day, surprised by the way the scholarly world has reacted to Ogbu’s latest work. “Academics are a sad case,” Steele says. “They support the politics of white responsibility for black problems. If they were to do research that found blacks responsible they’d be ‘Uncle Toms,’ and that’s how they’ve treated Ogbu.”

Ogbu seems a bit bothered by the avalanche of criticism that’s come his way. He treads carefully when he talks about his work and reiterates repeatedly in his writing and in person that he is not excusing the system. First of all, he concedes there are historic socioeconomic explanations to account for some black academic disengagement. Historically, there has been a weak link between academic success and upward mobility for African Americans Blacks traditionally saw big leaps in social mobility only during times of national crisis such as war- or during shortages of immigrant labor. “If those are the points where they move, it’s not a kind of experience that allows a group to plan their educational future,” Ogbu says.

In his book, he writes that the school district in Shaker Heights could do more to involve black parents and work at building more trust. He believes school officials should expand their existing Minority Achievement Committee, adopt more cooperative approaches to learning, and educated teachers about how their expectations can affect student performance. “I don’t think it’s one thing,” he says cautiously. “There are a whole lot of things involved. My advice is we should look at each very carefully.

But Ogbu is adamant in his belief that racism alone does not account for the distressing differences. “Discrimination is not enough to explain the gap,” he says. “There are studies showing that black African immigrants and Caribbean immigrants do better than black Americans even though some of them come with language barriers. It’s just not race.”

Ogbu believes he knows this firsthand. The son of parents who couldn’t read, he grew up in a remote Nigerian village with no roads. His father had three wives and seventeen children with those women. Ogbu has a difficult time with explaining his own academic success, which has earned him numerous accolades throughout his career. He did both undergraduate and graduate work at Berkeley and never left. When pressed, he says he believes his own success primarily stems from being a voluntary immigrant who knew that no matter how many hurdles he had to overcome in the United States, his new life was an improvement over a hut in Nigeria with no running water. Involuntary immigrants don’t think that way, he says. They have no separate homeland to compare things to, yet see the academic demands made of them as robbing them of their culture. Ogbu would like to see involuntary immigrants, such as the black families in Shaker Heights, think more like voluntary immigrants. Ion doing that, he says, they’ll understand that meeting academic challenges does not “displace your identity.

The parents who invited Ogbu to Shaker Heights are uncertain about what to do with his theory. They know he is one of the preeminent scholars in his field, and yet his premise makes many of them uncomfortable and angry. They insist that they care deeply about education which many say is the reason they moved to Shaker Heights. They feel betrayed by the very person they turned to for help.

Khalid Samad, the parent who compares Ogbu to Clarence Thomas, believes the professor fails to understand the black experience in America and how that creates problems for African-American students. “The system has de-educated and miss-educates African Americans,” he says. “Africans came here having some knowledge of who they were and their history and they had a self-acceptance. For several generations there has been a systematic robbing African Americans of their sociocultural identity and their personal identity. The depth of that kind of experience has created problems we’re still grappling with today.”

Meanwhile, Howard Hall, a black Shaker Heights parent who is a child physiologist and professor as Case Western University , believes Ogbu had his mind made up before he even started his research. “It’s scandalous to blame the kids for this,” he says. “It’s a good school system, but there are weaknesses in addressing the racial disparity and it’s not the parents’ fault. Effective schools set up an environment where most kids reach their potential.

Ogbu’s theory did find some support among black parents. Although they are in the minority, these parents believe he’s pointed out a painful but powerful truth, and are happy to see it aired. “I already held this position before he did his research,” says Nancy Jones, who has one child in the district and two who have graduated. “You can’t get African-American parents to get involved and stay involved.”

Jones says she is sick of the finger-pointing and blaming in her community, and was thrilled to see Ogbu highlight why this is detrimental;. “We come from this point of view of slavery and victim hood and every problem is due to racist white people,” she says. “That victim mentality is perpetrated by parents and they’re doing their kids a disservice. …My primary objective is not to hold someone accountable but to close the achievement gap.”

Other parents also agree with Ogbu, Jones says, and will admit it privately, but publicly, it’s too politically charged. “When you’re in a public setting people are less apt to speak their mind if they think it’s politically incorrect.”

Sadly, Jones says, harsh criticism of Ogbu’s Shaker Heights work has made any positive change nearly impossible. “Experts are telling the parents, ‘The research wasn’t good,’ and, ‘Disregard him,’” she says. “Besides, the parents’ gut instinct tells them the district is at fault. When you have that many academics trashing him, it’s easy to write off his conclusions. I’m having my doubts his work is going to motivate African-American parents and kids.”

Snowflake Babies

2005-08-09T07:55:00.000-07:00

My wife told me about a news report she heard about "Snowflake Babies." These are frozen human embryos which have been salvaged by pro-life advocates who have "adopted" them; that is, placed them in-vitro and carried to full pregnancy as a fully formed human being.

The point for these folks seems to be: Look, these embryos are human beings...killing an embryo is killing a person. You can read more about what some of these folks are saying at http://www.family.org/cforum/fnif/news/a0036674.cfm.

Now, I must say these people (at least the female ones) are putting their bodies where their mouths are, and I admire that. I admire them in the same way I admire people who recycle everything...not just the usual stuff but, like, old soda-can pull-tops and used yarn and phlegm. They are so focused! So energetic and enthused!

But what interests me is where this energy comes from. It's clear that these folks think an embryo, frozen or not, is a person and has a soul...or at least has the potential to be a person. I'm curious where these folks would draw the line. Does an unfertilized egg constitute life? Or is the moment of fertilization the magical birth? What about all those gyrating sperm? Is Odin a murderer?

It seems to me that we are simply parts. We come from parts, we are made from parts, and we will decay into parts. It seems to me much of religion and faith in a soul is an attempt to deceive ourselves of this very basic fact of life. Parts is parts.

If that is true, is the "murder" of a potential-person for the potential curing of other people a bad thing. If you say yes, then what about this: How many living, breathing, pooping babies are right now being "murdered" to keep you healthy and comfortable? Maybe they are not being macheted (though some undoubtedly are); some are malnourished, impoverished and/or are ill and have no medical insurance. They die while you and I write silly pseudo-intellectualized blog posts. And perhaps putting an embryo in your body is more comfortable--yes, I said it--than seeking to discover the atrocities that are being perpetrated around the world, and in our country, and in your own town.

Okay, that's a little preachy, but it seems to me we are surrounded by abortions. Walk down any urban street and you'll see a handful of them, homeless and friendless and lost. Who's going to stick these in their uterus?

As much as admire the chutzpah of these Snowflake Baby rescuers, I don't think giving a cute name to DNA and providing a human stove to bake it in is a solution the big-picture problems.

Bullshit: PETA stop littering!

2005-08-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

So I just found a flyer on my doorstep. It says "Roadside Hellholes" and it has pictures of a black bear and a monkey in a cage. Open up the flyer and there are more pictures (a sad gorilla gazing out through bars, lions in a cage, some monkeys) and the caption at the top of the page reads WHAT YOU WILL SEE WILL BREAK YOUR HEART. At the bottom of the flyer is a Toronto Sun columnist saying "Picture a mental hospital in Victorian England complete with blood-curdling, relentless screams."

What you can do to help the animals, says PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals): 1. Never pay a visit to a roadside zoo. 2. Write a letter to newspapers, Chamber of Commerce, etc to voice your opinion about roadside zoos.

Okay, look PETA...what the hell is a roadside zoo? I've never seen one. Has anybody seen a raodside zoo in Northern California? Whoever left this flyer on my doorstep has got to know that the only friggin zoos in this area are the Oakland Zoo and the San Francisco Zoo (both of which, as zoos go, seem pretty friggin awesome) and the Alexander Lindsey Museum, an amazing place which cares for animals while it educates the public about conservation. So who am I trying to shut down?

Either this is 1) a way for PETA to get its name out there in a positive light...like me handing out flyers saying "DON'T SUPPORT HITTING PEOPLE IN THE KNEES WITH BASEBALL BATS--HORRIFIC SCREAMS!" or 2) PETA actually wants to shut down major zoos--ALL major zoos. In both cases, PETA is full of it.

Look PETA, I saw Penn and Teller's show on Showtime called BULLSHIT. They told me all about you...about how your CEO is a fanatic, about how you equate imprisoned animals with humans in the Holocaust, about how you preach that all animal testing and products (even medicine) derived from animals is like unholy water (even though your officers use these medicines themselves), and about how PETA condones arson and fear-evoking tactics to get "the job" done. And you know what? Penn and Teller told all this to me while doing cool magic tricks. And they didn't leave a friggin flyer on my doorstep. How many trees, PETA, were cut down to support your littering of doorsteps, huh? How many squirrels and birds and rabbits who have learned how to climb trees are now without a home? What about THAT?! You know where all those animals are, I bet? Either dead or in ZOOS, you stupid PETA people!

So keep your trash to yourself. I'm going to write a letter to Penn and Teller and tell them to do another show on you. And I bet they will. Why? Because Penn gave his daughter the middle name of "crime-fighter." How cool is that? That sounds a lot better than "Free Willy." Stop littering my neighborhood!

Grossest Thing I've Heard this Year

2005-07-31T21:10:00.000-07:00

I have to share this with others.

A friend explained to me that her dog Oscar enjoys eating poo. A lot of poo. In fact, Oscar went for a romp out in the woods where, evidently, there aren't bathrooms for miles. Oscar came home and puked feces all over BOTH Oriental rugs...human feces.

Shit-vomit. Is there anything grosser?

Perhaps the dog eating the shit-vomit off the rugs? Yes, that would do it. Oscar you are one sick dog.

Social Experiment #15: Clan Bake

2005-07-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

For the many years I've played on-line computer games, I have smirked at the thousands of gamers who are a part of a clan. Finally, out of curiousity I decided to join one.

A clan is a team of players who dedicate time to practicing together and competing together. Clans will set up times to play other clans, and web-sites indicate who has the best record in the world. Thus, certain clans garnish a reputation in the cyber-world as being bad-ass, others for being friendly and some for being sneaky.

I was recruited by a member of a clan as we played what is called a "Pub-style" game (I'm not sure whether this means public--open to everybody--or Pub--as in we are down in the pub drinking a Guiness and watching O'Conner light his farts on fire). The game is called Call of Duty; it is a World War II first-person shooter, which means you see your gun in front of you as you move around a 3-D city, landscape, etc. You can use about a dozen different weapons, and the best players are able to take out 4 or 5 or 12 enemies for every time they are killed. As you play, you can "talk" to others via a small display at the bottom of the screen. My screen name is halftard* and the player who recruited me is named Reaper. Here is how my recruitment happened:

Reaper: "Hey HT are you this good or just getting lucky?"
Halftard: "Oh I am THIS good. And I'm good looking."
Reaper: "Want to try out for our clan?"
Halftard: "Sure. What do I have to do?"
Repear: "Go to our server and start practicing with us. You'll be asked to join if you are dedicated. How old are you?"
Halftard: "Okay. I'm 36. But my maturity level is more like 12. How about you?"
Reaper: "lol I'm 16. Our clan leaders are about your age so you'll get along."

I have some observations to make. First, I am being recruited by a 16 year old--who also is probably better than me at the friggin game. Second, he is extremely nice--almost excruciatingly so (another clan member spent about two hours helping me set up my clan-membership. Third, he could be Jessica Simpson for all I know. As I went through the process of joining the clan--I am now a full-fledged member--I began to think about the strange society of the computer age and especially the cyber-space of gamers. Everybody wants to know some details about you (age, gender, maybe where you are from) but nobody seems to volunteer or even ask for much more beyond that. Decorum seems to require that we allow our interactions to remain somewhat anonymous, or perhaps nobody really cares to find out who these other people are. Clan-members interact with each other on a daily basis; I've got to assume that many of these people spend more time with each other than some of their family members. Yet all they "know" of each other is a screen-name and a cyber-voice. Such anonymity could engender racism, verbal abuse, etc--and it does sometimes on pub-style servers. But those in the clan I've talked to so far have been extraordinarily courteous and nice...which makes sense, i guess; nobody wants a clan of arrogant racists. {insert joke about our government here}

In fact, they've asked me to change my screen name because it might offend some people (I changed it to Ophelia). And at some point I said the word "ass" and Reaper said people weren't allowed to swear on the clan server (I stopped swearing). Here we had teen-agers asking a grown man to think about how his actions might be affecting others. I wondered whether I would be as open to the feedback if it happened in my classroom? In cyber-space, even though I know (or suspect) that some are kids, I don't really give much thought to who I'm talking to; race, age, gender don't affect my judgement. And I am being judged strictly by my actions--not because I am an adult, a teacher, a handsome hunk of love, etc.

So is cyber-space the new frontier of democracy? I read an article by a French journalist who noticed the democracy of our freeways--you have old cars, new cars, expensive cars, crappy cars all moving at whatever speeds and in whatever lanes the drivers choose. In France, a honk from an expensive car will cause a pedestrain one to pull over and make way for the royalty. In cyber-space, anybody can honk--and you don't even need to own a license or a car.

By the way, as the newest clan member I start as a priavte. That means any higher-ranking kid, man, woman, Star Trek geek wearing a "Live Long and Prosper" T-Shirt in the clan can give me orders. I hope I don't run into one of my students here...

*some background information about my screen-name is worth mentioning. I teach at a high school which has a program for Emotionally Disturbed children. These children are not necessarily dim-witted, bad learners or limited by learning disabilities (though some may be). These kids have special needs which need to be addressed so they can learn: problems at home may cause them to "act out" or cut class; they have anger issues, social fears which paralyze them in the classroom, etc. A few years ago, one of my particularly bright (and mischievious) students was in the ED program, which meant he spent at least one period each day in the ED classroom. When a new teacher asked why he and his Ed buddy had to go to this classroom each day, the kid repsonded "We're halftards." Thus, I wear my on-line name in loving memory of this student.

Making a Case for Racism Part II

2005-07-10T19:21:00.000-07:00

A friend passed on a blog I wrote a while ago (read 'Making a Case for Racism') to a forum/discussion about issues pertaining to racism and white guilt. You can read the discussion at http://www.livejournal.com/community/debunkingwhite/195163.html.

It's a smart discussion and about 45 points are brought up which I feel compelled to respond to; however, I have had three glasses of wine and I doubt I could be coherent. Ergo, I will simply relate the end of the story with Will.

Will failed. The contract which we set up did absolutely nothing as far as motivation was concerend. He continued to blow off homework, and he continued to perform poorly on some tests (though he did well on most tests which did not require him to study...like vocabulary). Some other details: Will lived with sister, not his parents. His father is not in the picture and his mother lives on the east coast. His sister was as frustrated as I was with Will's performance, but at the time she was nursing a newborn baby so trying to motivate Will obviously was not first on the priority list. The ill feelings of Will's family toward the school (i.e. that racism existed and was not being properly addressed) seemed to continue. Will told me that if he failed his freshman year that he would be returning to his mother's home back east, something which he said he did not want to do (he said that he was made fun of for doing well in school there; in a primarily black school he was called Oreo for selling out and doing well). Of course, what 9th graders say they want and what they actually want can be quite different.

So the end of the story? It seems Will will be moving East, our school will lose one of only 3 or 4 black students, and I think all parties lose.

I'm not sure I've found a satisfactory answer to the question of should a white teacher in a predominantly white school treat a black student differently. My friend Alysse brings up the idea of equality and equity being different things, and I think she's right. What she's saying goes beyond race (students with special needs are certainly treated differently, but this "unequal" treatment is meant to provide a fair opportunity for learning). So within the murkiness of making things "equitable" in regards to race I suppose we just muddle our way through student by student.

Will has the capability to succeed academically, and at some point he'll decide to start working. But the school system, which of course is just a microcosm for our entire financial, judicial and social systems, isn't working properly. And it seems like very, very few people are truly working on fixing this particular problem.

Here's a different issue/question: How do we get more black students to come to this school? And once we do how do we hold on them? We just failed 25% of them! How do we get even one black teacher (we have zero black men/women on staff. ZERO!) here? I've been told that the school has tried to attract black educators but there's been little interest. That may or may not be true (it's hard to argue that the school has been doing a fair job when we have ZERO black teachers). I think if I was a black man I would not want to live and/or teach in this community because even though the kids are motivated, I'd feel like I was in shark-infested waters.

Why Southern California Sucks

2005-07-09T13:24:00.000-07:00

I've finally figured out what irks me about the people in Southern California and why after two days in Manhattan Beach I start to twitch. It's not the smog or the Hummers or the omni-tattoos around biceps and calves. It's not the materialism--we have that just as bad in Northern California--and it's not the classism and blandness of white-ism. It's not the fake boobs (hell, I've lined up dollar bills to get closer looks at those) or the traffic or the McMansions springing up.

It's the fact that this lady cut me off with her stroller and didn't say excuse me.

She didn't even hesitate; she just blasted on past me, almost excising my big (and my favorite) toe in the process. She didn't look up, she didn't give a furtive glance or look around sheepishly. Nor did any of the surrouding pedestrians have the slightest problem with what had happened. None of them had even noticed.

Trying to parallel park on Highland, I turned on my blinker as I slowed to a stop just past the open parking space. I prepared to back in only to be blocked from behind (from WAY behind) by a woman driving a SUV (which was cooler than mine except for the color) yapping on her cell phone next to her 15 year old daughter who was yapping away in the passenger seat on her own cell phone. She stopped right at my bumper. And then she realized that I was not going to move out of HER way, so she backed up--about one foot. She backed up another foot and continued to yap on the phone while backing up. I had choices here. I could have stood my ground and forced the lady to force the line of cars behind her to move. But I just sped off. Why? Because I'm from the land of Northern California where we are fair-minded and diverisfied and tolerant, where we recycle and read high-minded books. Okay, no, it's because I didn't want to flip out in front of my ten-year old boy and his best friend.

It's not like these are evil people. Or even Republicans. They just don't have empathy. They don't seem to be able to see that their actions are affecting other people. A person in So Cal will cut you off not because he's out to get you; he just doesn't have a clue that his actions may be affecting you in any way. After cutting you off, he may even look up from his Palm Pilot and wave at you and smile. In fact, if you're from, say, New York, and you travel to L.A. you may be overwhelmed by the number of smiling faces and "niceness" you'll find here. The women will smile at you, the metrasexual men will smile at you...especially if you are white, blond and at least somewhat female. That is, until they cut you off and run over your fucking toe.

If you're from New York, you know that the person who cuts you off knows damn well what he did. In New York, drivers will speed up just so they can cut you off (and then scream "Get off the road!"). It's an open act of agression which I find sort of endearing. The New Yorker has empathy; he just chooses to ignore it. Or maybe it has to do with revenge. In Boston, my friend would wait at a red light, four cars back, his hand poised above his horn. The instant the light turned green he would lay on his horn, pushing it as if his full weight would force a louder blaring from it. He never tired of this game because he knew he was pissing people off. Now that's empathy!

I think if I had told off the lady in the car New York style, she would have been genuinely shocked. I don't think it would even have occurred to her that I was there in the first place. And if I had stopped the lady with the stroller and said "How about an excuse me?" I think I would have gotten a mumble, a dismissal. Why should my toe matter to her? At least my friend from Boston would have the decency to back up and run over my other one.

My Wife is Spotting

2005-06-30T18:43:00.000-07:00

I am teaching my wife how to work out with weights. Today, I had her "spot" me. I used all of the pedagogical techniques at my disposal to teach her how to spot somebody. First, I showed her what to do, using verbal directions as well as visual demonstrations. I told her where to stand, and I even repeated the directions. Then I began doing curls. As I reached muscle failure on my last set, my arm slowly urged the dumb-bell up and then stopped only half-way through the rep. My wife stood there staring at me, the dumb-bell, and, without moving an inch, said "Ah, naw, you're done." After I collapsed and finished cursing, I explained to her that "Ah, naw, you're done" might not be the most appropriate method of helping somebody achieve their goal. In fact, "spotting" means your supposed to help the person you're spotting (not to be confused with heckling). I did two more reps with my wife reluctantly pushing the dumb-bell up with her hand while silently giggling at the strangeness of the whole thing. I could tell exactly what she was thinking: "If it's so damn hard why don't you just stop, jackass!"

Joyce's ULYSSES: Over-rated

2005-06-28T21:38:00.000-07:00

That's right; I said it. It sucks.

I have a few friends who revere this novel, and they join countless critics and literary aficionados who claim Ulysses is one of the greatest works of mankind. In fact, I recently saw a list of the best 100 novels ever--and Joyce's work was #3, beaten out only by Don Quixote and War and Peace. Yet whenever I ask anybody why Ulysses is so incredible, I invariably get a confused look...as if I had just asked whether breathing was a good thing. Somebody will say it's a breakthrough novel (whatever that means) and another will say it's the best stream-of-consciousness work ever written. And somebody else will sputter out the words "timeless" and "post-modern".

In other words, nobody can tell me a damn thing.

Ulysses is a failed novel. Sure, it's an innovative work, staggering in its attempt to break the genre. A critic of Kenneth Brannaugh's film Love Labor's Lost said something which is important here. The film, which attempts to take Shakespeare's play and transform it into a muscial, doesn't work. The critic admits that it doesn't work--but he also says that we must admire and congratulate the film-maker for taking such a risk, for striving to produce something new. We must apply the same standards to Joyce. He tried something new, and others have since built on this work. The publishers should be congrulated too, for publishing such a work was a huge risk, a breaking of the "genre" of publishable work. How many publishing houses today would touch such experimental writing (especially a work of fiction in an industry which publishes 75% non-fiction)?

The tipping of hats to valiant attempts--sure, that's important; however, the fact remains the novel is a failure. The purpose of a novel is broad, perhaps, but it is definable, I think. We read it to be entertained; we read to escape our mundane lives. We read to learn what it is like to be stranded on a desert island, to look evil in the face, to be worshipped, to be humiliated and destroyed...ultimately, we read to experience all that there is to be experienced. Often that experience is tied to how we see characters interacting in the world--and how that world pushes back. Or we see the world from the perspective of the characters themselves, hearing their voices or seeing the world filtered through their eyes (or even through their minds). The ability to experience becomes difficult when the world is filtered entirely. It becomes more difficult when there is no perceivable journey.

You are already thinking of a rebuttal. Let me sum up your options:
1) You say: "You've convinced me. You're arguments are eloquent. You are good looking. Here, take some naked pictures of my wife. And here are some throw cushions for your home."
2) You say: "Oh yeah? Well your mama is so fat that she broke her leg and gravy came out."
3) You say: "The novel is not a static genre. In fact, Joyce's novel caused us to re-examine what a novel is; he widened the genre."

My response:
1) You are a reasonable person. Now I'd like to share with you my ideas about why "horticulture" is neither a culture or a whore.
2) I too have seen White Men Can't Jump and your mama is so poor that when she had to move homes she kicked a can down the street.
3) Joyce widened nothing but the gap between the masses and the intellectual elite who love to cling to books and words which the proliteriat cannot begin to fathom. No--Ulysses is not a novel. A piece of experimental writing? Yes? Narrative stream of wretchedness? Yes. But, no it's not a genre-widening piece. I could take a dump on a statue of Buddha and call it art, but I hope nobody would say that I've just widened art (or Buddha).

Don Quixote, the Man of Las Vegas

2005-06-24T15:41:00.000-07:00

Art and Life continue to molest each other:

I brought Cervantes' Don Quixote to read on my recent Las Vegas trip, a four-day bachelor/bachelorette feista for my good friends Nate and Sarah. As I lounged by the pool of the Hard Rock Hotel (a fruity drink in one hand and my Cervantes in the other), a found compelling evidence that Don Quixote was indeed among our party in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is a world of illusion. It is the solidified and actualized mirage in the desert--the one mirage which you can see and touch and drink from and get arrested in. The boundaries between illusionary and real become blurred (and as you drink more fruity drinks almost everything becomes blurred). In a way, when you travel to Vegas you become mad. Even now, less than 24 hours back, I find the strong urge to tip people wherever I go. Of course, Don Quixote's madness was focused; he saw himself as a knight and his surroundings were adventures to be had. This specific madness is the kind you feel in Vegas.

When you sit down at a blackjack table, you are seeking that moment of your destiny. You know you are destined to win--why else would you play? You may try to trick yourself into believing you play Craps for the free drinks, the comraderie or just for the thrill of it--but the deeper truth is you long for that moment when you go "all in" in Texas Holdem and rake in the chips; it's not about the money; it's about realizing your moment of glory, the moment you've always known would come to you.

Las Vegas, of course, feeds this belief that you are in a land of fairydom and magic and power. Scantily-clad cocktresses lean towards you to accept your gracious tips (you're like a king bestowing gifts really), carriages in the form of taxis are just a whistle away (and you will never have to do the whistling yourself), and you return to a bed fluffy and well-made by Latino-like elves (who also perfume your bathroom and remove the unpleasant remains of last night from the waste-can).

Like Don Quixote, you rush headlong into this dream. You are a knight! And you will be known! And more often than not, you are beaten about the head, body and soul. You step up to the Craps table and within 15 minutes you've lost 300 dollars. And even if you win, you party so hard that you fall down an escalator and tear open your knee. You lose your wedding ring. You get sunburnt and a hangover after 6 pool-side Margaritas at $13.50 a pop. After your fourth drink, you go for a swim with your cell phone. That night you spend $57.00 tipping the topless dancer waggling your two new silicon friends in front of you; you are certain that the two of you have made a "connection." She doesn't call...either because she threw away your number or because your cell phone is broken.

Some might say your "knighthood" is a joke. And you probably agree as you return to reality, broke and broken in spirit. I'm only partly through Don Quixote, but I doubt he will ever return to reality. And the final tragedy is that you never will either. That part of you that knows you are fated to achieve your destiny (whether that means hitting a jackpot or finding the three girls of your dreams) is still there--and it will be fulfilled the next time you go to Vegas and BY GOD THERE WILL BE A NEXT TIME!

Perhaps that isn't a tragedy but just human nature. And perhaps the joke that you are is the joke we all are--and the joke is not mean but joyful. The moral of the story I suppose is to follow your dreams wherever they take you--because you can't help but do so. And where else but in your dreams can you see your friend Nate dancing to "Planet Rock" alone on the dance floor of Cleopatra's Barge, doing what appears to be a bizarre rendition of "the robot?"

Comics

2005-05-27T18:36:00.000-07:00

Just about anybody who's reading comics these days knows Brian Michael Bendis is writing some incredible stuff. His pen has been all over Spider-man, the New Avengers and Daredevil. I highly recommend picking up the latter. I just got part three in his newest storyline: Decalogue. The superhero is rarely even drawn in a single panel. The story is about a group of citizens from Hell's Kitchen who are holding a meeting in a church conference room--almost like an AA meeting--to discuss how Daredevil has affected their lives. Thus, although Daredevil is "absent" from the books, he is the central figure throughout. One story is about a man who is the son of an imprisoned hit-man, a bomber for hire who once planted a bomb to try and kill Matt Murdock. The father passes on a mission to his son, a hit on Murdock's best friend, Foggy. I won't tell you what happens, but the story is about an ordinary guy who has to choose between salvaging a relationship with his father and doing the "right" thing. Each chapter has brought in some sort of conflict which is grounded in a more realistic style than we see in most books. That's not to say there aren't supernatural elements--there are--but the stories are told from the point of view of humans, not super-humans (similar to Alex Ross' Marvels).

Another book worth checking out is the Ultimates: Galactus Nightmare, the first in trio of books about the coming of Galactus. This is not the David and Goliath story of yore where a big guy in a purple suit gets appeased by Reed Richards. This is some bleak, scary stuff. Here's a glimpse: long, long ago the Russians found an alien guy who came to warn us of impending doom. Did they listen? Hell, no. InsteaD, they dissected him and stuck his parts on soldiers, turning them into superfreaks. Then they buried them in a bunker when funds for the program ran out--where they stayed (along with the alien, still alive even after all the salvaging of his parts). The alien (what's left of him) sends out a message, cuz evidently the time of Galactus' arrival is imminent. The Ultimates send a team to investigate. The X-men send a team to investigate. And they have to battle through a nightmarish dungeon of crazy-ass Russian mutants. Sam Wilson, aka the Falcon, is introduced and his character rocks. He is a techno-whiz (he creates his wings), and we get to see his first meeting with Captain America, Sgt Fury and teh Black Widow. The writing here was fun--and maybe even ground-breaking. I realized that this is the first time I've EVER seen a major comic book scene in which the black guy was clearly the smartest one on the team--and that detail was amplified by the way Captain America bows to Wilson's mental prowess. I'll say no more except that the alien turns out to be a major character from the old Avengers. It's a smart way to introduce him.

Death of a Colleague

2005-05-18T18:38:00.000-07:00

Today a teacher at my school died. A couple of weeks from retirement--after 25 or 30 years of teaching--he had a mild heart attack. He was expected to recover. He passed away quietly sitting in his back yard.

He was not a good teacher. I would have to say, objectively, he was a bad teacher, one who did not teach his students the skills they needed to succeed at the next level of education.

Just this morning, our department was planning, half-heartedly, some "nice" things to do for him at the end-of-the-year faculty luncheon. Although he was not planning to return to school, he would return for the luncheon; he was the type of man who needed that sense of closure, or more to the point, to hear nice things said about him.

Today, people were talking about having a memorial for him on campus somewhere. I understand, I think. A comrade has fallen. It's true; no matter what you think of how he measured up as a teacher or what kind of man he was, the fact remains that he was one of us. And death quakes the living. Some need a way to fight back, I suppose, and so they reach for flowers and memorials and each other. A memorial would be fine--but honestly it would not be a testomonial to the man or the teacher. "He was a nice guy but a horrible teacher." I doubt anybody will profane the dead in this way. Thus, this monument will be for the living, a premptive strike against our own deaths. One teacher reacted to his death by saying, "We are going to fucking die here." Yes, we will. He was talking about this high school, but widen the scope and it's still true. We're all going to die here, there or wherever. And so we will build a memorial to the nice man who had a hard life and wasted the time of many of his students because we are all going to die and now one more of us is dead and what else is there to do?

I'll leave you (the two people reading this) with a poem by Stephen Dunn which seems appropriate.

On the Death of a Colleague

She taught theater, so we gathered
in the theater.
We praised her voice, her knowledge,
how good she was
with Godot and just four months later
with Gigi.
She was fifty. The problem in the liver.
Each of us recalled
an incident in which she'd been kind
or witty.
I told how she'd placed her hand
where the failure was,
taught me to speak from my diaphragm.
I was on stage
and heard myself wishing to be impressive.
Someone else spoke
of her cats and no one spoke
of her face
or the last few parties.
The fact was
I had avoided her for months.
It was a student's turn to speak, a sophomore,
one of her actors.
She was a drunk, he said, often came to class
reeking.

Sometimes he couldn't look at her, the blotches,
the awful puffiness.
And yet she was a great teacher,
he loved her,
but thought someone should say
what everyone knew
because she didn't die by accident.

Everyone was crying. Everyone was crying and it
was almost over now.
The remaining speaker, an historian, said he'd cut
his speech short.
And the Chairman stood up as if by habit,
said something about loss
and thanked us for coming. None of us moved
except some students-
to the student who'd spoken, and then others
moved to him, across dividers,
down aisles, to his side of the stage.

You will be assimilated

2005-05-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

From my friend Jonathan's blog (http://miniver.blogspot.com), you too are turned to the creepy world of children as aliens:

Go here now: http://www.whatisdeepfried.com/zogg/zogg1.html

Resistence is futile.

Doldrums

2005-05-09T17:50:00.000-07:00

I find myself returning to perennial question: Is this IT?

Thirty six years old, a clever home, a family, a job teaching motivated children, a Rottweiler, a decent jump-shot, steady bowel movements and a nascent wine-collection. My wife doesn't like me playing video games so much; I'm addicted she says. And she's probably right. But I like them, and we fight about them (among other things). And I stop, mostly, until I un-stop. I like them because in the fantasy land of first person shooters, I am in control, I stop thinking about...well, everything. I disconnect.

When I return to the world, I'm a bit groggy, sometimes cranky and almost always completely unfulfilled. So, usually, I turn back for more. Which is when my wife gets REALLY angry. I can tell she's angry because her shoe is hitting me on the head, and her arm is attached to it (the shoe, that is) and her face is kind of red and squishy like she just bit down on a hot chile pepper.

I get depressed when my wife doesn't like me. But then I get more depressed when I realize, why should she like me? I mean, I don't really like me--otherwise I wouldn't spend so much time forgetting about myself. Or maybe it's my life I don't like--or is there a difference?

I shouldn't complain because I've got all those things I listed before, plus a step-son who can write better poetry than me and a new fan which has three speeds and a timer. And yet, I find myself sighing through much of the day. I worry about racism. I think most teachers at my school whine a lot. I don't have enough money to buy a hot tub with a lounge seat and adjustable jets. IS THIS ALL THERE IS?

I turn to Camus: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering this fundamanetal question of philosophy. All the rest--whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine to twelve categories--comes afterward." A little later: "I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument." I'd have to agree with Albert here; having raised the toilet seat of my existence, I have not seen anything so unpleasant or disturbing which would drive me to give it all up.

Does that mean that all of my questioning, my existential angst and such, is just superfluous whining? I mean, I've made my decision, right? I got out of bed and decided NOT to kill myself. Not conscciously perhaps--and maybe that is an even better sign. I didn't even consider suicide an option this morning as I bit into my apple fritter and found it was stale. Or would the consideration of suicide, going through the decision-making process each morning make life BETTER? Is that my problem? Am I not suicide-worthy? Should I go into therapy and ressurect the depressing landscape of my childhood? THEN there'd be some reasons to stick my head in a stove!

It seems to me that having consciously or unconsciously decided to live means that I shouldn't get to be afraid or disturbed or worried about anything. I don't know a damn thing. I don't know what to do with my life, what would be fulfilling, whether there is a God or whether LOST will make it to a second season; I don't know whether I'm making a difference in people's lives or what I should do to have butt-loads of fun like I did when I was in college and lived off my parents' fortune with six other guys who punched holes in the ceiling. I don't know a thing, and yet I've decided to not kill myself. Ergo: even with all of this uncertainity, life is not horrifying or boring enough for me to end it. The rest is gravy--big vats of thick, steaming gravy with bacon in it. To complain about anything at this point seems absurd.

So really, shouldn't I just get to play all the video games I want?

From Iraq

2005-04-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

The following is from an ex-student of mine; he graduated from high school last year and, apparantly, has fallen in love in the most unlikely of places (he is Gunner's Mate in the Navy) and in the most unlikely of circumstances (in the midst of a war).

He's not even twenty and he writes better than I do.

I always feel sad when the sun goes down. But then she is replaced with the scream and fire of the guns, and I am no longer sad. I am glad to be alive, behind these cannon, instead of on the shore, hearing the scream and not the boom.

This is a tiny, dark place, and in it's confines, I am a god.

The Little Asian Girl

2005-04-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

Today in AP English we continued our discussion of a film called The Color of Fear." The conversation turned to and then orbited around the use of language: Is it racist when somebody refers to Mexican gardeners?

"No, I have Mexican gardeners--that's what they are. It's simply the truth."

"But why do you have to say Mexican? Why not just say gardeners?"

"If somebody said they had a gardener in California, it's most likely they are Mexican. And I garauntee that if anybody here was asked to picture a gardener they would automatically picture a Mexican gardener. So why is bad to say what everybody is thinking?"

And the debate raced on. Then she raised her hand just as the bell rang, and I told the class they had to stop and listen because I already knew what was coming...not the specifics...but the thing which she needed to say and everybody needed to hear.

"When I was a Sophomore two kids were walking behind me and one of them said 'Get out of the way little Asian girl.'" She cried as she tried to find the words. Of course she found them because she had been thinking of them for two years. "What they said was true...I am Asian and I am little. That's the truth. But even though it was true, there was more behind the words. That is what hurt."

She is the best teacher these kids have ever had, speaking of what lies behind the truth, seeing it and finding the courage to speak of this place which is beyond words.

Rwanda, U.S.A.

2005-04-06T16:52:00.000-07:00

The following excerpts are from a book about to be published (taken from Harper's Magazine) about interviews of Hutu men imprisoned for killing Tutsis in the genoicide in Rwanda. Some of it is, obviously, tough reading...so if you're having a good day you may want to skip this one. However, for those who are stout at heart, it's worth reading. These words are not just the words of men living in some unreachable place, some foreign jungle of godless, demon-like primates. These are the words of intelligent, articulate and sometimes loving men...men who perhaps resemble those you sit next to on the bus, whom you jostle as you walk down the crowded city street, even those who you live with.

PANCRACE: Cutting corn or bananas, it's a smooth job, because ears of corn and bunches of bananas are all the same--nothing troublesome there. Cutting in the marshes, it was more and more tiring, you know the reason why. It was a similar motion but not a similar situation. It was more hazardous. A hectic job.

In the beginning the Tutsis were many and frightened and not very active--that made our work easier. But at the end only the strong and the sly ones were left, and it got too hard. Too often we would get all mired up for nothing. Plus, the marshes were rotting with bodies softening in the slime. They were piling up, stinking more and more, and we had to take care not to step in them.

ELIE: God and Satan seem quite contrasting in the Bible and the priest's sermons. The first one blazes with white and gold, the second with red and black. But in the marshes, the colors were those of muddy swamps and rotting leaves. It was as if God and Satan had agreed to cloud our eyes. We did not give a damn for either of them.

All the important people turned their backs on our killings. The blue helmets, the Belgians, the white directors, the black presidents, the humanitarian people and the international cameramen, the priests and the bishops, and finally even God. Did He watch what was happening in the marshes? Why did He not stab our murderous eyes with His wrath? Or show some small sign of disapproval to save more lucky ones? In those horrible moments, who could hear His silence? We were abandoned by all words of rebuke.

LEOPORD: It is awkward to talk about hatred between Hutus and Tutsis, because words changed meaning after the killings. Before, we could fool around among ourselves and say we were going to kill them all, and the next moment we would join them to share some work or a bottle. Jokes and threats were mixed together. We no longer paid heed to what we said. We could toss around awful words without awful thoughts. The Tutsis did not even get very upset. Since then we have seen: those words brought on grave consequences.

ALPHONSE: Some offenders claim that we changed into wild animals, that we were blinded by ferocity, that we buried our civilization under branches, and that's why we are unable to find the right words to talk properly about it.

That is a trick to sidetrack the truth. I can say this: outside the marshes, our lives seemed quite ordinary. We sang on the paths, we downed some beer, we had our choice amid abundance. We chatted about our good fortune, we soaped off our bloodstains in the basin, and our noses enjoyed the aromas of full cooking pots. We rejoiced in the new life about to begin by feasting on leg of veal. We were hot at night atop our wives, and we scolded our rowdy children. Although no longer willing to feel pity, we were still greedy for good feelings.

The days all seemed much alike. We put on our field clothes We swapped gossip, we made bets on our victims, spoke mockingly of cut girls, squabbled foolishly over looted grain. We sharpened our tools on whetting stones. We traded stories about desperate Tutsi tricks, we made fun of every "Mercy!" cired by someone hunted down, we counted up and stashed away our goods.

We went on with all sorts of human business without a care in the world--provided we concentrated on killing during the day, naturally.

This last man says they were not wild animals--and the way he says it leaves do doubt of the veracity of this statement. These men, even as they slaughter other men, are human--they return to civilization each night, to rest before the next day's bloody work. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Marlowe struggles to relate the horror of the atrocities he sees--and the ultimate horror, of course, is seeing himself: a man deluded by the idea of dichtomies...civilization vs. barbarity, religious zeal vs. baseness, morality vs. genoicide, good vs. evil, white vs. black. But what he finds is that savagery exists in civilization--is, in fact, engendered there. The most religious, civilized men, he finds, are the ones who condone the most barbaric acts towards natives.

Art mirrors life, in Africa and in America; these murderers are witnesses. Humanitarians, politicians, the media all look elsewhere as the machetes fall. Of course they look away. Who wants to see his own arm holding a bloody blade? Africa (whether it's the Congo or Rwanda) is not so far away...and neither is Iraq for that matter. Leopord tells us of the words they used to speak against the Tutsis. These words are the same words we utter every day against...well, fill in the blank. How often do our words result in mass murder? How often do our words set the stage for mass murder? We are not wild animals, but neither are the Hutus. As Alphonse tells us, to think so is to trick yourself, to trick yourself out of seeing the truth.

And so, the ultimate question is, naturally, what is the truth? Are we barbarians waiting for the moment to fall to our bloody day's work? Are we simply waiting for the barbarians to come for us, to destroy our civilized world?

Is there a difference?

I miss my boys

2005-04-05T11:43:00.000-07:00

Two of my former students are in Iraq.

One joined the war only a couple of weeks after the first strike. His unit was in charge of guarding a road into one of the major cities the U.S. had occupied. When he came back he looked healthy and excited to be back. He told of 130 degree heat (in the shade), the Iraqis he'd met, doing the "job". He said he was going back because our troops were dying, that it was unsafe, that the military needed more competent people like him--and that, ulitmately, we needed to get all of our soldiers the hell out of there. Too many were dying, every day...his friends, his American comrades.

Another ex-student is stationed on a ship, so he doesn't see the war up close. What he does see is low morale and incompetence. He says it sadly: "I'm surrounded by people who cannot even practice basic hygiene." Many of these sailors are on the ship, he says, because they needed a way out of a crappy existence. They don't follow orders, he says. They don't want to lead. He says it is up to him to teach them discipline and raise their self-esteem, that the "great" U.S. military is anything but. I can hear how tired he is through his writing. Each month I get another communicado, and I can hear how isolated he feels: a smart, clever young mind, a noble guy wanting to do good and surrouded by mediocrity.

If either of these men were to come to harm, I don't think I could ever recover my hope for our country and our world. Sometimes, it is necessary to die, and sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice our young people. This is not one of them. I want them home.

A lost lady and a (not) dead cat

2005-03-30T21:37:00.000-08:00

As my friend Dino dropped me off after another humiliating basketball defeat, a car drove up and stopped in the middle of the road--a middle aged lady needing directions.

I told her to pull to the side of the road. And she did--sort of. She was looking for the San Rafael Bridge which was so far away I had no idea how to get her there at first. Plus, the lady was not very smart, so I knew my directions would have to be more detailed than they might be if I was talking to a smart person.

Just then my friend Dino ran into the middle of the street. A cat had just been hit by a car.

"A cat has just been hit by a car!" I told the lady. "I'll be right back."

The cat didn't look like a cat anymore. It was black, and it's legs twisted up in the air unnaturally, like it's spine had been twisted. It's mouth was the only part visible of it's head; the jaw was open in a smiling grimace. We watched as it twitched and my wife, Jake, came running out.

"Call the police!" Dino said

"Or animal control!" I said. "And how do you get to the San Rafael Bridge?!"

Too late. Jake had gone inside. The cat lay in the middle of Broadway, a long busy street. Dino and I stood over the cat waving frantically at cars speeding towards us. Cars eventually stopped and then crept around us, but each time there was a scary moment as if we too would join the cat as some distracted (or angry) driver struck us.

Jake came outside again. "I called the police! Animal control is closed." Apparantly, animals do not injure themselves after business hours.

"This cat's dead," Dino said.

Leaving Dino to fend for himself--and the dead cat, a rushed back to the (somewhat) parked car of the middle-aged lady.

"Is the cat okay?" she asked.

"It's pretty messed up," I replied.

"Oh, that's too bad. I don't know how I got here. I was trying to get to 880..."

"You want to turn around and go to 24..."

"But I don't want to go to 24."

"That's how you get to the San Rafael Bridge. Jake! How do you get to the San Rafael Bridge?"

"Hey, this cat is moving!" Dino cried, a car downshifting to a stop just before him.

"It's off of the 80!" Jake shouted from the porch.

"Look," I told the lady, "Go to 24 then to 80 west and from there you'll see signs for the Bridge."

The lady looked at me like I had just given her a receipe instead of directions. "Well how did I get here?"

"Just go to the 24..."

"This cat is moving!!"

"..to the 80. To the Bridge."

"There was a split, and I took one way.."

"24. 80. Bridge."

And with that I ran off into the middle of the street to see the remains of the dead (dying) cat. The cat had indeed moved. It's legs were now under it and it's head was moving around. One eye was bloody but looked intact. We couldn't tell how badly it was injured. But surely it had broken bones.

And then it got up and walked off into the bushes. It was like the Terminator, pulling itself back together and moving on just as strong. Well, maybe not--it lay down in the middle of the sidewalk as if these were the last movements of a dying (injured) animal. We watched apprhensively: me, Dino, my brother who had joined the scene, my wife, and the middle-aged lady from the car (who was talking to herself).

Then the cat got up again and wobbled off. We followed it, and it ran across the street...in front of the middle-aged lady's car; she had turned around to head to the 24 on-ramp. She did not hit the cat.

The cat wandered up the street and disappeared down an alley way between houses; somehow there was a remarkable resemblence in the way this cat and the car moved out of sight, drunkenly, as if both were in fact not dying nor drunk nor defeated but merely confused and slightly or severely fucked-up by the sudden crashing of the world around them.

Over the Hill and Through the Lane

2005-03-17T21:17:00.000-08:00

I am eighteen years old. I could swear to Jeebus I am.

And then I walk on to the basketball court. I am gaurded by some plucky youngster, maybe twenty or so and I think:

I can take him. He thinks I'm old. He thinks I'm 37 years old. But he's wrong. I'm thirty-six, and, really, deep down in the marrow of my bones there are the latent red cells of a teen-ager waiting to be manifested. I am like some athletic Bruce Banner and once I get the ball in my hands I will explode with speed and stamina. Plus, I have experience on my side. I can toy with his mind, let him think I'm feeble perhaps even semi-retarded...and then I will strike, and his spirit will be crushed as I swoop to the hoop with the grace of an exotic dancer.

What happens is this: I clank a 15 feet jump shot, and then chase a fast-break the other way, guard the ball-handler who takes three steps past me before my first step begins to form and then cuts back outside to drain a three pointer. The entire process takes a few seconds. In that space of time I am thinking: MOVE LEGS!! WHY DON'T YOU MOVE?! HE'S MOVING RIGHT PAST YOU! CAN'T YOU SEE HIM?! RIGHT THERE!! NO!! THE OTHER WAY!! YOU LOOK LIKE A FOOL!!

For some reason, the humiliation is not enough to dissaude me; I actually believe that this moment was a fluke. The next time down the court will surely be different. I buy some new shoes. I tug my two knee braces tighter. I play Street Basketball on Play Station 2 and watch college basketball.

And the next week, the guy I'm guarding dunks on me. To be more accurate, he dunks OVER me.

My son wathes the next game. We are beaten by a lot. A lot of three pointers. I take three shots and manage to hit one of them. The shot is enough to convince me that deep inside me remains the most incredible basketball player to never play in the NBA. Just because I am six feet tall (if I wear thick socks) and kind of chubby and not all that fast is no reason to suspect that I cannot stay with any player of semi-pro caliber.

After the game my ten year old son says, "Don't worry, you did better than I could have...or Mom could have." It is only at this moment, when my son is patronizing me--not in a mean way but in a very caring way, trying to make me feel better (like a nurse telling an old man that it's okay that he just crapped his pants)--that it sinks in.

I suck at basketball. I am not eighteen.

He lists off all the people who couldn't have played as well as me. What he is saying (or at least what I hear) is 'here are all the people who suck worse than you'. He lists off his ten year old friend and his friend's five year old sister, our dog, his grandmother.

"Plus anybody who's dead," I say.

"That's right," he says. "Like Elvis. Plus he died sitting on the toilet."

"And armodillos!" I say. Ha ha. This is funny. Really.

"Yeah, and Mrs. Strange." That's his 4th grade teacher. We continue on, and I smile, starting to think about when it would be fair to start playing one-on-one with the kid.

The worse thing? By next week's game I will actually believe I am eighteen again.

Gryphon

2005-03-16T18:41:00.000-08:00

Sun-baked boy
Sapling legs and arms
Skin brown leaves
Yours are not the fawn's wobbling hooves
Nor the cub's oversized paws;
They are the steps of the ghost of a man.

I see you sometimes listening
Mouth agape, eyes unfocused on this world,
Gazing at a far off place
I call your name, always twice or thrice,
Calling you back;
I want to ask you what you hear
Instead I tell you to learn about things
To swim, to add, to clean, to sit,
To play, To hug me

If I could leave you alone
I think you would lower your ear
To the ground
And hear what the earth says.

Urban Iditarod

2005-03-07T15:27:00.000-08:00

This past week marked the 11th annual Urban Iditarod in San Francisco. I was not a part of this silliness, but I offer this confession: I have been part of the silliness...twice.

I'll refrain from a detailed explanation of the Urban Iditarod; a concise description is as follows: you, your friends, dog costumes, beer, running, a shopping cart, and more beer. Go here for a more thorough look: http://www.urbaniditarod.com/index.shtml.

I'll also refrain from telling you in which two years I was involved as to avoid any legal action which might otherwise occur. However, a friend recently pulled me aside and said, "Did you hear about this? We gotta do this! We really, really gotta do this!" So I tried to explain I had done this and why everybody is immorally obliged to participate at least once.

The starting line: I'm dressed as Underdog: red, one-piece pajamas, floppy ears, a black nose. My buddies are Krypto, Dyna-mutt, a wrecthed looking Scoobie Doo, Mister Peabody and Huckleberry Hound. We have a shopping cart filled with two cases of beer, ice, a CD player cued to blast various dog-themed songs, two bags of (Scoobie) snacks and some extra rope. The rest of the rope has been tied to the cart and made into loops which will be "harnassed" to our teams of dogs.

The start is a chaotic mess. At some point, somebody, possibly the event organizer, is giving a speech from atop a cement pylon. Somehow, I have ended up beside him and have decided to invent sign-language to help aid our hundred plus viewing audience. I am drunk and it is not yet noon. Soon thereafter somebody yells "Mush!" and we are hurtling forward, a horrid wave of dogs and assembled sleds. One sled is a fake dog the size of a one-story building. Another sled has an almost comatose female riding inside.

It seems as if we have just started running when we have stopped again, just outside a bar. The sounds of beers being cracked, assorted barking and baying noises and the cheers of humans-dressed-like-dogs-for-no-good-reasons ensues. A pack of svelte looking "bitches" is actually a group of cats posing as dogs. Also, this team has a limosine (smart kitties). I notice another Underdog and think about offering to rumble, but suddenly everybody is moving as if by insticnt or by the fact that policemen have gathered.

We run through traffic--through all of the traffic that San Francisco has to offer--down Market, acorss Market, zig-zagging through terrified motorists who must think that New Yorkers have finally invaded. Our shopping cart bumps awkwardly over the cable car tracks, threatens to tip over, and then rights itself with the help of Mr. Peabody's expert guidance. I notice that virtually everybody is running with at least one beer in hand. Another team (French poodles) passes us on our right and I throw some ice. They laugh and strike back with French obscenties. The police seem stuck. There is little chance of them stopping this fleet even if they tried. We stop at another bar and our team, along with others, is huffing. We've lost Scoobie. Only when we are about to start running again does he find us. We rejoice without the sniffing of crotches.

We are running again, and this time we've smartly located ourselves at the head of the pack, just behind the "lead dogs". As we hurtle through Union Square--I mean straight through it--through the displays of arts and crafts--we hear some patrons shout with glee "a parade!" and then some disgruntled cursing as they are jostled aside. One artist stands boldly in front of his wares shouting "You break it, you buy it!" Through Union square, we push up a steep street which separates the weak from the strong. We are definately not the strong, and by the time we've reached the top our team is decimated. Nobody wants to haul the friggin "sled" anymore. Scoobie has been lost again, and our beers are so shaken that every can opened is a blooming flower of foam. But we're at another bar...with police and people dressed like dogs and a sled that contains a giant fire hydrant and we quickly recover our enthusiasm.

We run again, and the pace is furious. We hit a down-slope, and dogs have to leap out of the way as some of the more fierce competitors jump on thier sleds and ride. I follow suit, and I'm hurtling down the street (avoiding cars by sheer good fortune) when the cart hits a cable car track and we (I have come to think of my sled as a friend) topple over spilling beer and ice and CD player and snacks throughout a major intersection. My team catches up and scrambles to save the beer. We leave the remains of the CD player behind and rush on to rejoin the race. As we sprint past a crosswalk, a spectator cries "What are you protesting?" She is immediately met with a flurry of replies: "Sobriety!" "You!" "I just sharted!" And then there is more barking.

The next bar is a blur of beer and war stories already being formed. And then we are off on the next leg which, thankfully, has no hills. We are running on love now. Ahead of us, a dog pulling a large cooler on wheels makes a sharp turn; his cooler zips in a wide arc and explodes as it hits a parked car. There are screams of terror and jubilation, and somebody starts barking. My cape is tangled and upsets my otherwise world-class speed, and I have lost an ear. We are trading off pulling and pushing our slightly bent sled (now empty), truly working as team that is out of shape, drunk and worried that the beer is almost gone. We pass a slumped body on one of the sidewalks--he's probably dead. The police are now blocking off intersections on our route giving us free play in the streets.

The last bar comes and we rest for only a moment; we decide that cheating is not just the only way to win--it's the best way. Before the rest of the teams have finished the rest period, we trek off down a side street and soon become lost. We backtrack to the bar and try to cheat again, this time heading straight down the last leg of the course as non-chalantly as men dressed like dogs can. We push and pull our sled up the longest hill in the entire universe and cross into the finish area, a verdant field of grass where dogs can fall down and rest weary beer-soaked bones. Two other teams are here already having cheated better than us; we overlook their treachery and proclaim ourselves champions.

When the rest of group finishes, we mingle, sharing our stories of our brilliance with all who will listen. Scoobie shows up with a pack of scantily-clad doggettes and Mr. Peaobody throws up. Krypto and I try to hitch-hike back to the starting line, but nobody will stop to pick us up. I scream at them as they pass by, laughing, shaking their heads:

"But I'm Underdog!"

Academic Blunders and Stretchmarks: the Rantings of an English Teacher

2005-03-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've posted. Why? I've been busy attending preparational meetings for a WASC visit to our school--and it's my year to be evaluated as a high school English teacher.

Maybe Arnold (the Governator)is right. Maybe we do need to destroy the public school system.

An administrator just walked into my class for an "informal observation". Luckily, my class kicks ass (informally).

Here is the form I am supposed to fill out (to show that my classroom teaching adheres to the proper formula):

Post Informal Observation Information Sheet

Teacher _______________ Date Informally Observed ______________

Period _______________ Class ______________

I. Lesson Objective as Stated by Teacher
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________

II. List the content (academic) standards and benchmarks used in this lesson for the students.
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________

III. List professional teaching standards incorporated in the lesson.

_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________

IV. List schoolwide student goals (SSG’s) addressed in the lesson and briefly explain connection.
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________

Thank you for your input.

What this means: for my lesson I should have three different sets of standards in mind as I teach. Presumably, for every lesson I teach I should have three different sets of standards bulwarking my otherwise feeble lessons.

I will confess something to you; other than this one lesson, I will not have a clue as to how these standards apply to my classroom on a daily basis. I am embarassed by this confession. I can feel you wondering whether or not my students are mastering Standard 3.5. Some of you are shaking your head, realizing that when it comes to professional teaching standard 1.4 I am a joke. I also must openly admit that I do not understand all of the SSGs (originally, I thought an SSG was a gastro-intestinal illness).

Teachers are supposed to hang a large copy of the Standards and Benchmarks in our class, which I have dutifully done--right above the garbage can. Any of my students can crumple paper and throw a bank-shot off the large laminated sheet. Yes, it is laminated. It is the only thing laminated in my classroom, as if to protect it from sudden hurricanes or madmen attacking with buckets of water. It hangs like the Declaration of Co-dependence.

Here is a 9th grade standard: "Applies knowledge of Greek, Latin and Anglo-Saxon roots and affixes to draw inferences". Apparantly, this is supposed to be quite clear to each freshmen student who marches past it each day.

"Mr Donohoe?" says a cheerful student. "What are we going to do today?"
"Today class, we are exploring Standard 1.6!" I reply, and I step aside so they can see.
"Mr. Donohoe? What are affixes?"
"Easy, my cheerful student! Those are the end-parts of words! Not to be confused with 'prefixes' which we won't be doing as they are not part of the standards and benchmarks."
"Mr. Donohoe? How do you draw inferences?"
"Well, you make a conclusion or reasonable guess based on the information you have."
"You mean we're not drawing pictures?"
"Nope! Not part of the standards!"
"What's an Anglo-Saxon?"
"A large, bearded man who used to roam the earth pillaging villages so he could leave us words!"

And then the bell rings without my having the time to explain just how we are supposed to "apply knowledge".

The dance of the white man

2005-01-19T18:28:00.000-08:00

In one chapter of his newest book The Artificial White Man, Stanley Crouch "discusses" David Shields' book titled Black Planet. In other words, Crouch makes Shields look like a philisophical twit. Shields, a white Jew, writes about how he identifies with and idolizes the maverick black basketball players in the NBA, especially the ones who are the most rude and boisterous. Evidently, Shields equates this type of player as freedom and moral courage (standing up to "the man"); such courage, in his mind, is lacking in his own life.

Crouch performs a literary bris on Shields. He deftly and, at times, forcefully circumcises Shields' ideas of what it is to be a black man--and what it means to be a white Jewish writer for that matter. Crouch gives the following passage from Shields' book (which he then comments upon):

Shields: "In and around Seattle, you see kids wearing not only Sonics jerseys . . . but also jerseys of players from other teams--almost always guys who not only are great players but have a fuck you attitude . . . Today, for instance, because for some reason there seems to be an amazing number of kids walking around wearing NBA jerseys, you can feel with a certain clarity what the whole thing is about: how much of these kids' swagger comes from the players, the sheer volume of hope/possibility/resistance these guys represent. Is it just my imagination, or does even Natalie [his daughter] raise more hell than usual when she's wearing her Sonics outfit?"

Here is a piece of Crouch's commentary:

"The immaturity expressed in this passage is heightened in the overall terrain of the book because it is the result of a willful adolescence . . . For Shields, 'fuck you attitudes' and 'cool' are the ultimate achievements and amount to qualities that black men such as Gary Patton have, of course, in spades . . . Shields does not perceive black Americans in the realm of humanity at large. He tries but finds it impossible. They exist primarily as blackboards on which the chalk of white fantasies are forever moving."

It's worth a read just to hear the verbal thuds of Crouch's intellectual fists. But I do think that Shields' sentiments are not those of some lone novelist. The glorification of these type of men, these type of black men, is wide-spread--and many of those doing the glorification are white men.

I find myself wondering why. I think it's true that many white men glorify black men in a way that both pigeon-holes black men and allows white men to side-step traversing the terrain of their own identities. We see the former in how we celebrate black men: they are basketball players and other types of athletes, rap-stars and, occasionally, movie stars. They are typically not intellectual or political leaders. They are not super-heroes. They are not the pardigm for the good father. The latter effect, the way white men ignore questions of their own racial identity, is more pervasive; we find it even in those white men who have a more human vision of black men.

The question of what it means to be a white man in the United States is a confusing one. It is confusing because white men do not have to grapple with this fundamental question on a regular basis--if ever. White men do not seek the roots of their whiteness; they do not share a deep common experience; most are not put in real, on-going circumstances in which they have to think about how their whiteness might inhibit their success. Men and women of other races (as do white women) have the experience of seeing their identities differing from those in power. Jewish men, like Shields, share this experience, yet, as Crouch points out, Shields misses his opportunity to explore how being a religious minority has impacted his formation as a man. Yet even if this exploration happened, the question of what it means to be a white man would still be unanswered.

Perhaps the question of what it is to be white is confusing because whiteness isn't a shared culture. We are Irish-American, English American, Canadian-American, French-American, German-American, Scottish-American, Australian-American, Russian-American, and so on. With so many--virtually uncountable--ingredients, can you really put your finger on the white man in America?

Well, maybe you can. It's true that the white man does not have a shared past--or the experiences of those pasts are so different that they might as well be of different colors. But there is a shared present for most, if not all, white men.

The one prevailing characteristic of the white man, as I see it, is this: a white man is human being. This may sound redundant or trite, but it is a significant part of his identity. His human-ness allows him to act and react in a world of white humans, where the shared experience is simply that human-ness. A white man knows intellectually that men of other races are "human". They have a head, arms, they move and can eat. But a white man does not see a non-white as a human being, not really. A white man certainly does not see a non-white as a white man--and that lack of whiteness equates to the lack of human-ness.

Because I am a white man, I cannot begin to know what how a black man sees the world. Nor do I even have to try. A black man living in a white world must try to see things from a white perspective if he is to succeed. The prisons are filled with young black men who either refused to conform to the vision of white men or conformed perfectly to that vision. I assume, then, that a black man must on some level perceive that he is not human to a white man. I wonder if living in such a world has created a black man who also views himself as something other than human. Does a black man accept that a white man is a human being?

There may be other cultural norms for the present white man. Religious beliefs are disparate but most seem to burgeon from a Judeo-Christian mythos. True, many white men practice Eastern religions and some are, of course, atheists, but the vast majority live in a world where there is one God, one father in the household, one leader. We see it this idea in our political system, our classrooms, and in our stories of heroes. The white man also prays at the common alter of capitalism which, naturally, forges our conception of who we are, what we eat and wear and think, who we drop bombs on, and what our future looks like--and what it should look like.

It seems that the only way to discuss what it is to be a white man is to discuss the white man's relationship with other races (especially the white man's relationship to the black man). This notion seems important, though I have not worked out just how important...and my inability to do so, I fear, is because as a white man I suffer from a lack of insight into how my self-identity hinges upon my conception of both myself and others who are unlike myself. Perhaps that, too, is what it means to be a white man: to dance without a partner.

De-evolution

2005-01-09T22:19:00.000-08:00

The educational system in America, in California particularly, is under construction. It has been for some years. Perhaps you missed the signs, but they were there.

"The Road Most Travelled--Your Tax Dollars at Work"

Unfortunately for you, students are being taught not to think, or, rather to think along only certain lines...to edge towards certain paths...all of which serpintine towards the glorious horizon of unthinking. These paths all have crosswords with signposts: "Which college should I go to?" "How much money will I make?" "How far is Starbuck's from here?" "Should I become a doctor or just marry one?"

Ah, but why is this unfortunate for you? The answer is that YOU are already there, in the bright silken throne of comfort and career where you have, for the most part, stopped thinking. Perhaps you have vague existential yearnings. But they are (thankfully) buried in iPod commercials and the nighborhood gossip and the aroma of herbal tea and croissants. Who, then, will think the thoughts? Who will ask questions to find the clues to find the secret door which opens to the path which has been hidden all along? THAT road won't be travelled by you. Or at least not without a guide.

Who will think us towards what humans will be?

Following this paragraph is an excerpt from J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello (the fictional narrator/writer is giving a speech inspired by some very real experiments which occurred almost one hundred years ago). I think it is so cool that I typed it up. The analogy he is forming is clear...but less clear is how to fight the scientists who trick, punish and torture us out of our thoughts. Ultimately, I believe, we are our own scientists--having locked ourselves in our overpriced Californian homes filled with enough "stuff" to occupy our consciouses for decades. Read on if you like. I must go play video games. My attention span is not what it used to be.

"In 1912, the Prussian Academy of Sciences established on the island of Tenerife a station devoted to experimentation inot the mental capacities of apes, particularly chimpanzees. The station operated until 1920.

One of the scientists working there was the psychologist Wolfgang Kohler. In 1917 Kohler published a monograph entitled The Mentality of Apes describing his experiments. In November of the same year Franz Kafka published his “Report to an Academy”. Whether Kafka had read Kohler’s book I do not know. He makes no reference to it in his letters or diaries, and his library disappeared during the Nazi era. Some two hundred of his books reemerged in 1982. They do not include Kohler’s book, but that proves nothing.

I am not a Kafka scholar. In fact, I am not a scholar at all. My status in the world does not rest on whether I am right or wrong in claiming that Kafka read Kohler’s book. But I would like to think he did, and the chronology makes my speculation at least plausible.

According to his own account, Red Peter was captured on the African mainland by hunters specializing in the ape trade, and shipped across the sea to a scientific institute. So were the apes Kohler worked with. Both Red Peter and Kohler’s apes then underwent a period of training intended to humanize them. Red Peter passed his course with flying colours, though at deep personal cost. Kafka’s story deals with that cost: we learn what it consists in through the ironies and silences of the story. Kohler’s apes did less well. Nevertheless, they acquired at least a smattering of education.

Let me recount to you some what the apes on Tenerife leanred from their master Wolfgang Kohler, in particular Sultan, the best of his pupils, in a certain sense the prototype of Red Peter.

Sultan is alone in his pen. He is hungry: the food that used to arrive regularly has unaccountably ceased coming.

The man who used to feed him and has now stopped feeding him stretches a wire over the pen three metres above ground level, and hangs a bunch of bananas from it. Into the pen he drags three wooden crates. Then he disappears, closing the gate behind him, though he is still somewhere in the vicinity, since one can smell him.

Sutlan knows: Now one is supposed to think. That is what the bananas up there are about. The bananas are there to make one think, to spur one to the limits of one’s thinking. But what must one think? One thinks: Why is he starving me? One thinks: Why have I done? Why has he stopped liking me? One thinks: Why does he not want these crates any more? But none of these is the right thought. Even a more complicated thought—for instance: What is wrong with him, what misconception does he have of me, that leads him to believe it is easier for me to reach a banana hanging from a wire than to pick up a banana from the floor?—is wrong. The right thought to think is: How does one use the crates to reach the bananas?

Sultan drags the crates under the bananas, piles them one on top of the other, climbs the tower he has built, and pulls down the bananas. He thinks: Now will he stop punishing me?

The answer is: No. The next day the man hangs a fresh bunch of bananas from the wire but also fills the crates with stones so that they are too heavy to be dragged. One is not supposed to think: Why has he filled he crates with stones> One is supposed to think: How does one use the crates to get the bananas despite the fact that they are filled with stones?

One is beginning to see how the man’s mind works.

Sultan empties the stones from the crates, builds a tower with the crates, climbs the tower, pulls down the bananas.

As long as Sultan continues to think wrong thoughts, he is starved. He is starved until the pangs of hunger are so intense, so overriding, that he is forced to think the right thought, namely, how to go about getting the bananas. Thus are the mental capabilities of the chimpanzee tested to their uttermost.

The man drops a bunch of bananas a metre outside the wire pen. Into the pen he tosses a stick. The wrong thought is: Why has he stopped hanging the bananas on the wire? The wrong thought (the right wrong thought, however) is: How does one use the three crates to reach the bananas? The right thought is: How does one use the stick to reach the bananas?

At every turn Sultan is driven to think the less interesting thought. From the purity of speculation (Why do men behave like this?) he is relentlessly propelled towards the lower, practical, instrumental reason (How does one use this to get that?) and thus towards acceptance of himself as primarily an organism with an appetite that needs to be satisfied. Although his entire history, from the time his mother was shot and he was captured, through his voyage in a cage to imprisonment on this island prison camp and the sadistic games that are played around food here, leads him to ask questions about the justice of the universe and the place of this penal colony in it, a carefully plotted psychological regimen conducts him away from ethics and metaphysics towards the humbler reaches of practical reason. And somehow, as he inches through his labyrinth of constraint, manipulation and duplicity, he must realize that on no account dare he give up, for on his brothers and sisters may be determined by how well he performs."

Laura

2005-01-07T14:22:00.000-08:00

An ex-student (I'll call her Laura) came to visit me today during my off-period. I hadn't seen her in a few months, as she is studying back east.

"I need to talk to you about something," she said, the cue for me to boot all the other students out of my room. And when we were alone: "I needed to tell you how much your class has impacted my life."

I've heard this before:

boy, my writing is impressing my professors...
I've decided to become a teacher because of you...
I remembered something you said in class one day...
Your speech about choosing your own path in life has always stayed with me...
You were the one person who taught me how to...

If it sounds like I'm bragging, it's because I suppose I am. I'm a great teacher. I could teach circles around Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society--and still have time to grade some essays (how many papers did you see Mr. Keating grading, hmm?). So a student returning home from a first semster at college has been a frequent occurance, and compliments from kids and parents equally as forthcoming. Consequently, I make light of the nods in my direction. Today, I was reminded that making light of the good I do is not modesty but depracation of something sacred.

"I don't think many people knew this," said Laura. "But my father battled cancer all last year--ever since my freshman year."

"I didn't know that," I admitted, which was true. I did know a lot about her, but I knew also that she was careful about who she let in--and how far they would get. She has a strength of will, a "centeredness" I find in few people. She wants to stand alone not to push people away but to prove that she can.

"He got really bad over the last few months, and this December, he...he passed away." And then before I could figure out what to say. "Yeah, so we had some talks, just me and him, and we had one last talk before he really went downhill and became incoherent. He talked about what he would miss and about dying and some other stuff, and then he finished....he said everything he wanted to say to me. And then he asked me 'Do you have anything you want say?'"

She paused for a moment here, collecting herself.

"What am I supposed to say to THAT? I have no idea. My mind is reeling, and then I thought of something we talked about in class. I can't remember what exactly it was, I think a poem...but you talked about how you never really know the meaning of your life until the end of it."

The poem we had discussed was "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning. I presented a paper I'd written about the poem to my AP English students in which I explore the way the poem mystifies us by not ever "stopping"; it ends with the beginning, and we never achieve a final "meaning" to the poem. In the lecture to the class, I mentioned that one reason we read is to enjoy that moment of the last word on the last page, the moment in which we can experience the final "meaning" of the book's journey. It's like a "small death" in a way, and, in that sense, we are seeking a glimpse at our own death--the moment of understanding the "meaning" of our lives.

"I told my father that death is really a gift, and that the point of death is when he gets to look back and realize the meaning of everything he's done, of what his life means. Later, I was talking to my Aunt--she had talked to him too. She said that he'd told her all about what I had said and that he was so proud of me, proud that his daughter--that I could say such things. I needed to tell you that's what your class gave me...the ability to talk to my father for the last time."

Frog

2005-01-03T14:12:00.000-08:00

This fetid mud-choked devil
Crawling between mosquitoes and muck
Looks like Grendel's fetus,
Croaking midnight cries and croaks.

Hold its slippery mass;
It swipes and slips in your palms.
Better not kiss it;
It's warty hide could be yours,
Or worse, it could take your flesh,
And then what would you loathe?

C is for Coetzee, that's good enough for me

2004-12-28T09:01:00.000-08:00

Here is your new favorite author: J.M. Coetzee.

When I say "your" I mean "my". He is your favorite author because he wrote Disgrace, a novel about a jaded professor who sleeps with his students (not in a good way, but in a predatory "I can take advantage of THAT one" fashion). When his latest victim falls into a consequent depression and drops out of school, her family seeks legal action. The professor refuses to apologize for his action and decides to visit sunny South Africa...because what better place to seek salvation! Actually, his daughter lives there. She's raped. The professor is beaten. And the next door neighbors have a party a few days later, and the culprits are in attendence. However, the culprits are not treated as so. In fact, the next door neighbor tells the professor that he must not make noise (by going after the men who raped his daughter), that these are "good boys". It's clear this man would like nothing better than for all the white landowners to leave (in fact, it's implied that the rapists attacked the daughter because she is white). The professor tells the daughter that it's time to leave, that she could be hurt again, possibly even killed. So what does she do? She marries the next door neighbor! Now, she is under his protection, she gets to remain in her home, and he has gotten what he wants: her land.

It sounds ludicrous to you and, of course, bleak. But what you start to understand is that South Africa is a very, very different place than America. Disgrace and salvaltion and success and beauty mean very, very different things there--and you can only begin to glimpse an understanding of how different. Walk around in this professor's shoes for those last few chapters and you'll catch that glimpse.

The second book you've read by Coetzee is Elizabeth Costello. This "novel" is actually a series of lectures and anecdotes about "animal rights" which Coeztee wrote previously. Now, he's collected and revised them so they reflect the work and life (and death) of a fictional writer. The writer is eccentric, abrasive, and occassionally confused--but she is always adamant about the rights of animals. You like this writer because she is not like all the stereotypes of those dolphin-loving activists you make fun of by wearing "I ate Flipper" T-shirts. She talks about what "being" is--and how "being" is different for a human and animal. What is it like to be a bat? Or an ape? You cannot know, and so she dismisses those who argue about what it is to suffer or to be happy as it applies to animals. She relates the story of an ape who is "taught" to communicate--but the very act of communciating on a human level means that this ape's "apeness" has been left behind.

The thread that you see dangling through at least these two works has to do with your perception, your human-ness and your ability to see (and therefore connect) with all that you are not. It sounds funny now that you've written it out. But in our modern world of proliferating religions, cultures and Republicans it is a very important theme, you think. What is it to be South African? Or Iraqi? Israeli? Nebraskan? A bat? You think of Wallace Steven's "Snowman" and especailly the last three lines: "For the listener, who listens in the snow, / And, nothing himself, beholds / Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is". You realize that as a reader, as a writer and as a human being, your job is to listen--to listen carefully to all that you are not, to forget what you are--even if it's for a moment. That moment is transient; you cannot be a snowman or a bat. But that moment can shake you, reverbrate through your being--and that can change you.

Coetzee and milk are good for breakfast too!

Teaching Students to Masturbate

2004-12-13T18:58:00.000-08:00

This last week of teaching saw the culmination of my Hamlet unit in A.P. English. One of my prodigies asked if he could use the television and my computer for his performance, and, of couse, I complied. As he prepared to lauch into his soliloquy, he produced an image on the TV of an Anime-type blonde in the shower (with steam covering all rated R bits) and sat himself down in a chair as if he was watching the television.

He then proceeded to masturbate.

He's acting, true. His clothes are on. But it is clear what his character, Hamlet, is doing. It is clear because the groaning sounds of a guy masturbating are coming out of the speakers of my computer. The groans strengthen in frequency and volume. And then there is a climax.

Did I mention I am filming? I want to make sure I capture any decent performances so I can show them at Open House. I think I may have missed some of the visuals, as I am no longer looking into the camera lens. I am wondering how unemployment works. I'm pretty sure I am gaping in horror.

Having sheathed his "bare bodkin," Hamlet speaks; this is the soliloquy in Act II, scene ii, the "O what a rogue and peasent slave am I" speech (click here for the full speech). His speech is full of passion and acted well, with good discretion as Polonius would say. More than that, the speech is full of self-loathing. This Hamlet sees himself as a villain, a pervert, a whore who can only jerk-off with words. This Hamlet fantasizes about revenge in the same way a teenage boy fantasizes about screwing a super-model. And after the fantasy has played itself out, the utter loneliness sets in. Alone with his impotence, the pathetic portrait of what Hamlet is becoming takes shape: "O what an ass am I". The portrait is clear because the psuedo Anime-porn on the TV has been replaced by the image of this teenage actor; his face stares back at him--and us--througout the soliloquy.

Enthusiastic applause ensues, then silence...perhaps the class is waiting to see what I do. What should I do? The performance was brilliant, brave, discomforting and true. If I had seen this on stage I would have shook my head; how could everybody have missed it? Why hadn't anybody taken it this deep before? For the rest of the day I couldn't shake the disgust I felt, seen through Hamlet's eyes. But I have a responsibility to the class, to the school too, right? What about my role as teacher? Do I say "That was an amazing performance, but..." But what? But it made me uncomfortable? Isn't that what the living theater is suppossed to do? But. But the sexual content isn't appropriate for a public school classroom? Students should have the option to walk out beforehand?

What do I do?

My Kid's a Liar

2004-12-05T19:51:00.000-08:00

So I picked Gryphon up from school like I usually do, but this time he was late. Ten minutes after the bell had rung, he shuffled up to the car with that tight-faced expression that he gets after a cry.

"Hey little dude." I said. "What's up? What happened?"

"I hit my knee and kind of hurt it on a chair walking out of class" he said.

"Okay, well why were you late?"

"I had to go to the office to get me back in the classroom. I forgot my sweatshirt. Mrs. Strange leaves like right after class and the door is locked."

This explanation didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, so I asked him to explain it again. He hit his knee--then walked around in a daze for ten minutes until he realized he was without sweatshirt? He repeated the tale and it didn't get any clearer. The world of a nine year old is a muddled, confusing place, full of allusions to Pokemon and rules to nine-year old games which I think even they don't understand, so I decided to just let it go. But after years of teaching adolescents, I had developed a "spider-sense" of sorts which alerts me to the danger of"the con". And my spidey-sense was buzzing.

I hesitated. As far as I know, Gryphon had never, ever lied to me. I mean, sure there are the little kid fantasy lies ("I saw an elf in the backyard watering the ferns") but never I willful changing of the real facts, the facts that could get you in trouble. So I just drove home and forgot about it.

Until the next day when my wife informed me of an e-mail she'd received from our friend Mary (whose son, Drew, is in Gryphon's class). Apparantly, Drew and Gryphon were sent to the office for screwing around in class.

At this point, I had all sorts of thoughts. All the evidence against my kid was hearsay so far, so I needed to ask (interrogate) him about it. If his current no-lie policy turned out to be still in effect, then everything would be peachy. However, if he was lying (as I was almost sure was the case) then I would have to destroy my kid. I just didn't see any alternative. But there was also a part of me that was strangely excited--even proud--at the aspect that this kid would lie straight to my face. My son has balls! This was the threshold to all sorts of possibilities. Would he steal the car next week? Would I come home early from work to find him rummaging through my desk for porn? Is he secretly crank calling people under my very nose?

Putting all of these thoughts aside, Jake and I picked Gryphon up after school and drove straight home to have a "talk" in his bedroom. As soon as we entered, he muttered "Oh great" under his breath. I've noticed he mutters under his breath quite often, especially when upset. He's like a street-crazy in this way. It's pretty endearing because I always know exactly what he's thinking at these emotional moments. Sometimes I worry that he'll come to me one day and reveal that he's been talking to somebody or perhaps even a pig-demon like in the Amityville Horror. I don't think demonic forces could make it in such an tolerant, ethnic area where we'd probably have to take the demon in or send it to a shelter (do demon's have civil rights?). But I digress.

Jake and I asked about what really happened in class, and he immeditealy fessed up. He said he was scared that he'd get in big trouble for getting sent to the office. He apologized. He knew what a big deal it was that he lied and he promised it would be the last time. And it will be, or at least it will be a long, long time before he tries it again. We tried to play the tough (but understanding) parents; we gave him some consequences (actually, he suggested that he receive consequences and gave us a very appropriate idea). But after the way Gryphon owned his mistake, neither Jake or I cared about punishing him. In fact, he behaved in such a heroic fashion for a kid that I can't help wondering whether he's pulled one over on me. As a kid, I would have hung on to my lie like a piece of rock candy--and if it was clear that I was caught I would have blamed it on anything or anybody within reach ("It was Schwartz!"). I would have cried, pleaded, begged, threatened some sort of fecal explosion or told my parents I hated them...any form of dust blowing to take the heat off. But not Gryphon; he did the thing no rational adult or first term president would do: he said "I blew it and it will never happen again."

Could this all be a clever ruse? Some new-fangled way that kids are dealing with the throes of child-dom? Could my kid have lied to me in this way--a kinder, gentler lie?

If so, I am damn proud.

Probability Games

2004-11-30T17:41:00.000-08:00

A colleague of the mathematics brand posed this question to me today: Say you're playing five card draw poker and you have two tens. You're playing with four other players and you get the feeling you don't have the strongest hand. What are the odds that, if you discard three, you'll draw another ten?

Answers? Anyone? Bueller?

We both agreed that in simple terms you'd say (before you drew the first card), you have a 2 in 47 chance (there's two tens left and there's 47 cards left which you haven't seen). If after the first card drawn you didn't have a ten, you would have a 2 in 46 chance and then a 2 in 45 chance for the third.

But he argued that because other players already have cards that the probability changes--that you have LESS cards out there to draw from. I guess if you were God and could see everybody's cards, you could then calculate the odds. But he was saying, realistically, the probability is different even though you don't KNOW what the other cards are.

I'm not sure what I think about that. I mean, if you have that hand, it doesn't matter what cards are in other peoples hands or in the deck--there are 47 cards you haven't seen. But somehow, the idea of odds changing simply by the redistribution of the cards is intriguing--even if it is a crock of crapola.

If you sensed that the other players had a better hand than a pair of tens, you'd have to figure there are jacks, aces, queens, etc. out there and you could take that into consideration. But that's not what my poker buddy was talking about. I guess it's a philosophical question...if a tree farts in the woods and nobody's there to hear it, does it happen? If there are other cards in player's hands which you can't see does probability change? Philosophy and mathematics...it's like chicken and waffles...tasty but kind of messed up.

Ode to a Nice Guy

2004-11-26T09:42:00.000-08:00

To the one who has always been there
Like the sparrow’s pretty twittering
Amidst the street blather of car horns.
To that teethy grin that greets me
Like a tearless day:

Every time I see
Pain or fear or sorrow
I find you too.
Always a guide to me.
To the one who has sat by my side as I cried
Heartbroken sobs,
Who held my hair back when I got sick
And who feeds my dog
And picked me up after getting dumped by Nick
Who fixed my car
Who brought me flowers for no reason at all
Who loved me but never demanded a thing in return
To the one who drives my sister to school
And who cleans our pool
Just to show my parents how cool he is
To the one who makes me feel like a queen
Just for being seen
Just for being me
To the one whose waited patiently
For me to see
what you see in me:

Thank you. Thank you for being the king,
The nicest of the nice guys.

Now I am asking
Just one more thing of you.

Can you feed my dog tonight?
My folks are out of town and I’m going out with this totally hot guy I met outside a bar.

2004-11-23T20:46:00.000-08:00

This past weekend saw a basketball brawl in the stands in Detroit, an on-field fight between two college football squads--all this a week after a handful of pro football players in Cleveland concluded their pre-games warm-ups by punching each other in the face. Violence and sports certainly is a problem, and, while many are chastizing and moralizing, I am fraternizing with a solution to the problem.

It is clear that professional sports and college institutions are harboring terrorists. It's also clear that these miscreants are trying to make weapons of mass destruction--or at least of minor destruction (the gateway weapon). Did you see the crying children? Did you see the explosion of fists, cups and blood (possibly ketchup)? This kind of horror cannot be tolerated. We simply cannot allow this kind of brutality to be forced upon America by these violent individuals who cause fear, 430 instant replays and a boost in ratings.

Our only recourse is a premptive strike.

We must destroy the NBA. If they continue to harbor terrorists (and they most certainly will), we must invade, dismantle all weapons (including hook shots) and depose the tyranical NBA commisioner. We will roll on. We will fight the good fight. We will bring democracy to the NBA and make sure only the white guys get paid a lot of money. And if the NFL, NHL and other professional sports do not get the message then we will deal with them preemptively too. We will leave professional bowlers alone because they are too slow to do much harm. But we will watch them closely.

But we cannot stop there. What about the fans? Are they not too harboring terrorists? I'm sure I saw somebody of Middle Eastern persuasion in the stands leading the fisticuffs against our NBA players. Okay, maybe the oafish white guy in the blue jacket throwing random sucker punches wasn't Mid-Eastern, but he was certainly Mid-Western--and that is just as dangerous. We must dismantle the fans. All of them. If they resist, we will not back down. We know where we stand. We will not rest until every American is safe and that will not happen while Americans are unsafe. Once we have freed the stands of all fans, the stands will be free to follow their destinies. The stands will govern themselves and hold elections . . . free elections with no fans to spill beer on them, harass them with feet or indimate them with loud clapping motions after a dunk.

This is only a start, but I think we have to start somewhere. That somewhere is here and that sometime is now. We will not rest until Rush Limbaugh says we are safe or something that is not entirely silly. Until the war on terrorism is won, we are all losers. And America is not about losing but winning (even if we have to cheat), and winning is what we do.

Or somebody gets his ass kicked.

Making a case for Racism

2004-11-11T09:24:00.000-08:00

Working in a predominately white, upper class high school which churns out college-bound students by the sackful, I am presented with difficult problems every day. Should I tell my 16 year old teaching assistant to ask for a Humvee or a BMW for her birthday? Should I bring apple or pumpkin pie to the Thanksgiving party?

I have one black student, a freshman. I'll call him Will. I know that he's black because when I look around my English classroom he's the one who isn't white. He is also incredibly smart. We trade books to read, he writes about liking Charles Dickens and other American and English classics, he writes amazing poetry--and he is completely failing my class. Rarely does he turn in homework or raise his hand to speak in class. He blows off studying and, as a result, his test scores are low.

Usually in this situation, I just let the kid fail; it's his choice. But this time I called a meeting with his family, and Will signed a contract (which I wrote) stating that he'd turn in his homework or he'd stay in at lunch with me making up the work (and if he didn't there would be further consequences). Well, Will didn't live up to his end of the bargain, and I wrote him a referral--he had to visit the administration office (and get detention). My hopes: the more we tightened up, the more he'd be inclined to just do the work.

I got a vist from the administrator assigned to Will (after I wrote the first referral). Evidently, Will had been involved in a fight the week before--strictly a fight between some frehsman boys (with no racial overtones at all in the adm's eyes). Will's family saw it differently, and they complained about racism to the superintendent. Thus, this administrator was concerned, rightly so, about my plan of attack and the potential consequences. His point: in my years of teaching at this school, I had rarely imposed a student contract or set such a rigid plan in motion with a student. Implications: was this racially motivated? Or, more to the point, could it be construed by others as being racially motivated?

I felt bad about the situation I'd placed this administrator in; I set him up by not getting him involved with the process. But I also saw clearly the fear that surround the issue of racism at work. I think that fear overshadows, at least in this case, the good we're trying--and suppossed to be trying--to do.

The plan with Will was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, it's not going to work. The kid still isn't doing what's expected of him. I'll have to scrap this plan, and I may just have to let him fail. The interesing question that was raised out of all of this for me: Was my involvement racially motivated? That is, did I get involved because Will is black? Honestly, I'm not sure. My initial reaction is that this kid is special--he is super-smart and I just plain like him. But maybe it is, partly at least, because he's my sole black student. What if that's true? Some might argue that that is racism at work right there. Will is a sullen, quiet kid in class, and I think some of my colleagues here and elsewhere may judge him based on that and, possibly, because of the color of his skin. Shouldn't he get more now because he is black? The world will certainly offer him less because of his skin color. Isn't it our duty to find those smart, talented black men (and women) and do whatever it takes to grant them success? More importantly, is it our duty to put MORE effort into these young black students than our white students?

That's the tough question I'm mulling over now. I think the tough answer is yes. That answer doesn't seem to sit well because it's not "fair." No, it's not. And that's the point. "Yes" exposes what we know intellectually but don't truly confront or act upon: that our insitutions including, our school systems, are racist. They help white students succeed. Talking about it is one thing, but having the white and black students in front of our faces and actively making choices to confront these instituions is hard.

So do I let Will fail? At this point, having put so much time and energy into him with little to no results, I would let a white kid fail. I have a feeling Will is at least partly rebelling against his surroundings; he feels different, and he is very, very aware of the racial make-up of this community. Knowing that, at what point do i just back-off? Like I said, if he were white, I'd have backed-off already. In this case, however, maybe I should be racist.

Fahrenheit 911 Review

2004-06-28T16:29:00.000-07:00

I just saw Michael Moore's latest documentary purposefully NOT in Berkeley (away from the Moore acolytes camping out to worship their Bush bashing icon). I went far, far way--all the way to Emryville's AMC where I spotted some sneaky-looking Republicans slinking into "The Chronicles of Riddick" playing next door (which I saw two nights ago when Moore's movie opened).

The film, not surprisingly for those who have seen Moore's others, is not an objective documentary. It contains many head-shaking moments of Bush bashing. My favorite is a transition as one man describes meeting Osama bin Laden and being "unimpressed" by him; he describes him as a "quiet and simple man". "Quiet and simple?" asks Moore. Then we get a picture of George with an "aw shucks" expression. It is this kind of non-sequitur that caused me discomfort through parts of the film. In his effort to be glib at Bush's expense Moore miscalculates. While he may get a laugh from those who don't like the President, the assaults can only distance smart-minded viewers who have been captivated by the very serious message this film is sending: the President and those close to him are benefiting, financially, from the destruction of others.

Why I believe this film is worth watching, and why I urge every single person in America--and in the world for that matter--to see it is that Moore is asking pointed, important questions. The questions may have logical answers. It may be that the Bush administration made some decisions with the best interests of the American people in mind. We don't know because we have not been given the answers by the government--and many have been asking.

A few of these questions:

1. Why is it that every major news-station in the nation announced that Gore was the projected winner of the Presidential campaign yet these same news-stations did an about-face once they learned FOX news had announced Bush was the projected Florida winner? And isn't it suspicious the head of FOX News is a Bush relative (or associate--I can't remember--but we've all heard this one anyways)? The answer to this question, Moore implies, is the key to unlocking Pandora's Box. If you can get this one, all the rest will be easy.

2. Moore then asks about the link of the Bush family to the Bin Ladens. And of course he answers the question for you--showing the breadth of financial ties he and his father have to this family. The breadth is actually startling--and while I have some concern with the way Moore throws around a conspiratorial "Bush-Saudi" connection rather than the more specific "Bush-bin Laden" connection, I do see what he's asking: Why aren't we looking for Osama bin Laden in Saudi Arabia? And why the hell are we in Iraq when he's obviously got more support in Saudi Arabia (many of the terrorists taking part in the 911 were Saudi)?

3. Moore then points out, quite rightly I think, that this war like all wars reaffirm and solidifies the aristocracy-hierarchy that exists in America. Poor communities like Flint, Michigan provide the fighting force while the affluent communities (like the one I grew up in) feed off the "business opportunities" which arise in the wake of such wars. One soldier realizes that he's fighting for $3,000 a month while a Texas oil-worker drives a bus to an Iraq oil site for $10,000 a month (and he can do so only because the soldier makes it safe). The soldier asks a question to the effect of "How is that fair?". You can't see him, but you know Moore is grinning off screen. That's a keeper! Another soldier who has returned from Iraq helps Moore taunt Congressmen by asking them to enlist their children to go to Iraq (only one out of the 500+ congressmen and women has a child enlisted). Moore's military adjunct claims he will not go back to Iraq to kill other poor people for "nothing" even if it means jail-time. The question Moore asks through all of this: "Who is this war benefiting?" It's not the Iraqis. It's not the soldiers. It's not Americans who live in places like Flint. Then who? He plasters another gravelly picture of Bush in front of your face just in case you're missing his point.

4. The most moving and perhaps effective piece of Moore's film is his discovery of a woman who has lost a son in Iraq. She speaks of American "ideals" (that is, the flag), she sends more than one child to the military (and to war), and she values the Bible. He would have had a better shot of using her to melt the hearts of Republicans everywhere if she hadn't been married to a black man and spoke of cultural diversity (I wonder if Moore thought about cropping out her entire family and dubbing in a Klan hat or some pictures of Rush Limbaugh or maybe even Rush Limbaugh himself). We view her as a supporter of democracy, of "liberty" and of the government's role in our lives. And then she reads the last letter her son wrote to her. He says he is so angry at Bush and that he hopes nobody votes for "the fool" (because they are fighting for nothing). Then she visits the White House and sees a woman, possibly Iraqi, sleeping in box covered with photographs of dead Iraqis. The two woman exchange simple ideas: the one that Iraqis are being slaughtered by a tyrannical American government, the other that her son is dead, that her son killed those people and now he's dead. In the midst of all this, bizarrely, another woman jumps into view announcing that this "has all been staged! It's all staged!" I'm still not sure what exactly she was referring to, but the answer came: "My son is dead. Tell me that that was not staged." After a few moments, the woman gets it. Her feeble answer: "Well, lots of people were killed".

I can't help but feel that that woman's statement, said with a slightly embarassed shrug, is the real answer to every question that Moore was asking. He doesn't paint Bush or the CEOS or anybody else as evil. Buffoons? Maybe. Out-of-touch? Certainly. Culpable? Well, that's the real dinger, isn't it? Culpable for what? For the fact the there are 8 patrolman for the entire state of Oregon? For the thousands that are dead both Iraqi and American? For the budget cuts to the veterans hospitals which serve the very soldiers who are fighting as I write this?

The mother of this lost soldier wept in front of the White House saying that everybody is ignorant, that she in fact was ignorant and that now she isn't. What a price to pay to wake up. And that's, perhaps, the question that Moore really leaves us with--and it's the reason why everybody needs to see the film. How much does each of have to pay before we wake up?

Well, lots of people get killed.