The Kite Runner
26 Feb 2009 1 Comment
in authors, book reviews, conversations
Around Christmas, I read a streak of really well-written books that were also pretty brutal and gutwrenching to read (I’m thinking especially of House of Sand and Fog which I reviewed here). Just recently, I finished The Kite Runner
The Kite Runner is a story about the bonds of father-son love and of friendship, set against the backdrop of the fall of the monarchy and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. My mother was a US history teacher for many years and my degrees are in American Studies, so I often find that current events will throw a spotlight on a part of the world that I know nothing about, and when that happens, fiction is the easiest way for me to begin to grasp a foreign part of the world. Of course, as an English teacher, I think that’s one of the great values of literature, that it can at once show us the particularities of a life we haven’t lived but also show us what is transcendent or universal about the human experience. Great novels do both at once, and so does The Kite Runner.
In economic times like these, there has been a lot of talk about the worth of the humanities, which don’t directly translate into a career the way other disciplines seem to. There’s also a lot of talk about the dominance of new media and how it has made the world smaller, but for me, reading a book like The Kite Runner brings me in closer contact with the history and people of Afghanistan that any one webpage could. I also don’t mean to imply that reading can substitute for activism, or that I know all there is to know now about the Afghan experience. But the ability to communicate your experiences to people whose lives are enriched and benefited from knowing them is an incredible gift, and I do believe we are all better for it.
In my English 11 class, we are about to begin studying John Donne, one of the great metaphysical poets who often studied the great paradoxes of morality and religion and attempted to explore them poetically. Of course, for many he is best known for his lines in his “Meditation XVII”:
No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
When I read a book like The Kite Runner, I am reminded again that we are involved in mankind, and that the tolling bell rings for us all. The power of literature to bring that truth home to us is one of the greatest powers there is, and especially in these economic times, what more powerful lesson can there be?
Fear Itself
25 Feb 2009 4 Comments
in all about me, conversations
First it was far off– the cousin of my cousin’s husband in upstate New York lost his job. Then the governor of our state hinted around about making employees pay more of their health care costs and even started talking about layoffs. Then a friend from grad school started posting cryptic Facebook status messages, right before he got laid off. Then a capable, energetic woman who is a force of nature in the PTA posted her own status message about joining the ranks of the unemployed. One of the major employers in Baltimore is the Johns Hopkins University, which took a big hit on its endowment and is doing freezes, cuts and other dire maneuvers. Another friend’s company asked employees whether they should stop contributing to employee IRA accounts or do yet another round of layoffs. The stories are getting more frequent and more frightening.
Becca and Elizabeth have both recently posted links to truly heartbreaking stories collected by Moms Rising from families affected thus far by this horrible economic crisis. They’re incredibly difficult to read, just to warn you now, but many of you have been hearing worse ones. Anjali posted recently about a family on her street that lost their house to foreclosure.
None of us know what to do or say about any of it, but no one knows how to avoid it either. No one knows what it means or where it’s going, or what it will mean. I listened to some of the President’s speech last night, and I want to believe, but I just don’t know if I can– and we have not even been nearly as affected as so many other American families have. How can we ask them to hold on and keep believing that help is on the way?
I don’t know what else to say, but I don’t know how not to talk about it all.
Patchwork Life
24 Feb 2009 2 Comments
in all about me, blogging
First, if you are one of the many people who have landed here by searching for “patchwork poem” or any variation on “patchwork pattern,” I do apologize! This is a blog about my life, my thoughts, and my work, and I don’t actually do any patchwork, except for the metaphorical kind.
Naming a blog is a tricky decision. Since nothing on the Internet ever truly disappears, and this blog is my first under my own name, I really took some time deciding what to call it. There are already so many variations on “juggling,” and I didn’t have a cute nickname to fall back on, and the more I thought about it, the more I knew that I didn’t want to have a single-issue blog. This is not a pop-culture blog, mommy-blog, teacher-blog, or writer-blog; it’s a little of all of them, and that’s how I want it to be. I felt a little bad about choosing a sewing-influenced name when I only meant it metaphorically, but a few more minutes on Google should reward anyone looking for quilting tips, right? I connected this blog to my real name because my first purpose was to have an online home for as many links to my writing as possible, which this blog has done nicely, but my second purpose was to finally use blogging as more of a writer’s tool, and I think the accountability of using my real name has helped me work toward that as well. But I also did like the idea of a theme to tie it all together, and I think “patchwork” does that well.
My life is accomplished in bits and pieces, it seems to me, and sometimes it’s a struggle for me to see how this little piece connects to that little piece over there, which connects to that one piece way over in the corner. I like to think that the little bit of writing I do in free moments helps make me a better teacher, and that the fulfillment I find in both those areas makes me a happier mom when I’m volunteering at the book fair or helping my girls build Lego cityscapes. I’m not on a traditional teaching career path, and I’m not a product of the MFA process, so I’m figuring it all out as I go along, and it’s hard for me to step back and see the larger surface of what I’ve managed to piece together sometimes.
These are just some of the reasons why I like having this space to collect and contemplate my patchwork life.
Bicycles Built for Three
23 Feb 2009 3 Comments
in all about me, conversations, media mentions
Yes, I watched the Oscars last night. I was happy to see Heath Ledger and Kate Winslet win, loved having groups of past winners welcome the winners into their circle, happy for the Slumdog crowd even though I haven’t seen the movie yet. I was surprised to see Sean Penn win, but loved his acceptance speech, as well as the Milk writer’s speech. Now, onto my regularly scheduled entry.
I’m a little late to this conversation, but I’m taking off on a tangent anyway: Amber at American Family started the conversation by asking about parenting norms and safety, and Jody at Raising WEG picked up the ball and kept it rolling.
We have tried to give the girls as much independence as possible, but up till our current house, most of these questions weren’t valid– we didn’t have a yard, and the girls weren’t big enough to walk very far. Now that we do have a yard, I certainly let them play in our fenced backyard without me, but I do check on them through the windows and sometimes through the back door. In our old house, we had a 7-11 catty-corner from our house, and I know I left them alone in the house at least twice to run across– and I do mean run! There’s no park within a block or two of our house, but there are several attractive destinations a bit farther, and that’s what I’m thinking about these days.
The girls turn seven in May, and they have requested bicycles, which seems fun and appropriate, right? I have a troubled history with bikes myself– didn’t learn how to ride till I was nine or ten from timidity, then fell off a ten-speed at 13 and broke my left arm, haven’t been on a bike since. But I’m not letting this keep my girls from bicycling, though I will be a bit more trepidatious than my parents were (helmets will certainly be required). I’m planning to follow them around on their bikes for quite awhile, since we don’t live in a cul-de-sac like I did as a kid.
But when will we allow them to ride their bikes to the duckponds? When will we allow them to simply take off on their bikes, destination unknown? As a child, I loved that freedom and mobility, but the thought of it, in this world of registered sex offenders and fast cars, makes me quiver. My husband grew up in this same city, and rode his bike far and wide across many of these same streets and neighborhoods, but I can already tell that it will take some time for me to get comfortable.
So if you’re in Baltimore this summer, watch for the mom panting behind her two girls as they wheel away, faster and faster into the future.
Voices
20 Feb 2009 1 Comment
in all about me
I recently decided to start helping out with another afterschool club at my girls’ school– this time, it’s an art club, with a very good friend of mine as one of the co-sponsors. I’m starting to realize that one of my common patterns is to say “yes” to every interesting possiblity that comes along, without stopping to think about what it costs me.
But anyway, what I’m really thinking about this evening is how many voices I speak in during my days. There’s my teacher voice, which I used all afternoon in the club meeting as well as most of the day at school. It’s slightly louder, cheerful to all adults when needed, firm to students when needed, and comes with the teacher eye, which I can direct at any wayward student, who will feel it a mile away. The teacher voice can quiet a classroom of squirmy first-graders, and entrance kids sitting crisscross applesauce on the rug while I read them a wonderful fable. But I always feel funny using it in front of my friends, and I switch out of it as soon as the classroom door is closed.
Then there’s my mother voice– you know the one. It’s also pretty firm, can often be too harsh, has a nasty tendency to turn singsongy with the younger crowd. But sometimes the mother voice is tender, the one that croons while cuddling ,the bedtime story voice, the pet names and endearments voice, the one that says yes to the occasional surprise cupcake or lollipop. The mother voice scares me– I think the words that come out in that voice are some of the most powerful ones I may ever speak, but I don’t know which ones those will be. But it’s also in my mother voice that I work at my girls’ urban public school, and help in their classrooms, and bring in safety scissors and paper towels to their teachers. It’s in my mother voice that I tell my girls just how much I love them.
I don’t get to use my wifely voice nearly enough these days, with my husband in law school, but I cherish those moments, even if we’re talking about porkchops and dirty dishes. Then there’s the daughter, the friend, the sister, all too infrequently used as well.
It still amazes me to hear the teacher voice, the mother voice, come through my throat and from my mouth. It takes so much work and willpower, and yet in those voices, the transformation sounds so effortless.
Valentine’s Day
18 Feb 2009 3 Comments
in all about me, conversations
I completely understand why a lot of people hate Valentine’s Day. I have many, many friends and relatives who spent years as one of the chronically single, reminded each time of how single they were on the day when it felt like everyone else in the world was coupled up and incredibly happy. So I get it.
Personally, I love Valentine’s Day. I love the colors pink and red, I love heart-splattered dishtowels and placemats, I love greeting cards and conversation hearts, and I love picking out little perforated cards for my kids to give their friends. I have always been a romantic, easily swayed by silly gestures, easily moved by words of love. But I have also been a serial monogamist, and I haven’t been single on V-Day since I was in high school, so I know some of you are thinking, “well, of course you’ve always liked it!”
But this year, three of my friends have mentioned to me that they didn’t celebrate V-Day and that in fact, they rarely do– not because they don’t enjoy it or believe in it, but because their husbands don’t. “It’s a Hallmark holiday,” the men say, “I show you that I love you every day, why should this day matter more?” So my friends, my lovely, amazing, caring friends, have stopped trying, but clearly, it still matters to them.
I don’t care if you believe in Valentine’s Day, because I’m not married to you (except you there, who used to be one of the haters yourself. Hi, honey!). But if your spouse or partner does believe, does enjoy a greeting card, a bouquet of flowers, a box of drugstore chocolates, if your significant whatever is secretly wishing s/he had gotten a Valentine this year, then I’m talking to you, and I’m saying:
Next year, suck it up and buy a damn Valentine. Your partner deserves it, so save the schtick for someone else and ante up already.
Totally Obvious and Incredibly Effective
17 Feb 2009 Leave a Comment
in teaching
Sometimes with teaching, you stumble upon an idea that seems so obvious you can’t believe you never thought of it before. And then you try it, and it works, and you kick yourself for not having done it all along.
This past week, a colleague of mine and I were chatting about our ninth grade students. Ninth grade is our first year in the Upper School, and it is also a major entry point for students who haven’t come from our middle school. Those of us who teach ninth grade are in almost constant contact, trying to figure out how best to support our students as they make this academic and social transition.
His brilliantly obvious idea was to have the students come to class with three goals for the spring semester, and three strategies they think could help them toward that goal. Then the students could trade them and learn from each other, maybe even form study buddy connections, and we could also keep them as a record to refer to as we meet with the student.
So I tried it, and it worked so well. Not because my students all had concrete goals or strategies, but precisely because many of them didn’t, so I had the chance to offer personally tailored feedback, encouragement and suggestions. I spent over an hour writing them individual emails with advice, and have also shared some of the emails with parents and advisors, who have thanked me profusely for doing so. Of course, it’s easier for me to do because I teach part-time and have smallish sections, but if you standardized the form, or did it as part of a class blogging assignment, I think it would be do-able, and worth the investment in time.
I’m used to student evals at the end of each semester from college students, but that just assesses my performance, not theirs. In fact, I think most professors will agree that the student’s performance colors those evals more than students might want to admit, but there’s no mechanism for them to assess themselves. Since my ninth graders are just starting out on their journey, I like encouraging them to assess themselves as junior scholars, and I welcome the chance to offer help, not matter how much of it gets heeded.
Dream Jobs
16 Feb 2009 3 Comments
in all about me, conversations
Here’s a question for you, stolen directly from 11D: what dream jobs have you considered but never actually pursued? And second questions: what jobs have people said you should have, but you never did?
My dream jobs: Interior decorator, ballerina, tap dancer, singer-songwriter, rock star, journalist, novelist, pastry chef, tenured professor
Suggested jobs: acupuncturist, once, when I was waiting tables and had a two-top that included an acupuncturist. She said I was very good at recognizing people’s energies and responding at the appropriate level/variety of energy myself. Also, my aunt used to tell me I should be a romance novelist, because she thought it would be an easy way to make a living as a writer.
How about you?
My Writing Process
13 Feb 2009 4 Comments
in personal goals, poetry, writing
Recently my husband came upstairs to find me snug under the covers and scribbling in my current favorite poetry notebook, a lime-colored clothbound hardback with lined pages, stuffed with drafts and about a quarter full of poems. “How are the poems coming along?” he said, kind of like you’d ask a gardener about their tomato crop.
“Good, I think,” I said. “I think there are a few that are ready to come out of the notebook.”
“Oh,” he said. “Does that mean you’ll be sending them out to be published?” (his faith in me is touching, isn’t it?)
“Oh, no no no,” I said. “That just means I’ll type them up, and maybe do one or two more revisions. Then I’ll show them to a few people, and probably bring them to poetry group. Then maybe I’ll send them out.”
“Oh,” he said, clearly amused. But that’s how my poetry-writing process has evolved, especially over the past few years, when I started getting more serious about poetry.
I always begin a poem in pen, on paper, and it always goes through a few drafts that way, with words crossed out and new words and phrases scribbled on the sides with big arrows and asterisks everywhere. Once a draft has gotten too messy, it’s time to recopy it on a new page and see if I need to do any more messing with it. Once I’ve done that a few times, with appropriate intervals in between, I let the poem sit for awhile. Sometimes I go work on another poem in the meantime that needs to be messed with. If I come back to the poem, and only make a few minor adjustments (a comma here, a synonym there), then I know it’s ready to come out of the notebook. This proces speeds up somewhat when I have a workshop deadline, like I did for my museum workshops, but is still essentially the same. During the notebook period, a lot of the adjusting and revising happens in 5-10 minute spurts, easy to do before bed or when I’ve just woken up, or if I can steal a few minutes on the weekend in the middle of the day. Some poems spend a week or two in the notebook, some spend a month or two, and there are at least two still in there right now I’ve been kicking around for a year. A poem recently came out of the notebook prematurely, went to poetry group, and then went back to the notebook to get totally revamped.
Once I’ve typed a poem up and printed it out, I usually do one or two more polishes before I’m finally ready to show it to someone else, like my workshop or poetry group. I have two poet friends who can also be counted on to be a pair of eyes, but I really like the instant feedback of a group, so I’m glad to have found one. I also like to think that I’m pretty valuable in these settings as a pair of eyes for other poets. Years of reading voraciously and grading hundreds of student essays, not to mention working with my own words, has given me a pretty good eye for what works and what might not.
After all that, a poem feels ready to be sent out, unless of course, that poem has looped back for some reason and needs to repeat some stages. I have a few poems right now that need to be sent out, but I need to sit down with my market list and decide exactly where to send them. A workshop I went to last summer talked about setting up a tracking process for poems, which I have tried also, so I need to set that back up before I send anything out. It’s good to be able to keep track of where a poem is and where it’s been.
So there’s my writing process– it’s a little messy, a little elongated, and not very scientific, but it works for me. How about you?
Friday ________ Blogging
11 Feb 2009 5 Comments
Even though I’ve been blogging for years, I’ve never had a set blogging pattern. I’ve always just posted whatever I felt like, whenever I felt like it– sometimes I joined in themed global days, like blogging for peace or reproductive choice, but even those I’ve not done religiously. I’ve never done Friday Cat Blogging, and once I tried to do a weekly book review like Elizabeth does with Tuesday book reviews, but it didn’t last for me. I have also seen Friday poetry blogging, but haven’t adopted that either. Finally, I’ve seen Friday recipe blogging, and even Friday Middle English Recipe Blogging.
However, in this new space, I’ve been much more focused and disciplined already. I stockpile posts, check my stats and referrers and search terms, and am trying to be much more deliberate on my posting. For example, one of the functions I like here on WordPress is that I can track my statistics, and so I’ve realized that my stats always go down on the weekends. I think in recognition of that fact, I’m going to move to a Monday-Friday posting schedule. I also have come to appreciate the idea of ending the week with a regular themed post, but which theme?
So far the possibilities are recipes, poetry, book reviews, cats, and I have considered doing a Friday picture post, now that I’ve decided I’d like to take more pictures. So now I turn it to you, readers: if you had a choice, which would you rather see here on Fridays? If you have a new suggestion, I’d love to hear that too!
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