Notes to My Student Teacher

Well, since this is my 17th year in education, I hope I have something to say about. I'm not saying I have the answers, I'm saying I have something to say.

Here's a recent exchange between us:


STUDENT TEACHER: I started looking over Great Gatsby and experienced a mix of excitement/inspiration and dread/intimidation.

STEVE: I get that same mix most every day, and this is my 17th year.

STUDENT TEACHER: How can I teach this when I am no Fitzgerald expert?

STEVE: No problem not being a Fitzgerald expert . . . no one is really an expert on any author they teach. I remember an education professor say something which has turned out to be very true: a teacher pretends like they know something, and through the process of pretending, they come to know it.

So sometimes you know a lot about an author, sometimes you don't. What is that literary theory that disavows the author from his/her work? New Criticism? So there's some value in leaving the author out anyway. And if you just read the wikipedia page on him, you'd be WAY a head of the students.

STUDENT TEACHER: How do I know if my lesson plan ideas are good ones?

STEVE: Well, you never know. Sometimes you throw together a lesson, and it's a hit. Sometimes you spend hours crafting a masterpiece lesson, and it falls flat. You never know exactly why. There's just too many factors always at play: the weather, the time of year, the time of the day, which kids are having hard days, which kids are having good days, the ever-changing alchemy of the class, etc. That's why the best metaphor I've ever thought of for a teacher is a jazz musician. You've got to improv every day.

And herein lies why teaching is a magnificent profession: it's always elusive, never quite figured out, and never quite mastered. And that's great, because it's alway a challenge, always intellectually absorbing. Mastery can sometimes feel like a death, after all. Embracing the surprise and contingency (scary as it may be) is what keeps you coming back.

And it's hard to know what a good or bad lesson plan is when you don't know the students, haven't gotten a sense of their interests, their dispositions, their ability. Once you observe the students, it will become much more clear what a good lesson plan would look like.

STUDENT TEACHER: Do you plan lessons with the Massachusetts Curriculum guidelines in the forefront of your mind? If not, how would you suggest that a novice teacher such as myself assess whether her lesson plan ideas are practical and useful learning tools?

STEVE: I never, ever plan with the Massachusetts Curriculum guidelines in mind. But I/we need to be a bit careful here--I may be an exception instead of the rule. Maybe the guidelines help some, maybe they could help you. I have always, always gone rogue with my lessons, which may be a bad professional decision if I want to keep my job, but it hasn't gotten me fired yet. (The irony is, anytime I've gotten some sort of teaching accolades from students, it's BECAUSE I've gone rogue).

It can be very hard to engage students at all these days, and following something as sterile as the MA guidelines may make it worse. I've found you can almost always make a lesson plan that feels good in your gut, and then you can bend the curriculum guidelines fit it if you need to.

This will be interesting for me to figure out as we continue to work together: most of my decisions in my career come from asking simply what feels right. Using intuition is probably a good thing after you've been doing something for 17 years, so the question then becomes: what do you do your first few years? How valuable is intuition when you're inexperienced? I don't really know the answer, but my guess is the intuitive voice is still often the best way to go. My career started without very little guiding or direction (working in poor schools), and I became addicted to that freedom and autonomy, and I think it has always served me well.

Like I said before, I want you to choose the exact amount of prescription or freedom you want. I don't want you to feel hamstrung by structure, nor directionless by freedom. I can provide you with exactly as much prescription/structure as you think would be best at any given time.

STUDENT TEACHER: Do you read up on the history & politics underlying the books you teach? About the authors? Literary scholarship about the work?

STEVE: Usually not. There just isn't time . . . teaching high school is too busy an affair. Sometimes I might know a little something about an author, or will have previously read something that relates to a book, but for the most part, time is too short. And the CP class that you'll be teaching will have a lot of struggling students, and what works best (I think) is to use themes of the book to help them reflect upon their own lives. I find they are often eager to write about their lives, maybe because they are forming an identity at that age, or they need the catharsis because their home life is chaotic. That's what I often have in mind with a class, particularly a CP class.

And some final thoughts for you:

It's really hard to conceptualize lessons or teaching when you don't have the specifics of a particular class in mind. So I wouldn't try to figure out too much or worry too much at this point; much of teaching is dealing with things as they come up, and things won't come up until you're in the class every day.

I can tell by these questions alone that you'll do a great job. It will be hard and messy and complex and frustrating (and wonderful and exhilarating and interesting and rewarding) to be sure, but no matter what happens we can sit down and address every single concern. I may be out of the classroom (eventually) much of the time, but you won't be doing this alone by any means. I be working closely with you, you'll have a co-teacher in the room, you'll have all the other teachers around, you'll have your BU support (I know you know all this, but I'm typing it all out for some reason), so it will be a group effort in many ways. As it should be.

Hope some of that helps.

Steve

That Was Unexpected

One day this week, before 3rd period started, a student of mine came into class early. Let's call her Karolina. She seemed to be in a good mood, smiling and humming to herself. I asked her how she was:

ME: Karolina, how's it going?

KAROLINA: Great Mr. Jordan.

ME: How so?

KAROLINA: Well, I got some good news back from the doctor.

(As a teacher, anytime you hear half-revealed information like this, you always wonder if the students want to tell you more. And in case they do, you give them the chance.)

ME: You did? Is it anything concerning? And, if you want, you know you can feel free to tell me about it.

KAROLINA: Well, O.K. (pause). I just found out my chlamydia is all cleared up.

(Good to know Karolina, good to know).

Another Reason I'm Opposed To Facebook

When my dear friend and roommate Cara was a sophomore in high school, a girl named Stephanie Gouge etched the following into her locker (with a knife, and without my asterisk): "C*NT FROM BEYOND".

And just today, Stephanie asked to be her facebook friend.

Being Observed

When you're a teacher, you get observed. The principal or the department chair or the curriculum instructor or someone else important will sit in your classroom, observe your teaching, and then write up an assessment. It goes in your permanent record, and that's how you get tenure (or get fired).

I hate being observed. I HATE IT. So much so that I just wrote it in all capital letters. And let me be clear, it is NOT because of the people who have observed me. I've had my department chair observe, the principal observe, about 14 Fulbright teachers observe, and two German exchange teachers observe. And that's just in the first 8 weeks. (In one class, on one day, I had 11 observers observing 11 students). All of these observers have been thoughtful, respectful, helpful, inquisitive, and downright wonderful.

But I still hate being observed. This is my 17th year of teaching, and if I did the math, I've probably been observed on at least 40 occasions, by 50 or 60 people. I should be used to it. But I dislike being observed today as much as I did in my first year.

And why?

Because of murphy's law, and because of the observer effect (otherwise known as the observer-expectancy effect or the actor-observer bias, sometimes erroneously conflated with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle).

First, murphy's law: You've been having an entire month of fantastic classes. The students are engaged, the conversations are authentic and organic, and curiosity abounds. You've had 20 straight classes of good behavior and sophisticated scholarship. And then your department chair or the principal wanders in on the ONE day that month when the kids are dragging, or when one kid says a cuss word to another, or when the kids complain, or when the kids have endless sidebar conversations, or when the whole room seems to be off task. That's the day you get observed. The observer will only see the thinnest slice of your teaching, and it's that one bad day out of the entire month, and from that one class they will have to come to broad conclusions about your teaching ability.

I remember, about 14 years ago, I had one last observation before I was up for tenure . . . so I planned and I planned, and I even got a haircut the night before to look presentable. And lo and behold, on that very day, as my department chair was sitting in the back, a kid shot a coin across the room at someone else at 100 miles an hour that clanged into a cabinet and bounced around the room. After weeks of good work with that class, I was now yelling at a student as I watched the whole room (and lesson) fall apart, on the day of my final, crucial observation.

(Happy ending though, I did get tenure . . . back then in the mid 90's, it only took 2 years).

Here's another perfect example of murphy's law at work.

I teach AP Language second hour; I've really enjoyed the class thus far, and I am pleased with the progress of the students. We've talked about rhetorical strategies, we've read some of the big name philosophers, we've talked about justice, happiness, human rights, animal rights, etc. Which means 99% of the time, if anyone would have walked in the room, they would have heard something that might make me look good.

But one day we talked about female genital mutilation. It's a great way to talk about cultural relativism, and whether the good life is a universal virtue or something contingent from society to society. But it's still about female genitals and their mutilation.

And this was the one day that the principal came in to observe, unannounced.

That's right, the principal Dr. Saheed has been in my class once, and he walked in during our female genital mutilation conversation. For all I know, he opened the door when I was saying "genitals."

I quickly told him the broader discussion we were having, how this issue is an entry into important philosophical and sociological questions. He was great about it, and he had some really interesting things to say to contribute to the class discussion.

But, think about it. The one day he comes in. Female genital mutilation.

And then there's the observer effect. This is a psychological term that refers to the idea (in my mind, the truism) that you can never actually observe anything in it's true form, because the very act of observing changes the nature of what you are trying to observe. When there's an observer in the classroom the kids know it, and you the teacher definitely know it. So now everything is different--this isn't how you are normally as a teacher, and the atmosphere and goals of the class have been altered.

I've found that when I'm being observed, my mind is always split into two: the part of me that's speaking and teaching, and the part of me that is watching myself speak and teach. And a split mind isn't a fully immersed mind. The best classes are the one where you not only speak and teach, but also merge with the students and the lesson and the content and what you're pursuing-- you're almost no longer an individualized self (or as Alan Watts would say, a "skin-encapsulated ego"), but rather a part of something bigger. Which is why Yeats wrote "how can we know the dancer from the dance?"

O.K., I know that's a bit trippy and metaphorical and mystical, but the point is we're never at our best when we're hyper self-aware. And being observed makes us hyper self-aware.

So where does all this leave us? How do you ever know how good a teacher is?

Here's the only way I know: teach next door to somebody for 10 years. I taught in the same hallway of English teachers for 11 years, and only after all that time could I go down the hallway and give you my personal assessment of the teachers. Only after all those years of knowing the teachers, talking to them, teaching their former students, discussing students in common, being in their classrooms, walking by their classrooms, working on curriculum with them . . . only then did I get a true sense of who they are as educators.

I don't know how you formalize that into a school policy, (O.K., you can't), but that's the only way I know how to do it.

The Social Network

I just saw The Social Network. Great movie. Here's the thought I left with:

Nothing changes the world like a jilted nerd.

Least-Fun Uncle in the World

I think I'm the least-fun uncle in the world. Why? Because I I'm opposed to sugar and television. I won't buy ice cream or candy for my niece and nephew, and I won't let them watch T.V. if I'm babysitting. I bring over vegetables in a plastic container to eat in front of them. If they are watching T.V., I cover their eyes.

And do you know what two things children want to do more than anything else in the world? Eat sugar and watch T.V. It would be interesting to put sugar in one room and a television in another room and tell a child to pick a door. They might blow a gasket.

But I found a third thing that makes me the least-fun uncle in the world: I'm opposed to the song "Little Bitty" by Alan Jackson. My niece and nephew LOVE the song and would think nothing of listening to it 20 times in a row. And I have made it my campaign to prevent them from hearing the song--to try to save them from bad art that is defiling our collective cultural consciousness.

In order attack these three crimes against humanity all at once, I wrote my own version of "Little Bitty." I removed the corporate country twang and turned it into a bluesy, folksy number. And I've repurposed the idea of "little bitty" with my own lyrics: my version is about how sugar and television are acceptable only in the ittiest, bittiest amount.

So come and sing along everybody, and join me in being no fun to children:


"Itty Bit, That's It, Thank You"

You have a little dinner at the end of your day
Drink a little milk, have a little bit to say
You ate all your broccoli, ate all your greens
And you’re asking for a little ice cream

It’s alright to have an itty bitty
You can just nibble like an itty-bitty kitty
Just one bite, no more than two
Have an itty bit, that’s it, thank you

You’re a little kid with a lot of growin’ up
You never want to fill up on sugar-filled stuff
Eat a biggie meal as healthy as can be
Then and only then have a little candy

It’s alright to have an itty bitty
You can just nibble like an itty-bitty kitty
Just one bite, no more than two
Have an itty bit, that’s it, thank you


The best of you is right inside your head
You think all day and even when you go to bed
So much to learn and so much to see
But now you ask to watch a little tv

It’s all right watch an itty bitty
Then close your eyes like a sleepy little kitty
Or go outside, read all your books
Then and only then have an itty bitty look

In your head is where you keep your dreams
All the words and stories, and your self-esteem
So don’t slow it down, your head ain’t tired yet
Got so much more than the television set

It’s all right watch an itty bitty
Then close your eyes like a sleepy little kitty
Or go outside, read all your books
Then and only then have an itty bitty look

Song for Stella

Congratulations to my brother Matt and sister-in-law Senoe on the birth of their daughter Stella Naga Jordan Torgerson. I wrote her a song (everyone should start off life with their own song) called "Hello World." Here are the lyrics:


Hello world, how do you do
A pleasure finally meeting you
Why yes, I’d love to stay

As soon as can I learn to stand
I’ll cross all your meridians
I’m thinking if I may, I’d like to say:


REFRAIN

Hey-yo what’s up howdeedoo
Ni hao, sabaidee, yiassou
Shalom and gutentag
Que honda with a bon giourno
Salam alei kum, hujambo
G’Day, konnichi wa


I’ll shake the hands of all the trees
The oceans want to play with me
Take lunch up in the sky

The animals all dancing ‘round
The mountains echoing the sounds
As everyone decides to come on by


I know I’ll grow up big and tall
It makes it much more fun to fall
With grass stains on my knees

But here, today, I just arrived
To keep this feeling deep inside
To stay as new and free as I please

My Awful Confession

So, I really like the outdoors. I like my Outward Bound trips, I like forests and rivers and mountains, I like the wide-open permeable feeling you get after being outside for seven days straight. I feel healed, I feel right. I think that's also true for all of us and the whole world.

Anytime I make these jaunts into the natural world, I come in contact with people who who have organized their life around it. I hang out with wilderness guides, mountain climbers, kayakers, wilderness rescue crews, campers, hikers, etc., etc.

But I have an awful confession to make.

Here it is:

These outdoor types are BORING.

Boring to talk to that is. I like how they can take me into the wild, which makes their actions interesting I suppose. But their minds and their words are BORING.

I don't know how to explain it exactly. You might know the type. They wear Patagonia and fleeces and have tons of camping equipment and wear sandals with wool socks. They're never, ever mean to anyone; they're laid-back and easy going and know a lot about the outdoors.

But it's like they're psychologically 10 yards away from you anytime you converse with them. They never seem to quite register the real you that is trying to talk to them. They have no edge, they have no irony. Their highs and lows are flattened into a white noise of a personality. They seem interchangeable. You can feel your own sharpness depreciate when you talk to them.

But they're not dumb. In fact, most of them were usually pretty good students. But their words never seem to cut into anything, and there's never a shortage of things that need cutting.

Of course I feel like a jerk saying it. Like comedian Patton Oswalt said, "I never realized how desperately I depend on negativity and cynicism just to communicate with the outside world."

Maybe these outdoor types lack irony because they're kind of happy and satisfied with life. And that shouldn't be a bad thing.

Maybe I was hoping to export my interest in philosophy and literature and the like INTO the natural world. To be hiking and paddling WHILE ALSO talking about Heidegger and Orwell would be some kind of heaven.

But those two interests never seem to coexist.

There are eleven other students at this wilderness first responder course. They can talk all day about the mountains they climbed . . . and yet, how much is there to say? What else besides, "yep, I climbed that mountain. All the way to the top. Then I came back down."

Not a single one of the students brought a single book with them. For an 8 day course.

My wilderness first responder teacher is a 55 year-old guy with an amazing history of outdoor experience. It seems like he's climbed every mountain, plunged through every rapid, weathered every kind of injury. He pioneered the snowboard craze in the 90's, he started his own outdoor gear company, and he's rescued hundreds of people in his 30 year career as a search and rescue expert.

And his sense of humor as he lectures in class? It's no more developed than the noises 6 year-old boys make. Fart noises ("ppppffffffttt"), falling down noises ("badoom!", "kerplunk"), or engine noises ("vvvrrrrrooooommmmm!"). He'll start to use weird voices (of various characters I suppose) that have no point, make no jokes, have no irony, and go nowhere.

I know, I'm just a pompous jerk elitist who plans to read Anna Karenina this summer. But I've heard if you climb to the top of one of the tall Tolstoy mountains, you might have an interesting thing or two to say when you get back down.

Conway, New Hampshire

New Hampshire is a pretty interesting state. In some ways, it's the forgotten child of the northeast. Massachusetts has Boston, Vermont has hippies and timeshares, Maine has Stephen King and lobster and the honor of being as far northeast as you can get. And New Hampshire? It doesn't really know what it is, which makes it kind of cool. Overlooked by tourists, it's kind of scrappy and mountainous and rustic and undefined.

But I'm getting to know only one part of it--the area around Conway. And cities where people live are always more amusing than the majesty of the landscape. Conway is a perfect example.

Let's take their newspaper, the Conway Daily Sun, which I have been reading all week. On Thursday one of the front page headlines was "Losing 'Rural' Status Could Be 'Census Consequence' for Conway." You see, if the census says that Conway now has more than 10,000 people, they would no longer be designated as "rural".

Really? Does "rural" just refer to population? Doesn't it also refer to local culture? Or maybe a state of mind?

If we look at some other headlines from the Conway Daily Sun, we'll probably want to keep calling it "rural".

Here's my favorite, from this past Wednesday:

"Bear-Crossing Signs Going Up on West Side Road".

And that was FRONT page news. And many more to choose from. These headlines are from the past 3 days ALONE:

"Library Book Sale in Full Swing"
(It's such a bummer when it's only in partial swing.)

"Race Fans Rejoice: More Bathrooms at N.H. Track"
(Rejoice. That's right, the fans are rejoicing.)

"Bartlett/Jackson Food Pantry Now Open on Saturdays"
(It's such a bitch when you can only go Mon-Fri.)

"In Golf, As in Life, Timing is Everything"
(An editorial, of course. Too boring to read.)

"Police Cite Wrong Record for Suspect in Pepper-Spray Assault". (Didn't 40 people die in Chicago in one weekend recently? And all the while, the Conway Police were dealing with the ominous pepper-spray assailant.)

"Soup's On in Conway Village: Annual Conway Village Festival and Soup-a-thon is Saturday."
(I talked to some of my other Wilderness First Responder classmates about this. I could sit at home and just eat my own can of soup, but it wouldn't be a soup-a-thon. So the question is, what is the minimal number of cans you would need for it to be classified as a soup-a-thon? We decided it would be twelve. Twelve.)

Ah yes, the rural life can be funny. It can make you feel pretty superior about yourself.

Then again, the other day, I was the one digging through a stack of recycled newspapers, looking for headlines I could make fun of for this blog. Which means I'm an asshole. New Hampshire may be rural and rustic, but I'm an asshole with a blog.

Maybe I should try rural and rustic some day.

Wilderness First Responder

So I’m on the outskirts of Conway, New Hampshire, for about 8 days. I’m getting my Wilderness First Responder certification at a wilderness medicine school. That means I’m learning how to stabilize fractures, treat hypothermia, dress lacerations, etc., all improvised with what you can find in the wilderness or in a camper’s pack.

Yep, that’s me, a tough outdoorsman. The kind of manly roughneck that can survive on twigs and morning dew for a month if he needs to. The kind of guy who can wrestle a bear and catch salmon in his teeth.

Or at least that’s the plan.

Because I seem to have a ways to go. I’m not in the wilderness per se . . . if I was I wouldn’t be posting this blog. I’m moving between rustic three buildings: a classroom, a dining hall/administration office, and a dorm, all a few yards from each other in the New Hampshire woods.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I’ve been battling a face rash all year. It comes and goes, and when it comes, it’s a real drag: itchy, painful, inflamed, red, rough skin. All over my face. The only thing that helps a very powerful steroid cream. Which I didn’t bring with me.

Two days into the wilderness course it started to flare up in a serious way, so I had my roommate find the cream and overnight it to the camp. Yep, I was being trained to survive in the wilderness, and I needed a face cream mailed to me. What a mountain man.

Superman’s downfall was kryptonite. Mine is ketoconazole cream. For dermatologic use only.

The Real Housewives of New York City

For some reason, I watched clips of The Real Housewives of New York City today. For those of you who don't know (and I hope that's many of you), it's a reality show about the richest wives/gold diggers of New York City. I think I was checking out the Huffington Post, and there was a link to some of these wives' shenanigans, and I watched it.

I saw about 5 minutes of clips, but I think that's enough to understand the scope of the show. (Kelly really is crazy! That Bethany is such a bitch!)

These women are the most embarrassing, reprehensible, unabashedly shallow, useless, self-involved people on the planet. Which must the the function of the show. Maybe we needed to get to the rock bottom of the human species, to take all the horrors of consumerism and wealth and media whoring and superciliousness and selfishness and push them to their logical ends. And when we do, we get these housewives, the most shameful, vile versions of any human beings ever. And then we can look at it and say "there, that's it. That's as low as we can go. It can get no worse than this. We can start here, and any move we make will be an improvement. And least we know which way is up."

And yet, I may just need to watch a few more of these clips before I go to sleep tonight.

Progress of Some Sort

Now that I'm done with this whole Harvard gig, I ought to reflect a bit. I remember writing my first sentence for my first essay for my first class . . . a rather anxious undertaking. I'd write a sentence and then panic: is that sentence smart enough? It has to be a Harvard sentence. It's for a Harvard assignment, and it will be read by a Harvard professor. Is that how they write their sentences here? Is that how Harvard scholars string their words together? Is my vocabulary embarrassingly shallow? I'll write it again. O.K., how about THAT sentence. Uh oh, am I trying too hard? Is that a vacuous thought that amounts to no more than a thinly-veiled attempt at sounding intelligent? Will I be exposed for the sham that I am?

It went on and on like that.

And then, by the end of the year, I was turning in a 34 page paper that largely disagreed with the professor's position, the very same professor that would be reading and grading the paper. (What can I say? He was wrong, really wrong.)

None of this means I think I'm smarter than Harvard academics. Far from it. If I was honest with myself (and because the ed school is an entirely different animal than the other schools), I'm in the bottom 1% of the university. I'm not bummed out about it or anything, I've just seen the intellectual acumen of folks around here, so I know my place.

But now, at the end of the year, I find I'm not really intimidated by all this brilliance. I'm not brilliant myself, but I'm also not that insecure when I'm amongst the geniuses. They're smart, but they're mortal.

I'll consider that my Harvard education.

(And I like cooler bands than they do anyway).

Graduation - Part 1

Yep, graduation at Harvard University. I think it's supposed to be a big deal. At least it's a spectacle.

Every school has their own graduation in the afternoon, but on graduation morn they actually get everyone together for an all school event. That's when the president speaks, that's when they give honorary degrees (Meryl Streep got one this year), that's where it's nearly impossible to get tickets as a spectator. So after a previous night of drinking and celebrating, you wake up very early the next morning, squint through the pain in your don't-really-feel-Ivy-League-at-all aching head, and you head out to the yard.

And it's packed. It takes about two hours just to file in, and then you're stuck in a teeming prison of brainy graduates for the entire ceremony. I spent most of my time worrying about my bladder and the impossibility of finding a toilet if needed.

Some of the ceremony feels like you've snuck into an old cultish ritual. It all starts off with an announcement from the Sheriff of MIddlesex County. (Nearly impossible to say that title without affecting an east coast snobby lilt in your voice). I guess he's the ACTUAL sheriff of Middlesex County; he rides in on a horse, wears a top hat, and walks (stomps) around the stage with a huge scepter in his hand. He marches up to the microphone and bellows (like the word "bellows" was invented just for him): "AS THE SHERIFF OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY I DEEM THIS ESTEEMED GRADUATION CEREMONY IS NOW UNDERWAY!"

It's pretty obvious what's happening here. Harvard is the oldest university in the country, so they have some antiquated rituals that have never gone away. Apparently in the days of horses and buggies (and a university that would only admit white males), the Sheriff of Middlesex County would officially start and end the graduation. And he still does.

Which had me wondering. When the Sheriff first did this long ago, and for for the first 10 or 20 graduations, it fit the times. It was the protocol, it was completely normal. When he does it now, it's mere theater, a throwback scene which provides some charm and some history. The ridiculousness of his outfit and his scepter and his histrionics are completely anomalous to modern times, and are enjoyed for exactly that reason. But what about those years between these two extremes? What about those awkward years when the whole Sheriff ritual seemed ridiculously out of date, but it was still too soon for it to be a gesture to antiquity? Those must of been some tough years. The Sheriff must have felt like a complete tool, especially considering the getup he'd be wearing. Wearing no costume is fine, wearing a costume that everyone knows is a costume is fine, but wearing an outfit in which it's unclear if it's ironic or just a poor clothing choice, is the worst.

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, the ceremony. Next came the undergraduate speech. Every year they pick some over-overachiever over all other overachievers to give the student speech. Can you even imagine such a person? Think of how type-A you have to be to even get into Harvard. And think of what a go-getter you must be in the top 10% of your class at Harvard. Now fathom the unfathomable person that can actually surpass ALL of this. I guarantee you they are no fun at parties (and are cold and inert in the bedroom).

But here's the catch: who ever is selected to give the speech, they have to write it in Latin, and then MEMORIZE it in Latin. It's not a student who is majoring in Latin mind you, it's just someone who has to put the WHOLE thing in Latin. And it must be memorized. That's right, you're 22 years old, you've memorized a 15 minute speech in a language you don't speak, you're at the most esteemed university on the planet, the Harvard president is sitting behind you, and Meryl Streep is looking on. So you better have that shit memorized. And to think I can't go to the grocery story without a list written down.

Why give the speech in Latin? I suppose it's another antiquated ritual a la the Sheriff. But more likely it's just Harvard pompousness. YES Harvard, we know you're smart . . . YES Harvard, smart people speak and read Latin . . . YES Harvard, most of us don't understand a word of this speech, and we feel a little dumb for it, and that's what you wanted. So here was this young woman, rambling on in Latin about pursuing your dreams or some such nonsense, and I don't get a single word. But then she said something and some people start chuckling. What? You're laughing? At what? You were tracking that whole speech IN LATIN? For real? Is that even possible? Can you be funny in Latin? How would you say "take my wife, please"?

Graduation - Part 2

Here's a cool part of graduation. Every school carries a different representative object to wave. The law school had gavels, the divinity school had a halos over their heads, public policy had inflatable globes, the ed school had books, and the design school built structures out of legos and taped it to their hats. I saw one person with a gavel AND a halo . . . must've been a double major. Or maybe he was representing the justice meted out by angels. The business school waved American flags, though I think dollar bills would have been better. (Or can you somehow wave the oppression of 3rd world peoples? Isn't that what they've been learning?)

Then came the honorary degrees. A was a pretty impressive bunch: a philosopher of justice, an experimental sculptor, a bioethicist, a researcher in blood-based disorders, a molecular biologist, etc. People who probably never get stoned. Or couldn't name a single NFL player. And yes, Meryl Streep also got one. It's a little disheartening to see how everyone craned their neck when her turn was up, after dozing through everyone else. Sure breaking the boundaries of science or revolutionizing philosophy are both impressive, but if you give us a movie actress, we are INTERESTED. Sure your research may solve a fatal illness, but did you star in "Mama Mia"? Because Meryl did.

My favorite recipient of an honorary degree was Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of a U of Maryland university and a founder of multiple programs that serve underprivileged african-american youth. Why did I like him so much? Because he has two degrees from the University of Illinois. My school.

So I have three schools under my belt now: U of I, Northwestern, and Harvard. If you've gone to multiple colleges, sometimes you wonder where your loyalties lie. If the schools played each other in football, who would you root for? For me it's easy: University of Illinois first and foremost, and always. No contest. Your undergraduate years are somehow housed in your DNA--that formative time is inextricable from who you are. For me, the other schools are nice add-ons, but they'll never touch U of I in loyalty.

So there I was sitting in the hot sun in Harvard yard, half paying attention, when I hear "Mr. Hrabowski completed is graduate degrees in mathematics and education at the University of Illinois." And do you know what I did? I whooped. Loudly. Really loudly. I didn't plan it--it wasn't one of those times when you think "well, I know what I could yell . . . should I do it?" It was an involuntary whoop that I couldn't have retained if I wanted to. But people had to know I was there to REPRESENT.

Of course graduation is a big day for the Harvard University president. Right now that's Drew Faust, and she made her presence known in a strange way. Before one of the honorary degrees was given out to a person, someone would stand up and read their straightforward bio. And then Drew Faust would stand up and add HER two sentences. And what a two sentences they always were. You could tell she had working for the past 6 months on making her lines JUST SO. Once she spoke you could hear the (deliberate) elevation in eloquence and vocabulary. She'd say things like "his perspicacious insight has us soaring to new scientific heights" or "his vertiginous climb to the top of his field is only matched by his galvanisation of the movement." At one point my friend April took out her iPhone, got online, brought up dictionary.com, and started to type in every unknown word that would come out of Drew's mouth.

In the afternoon, things got down to business. All the schools broke into their own ceremonies, and soon enough I was walking across the stage and shaking hands, and I was graduated.

Well, almost.

It's entirely likely that a Harvard graduate is an insufferable person. They think they went to the best school, so they likewise think they're amongst the best people in the world, and what they say is some of the best things humans have ever said. As my brother told me a few months ago, "you're now going to be really insufferable, aren't you?"

I don't think so. As I sat back in my chair with all of the other graduates, I looked down the aisle and saw everyone opening up their large, sealed envelopes to pull out their diplomas and have a look. To sit back and admire it. I started to do the same: pop the golden seal, lift up the red flap, and look inside for that piece of parchment paper with the calligraphic script you've been working so hard for.

But mine didn't have a diploma. It only had a single sheet of paper.

Apparently you have to complete some financial aid payback forms before you can graduate. Supposedly everyone knew this. Supposedly there was email after email, and reminder after reminder. And I missed it all. Maybe it was my laziness, maybe it was my flakiness, maybe it was my disorganization. All I knew was I didn't have a diploma--instead I had a little piece of paper that was gently scolding my neglect.

I looked down the rows and saw all the diplomas in the proud hands of the graduates. And then I looked down at my sheet, which might as well have been a note to the principal's office.

If I ever seem to have a bit of that Harvard arrogance, I assure you, it's only an act.

It Changes Everything

Do you want to know what changes everything? What can change your day, your week, your whole year? Something that, if you started with it, just about everything else falls into place?

Naps.

That's right, taking a nap.

I had the good fortune to be able to take naps this year. Because I had the varied schedule of a student, I could nap an hour in the afternoon here and there, or sometimes in the late morning, or right after dinner (since I was going to go to bed at 2 am anyway). I would take a nap at the library, take a nap in my own bed, take a on the couch downstairs . . . I napped with the best of them.

I cannot tell you how great it is. When you nap your mood improves, your health improves, your cognition improves. You have more energy and you're more alert and you're more present and you're more alive. I'm sure it adds years to your life.

But this shouldn't surprise us: if your body says it's tired, it knows what it needs, so you should go to sleep. Pretty simple.

If you start with naps, everything else can fall into place. True for an individual, true for a society.

Napping is so great and so essential, that I think it's a crime if you can't do it. If your culture has constructed itself so that it's impossible to take naps whenever you want, it's a culture that's gone badly off the rails.

So here is my new gauge of the worthiness of a society: how much napping can you do?

And I'm not really joking. If your culture has ample napping time, it's a culture that honors biorhythms, honors health, and honors individuality. Do you know who does all the napping they ever need? Hunter-gatherers . . . both stone age hunter-gatherers and modern hunter-gatherers. Consider this passage about an aboriginal group in Australia:

"Apart from the time spent in general social intercourse, chatting, gossiping, and so on, some hours of the daylight were also spent resting and sleeping. If the men were in camp, they usually slept after lunch from an hour to an hour and a half, sometimes even more. After returning from fishing or hunting they usually had a sleep . . . . The women, when out collecting in the forest, appeared to rest more frequently than the men. If in camp all day, they also slept at odd times, sometimes for long periods."

That's right, by my formula, the aborigines are more advanced than we are. They have lots of napping opportunities. We have almost none. And we think that's progress.

Bumming Myself Out

I think the oil spill in the gulf is too much. It's too depressing, too demoralizing, too apocalyptic. Our final stab into the heart of mother earth. Or something.

This is one of the first times I am deliberately ignoring an important story, a weak defense mechanism against a crushing reality.

How can we keep ignoring the natural world? Is it that we're lazy? Selfish? Reluctant to give up our comfortable modern lives? Is the truth of it all too depressing?

Credible scientists say that in the future people will be amazed that we spent so much time and money on the Iraq war, when global warming was so much more important. IT'S NON-NEGOTIABLE. Nothing happens if you don't have a landbase. Countless lives are at stake. Countless ecosystems are at stake. Other credible scientists say it may be too late. And still we ignore it.

I'll try to write a more upbeat, casual blog next. Something about graduation. If the oil spill hasn't reached the Massachusetts shore yet.

End of the Minivan Era

Today has been a difficult day for Uncle Steve Jordan.

The Era of the Minivan has come to an end.

For the past 3 years or so, I've driven a minivan. A 1995 Plymouth Voyager, a real honest-to-goodness soccer mom minivan. And I EMBRACED it. I had a bumper sticker that said "My child is an honors student." I have a shirt that says "Soccer Mom." I have another shirt that says "Minivan Mega Fun."

Don't you see? It was ironic. I'm not a soccer mom. I don't have a child who is an honors student. Nor do I have a child.

That's why it was clever. And hip. Because it's ironic.

So I really loved driving that behemoth. Or, as I liked to call it, the green mother ship.

But the repairs became too frequent, the overheated engine became too common, the leaking coolant (and door that didn't open, and cracked windshield, and windows that didn't roll down, and the air conditioning that didn't work) became too constant. So I let her go. Today.

What am I going to do now? Without this ironic part of me? Can I still wear my "Minivan Mega Fun" shirt? Do I have to try to be interesting all on my own? Develop a personality or something?

Because I like things that are a substitute for actually being an engaging person. Like "I drive a minivan." Or "I don't have a cell phone." Or "My favorite bands are more obscure than your favorite bands."

Sigh.

At least my Chicago Blackhawks are tearing through the NHL playoffs.

Wait a minute . . . I'm a hockey fan . . . I drove a mini van . . . I was almost a hockey mom!

Like my hero Sarah Palin.

And as I said goodbye to the minivan, I was wondering, do we really have relationships with inanimate objects? I suppose we do. Certainly children do with their dolls and stuffed animals. But us adults? Are we really attached to things that aren't alive? Do concrete objects actually posses a personality? Do we think they have some kind of soul or something? Or is that just what our minds project UPON them? And if it is just something our mind does, then we should just be able to turn off our minds when we have to say goodbye. Because there's nothing really THERE, is there?

I'll now be on a bike path or sidewalk near you. See you then.

Random Out-of-Context Paragraphs #2

This is what we need to do with the natural world: listen. Then we might know how to live and what to do. I’m not the one to say what that is, since I have a lot more listening to do myself. But we can find people who listen and hear what is being said: the remaining hunter-gatherers, Native Americans, or those who have spent their lives immersed in their bioregion. These are the masters that Confucius talks about, those who have trained themselves through a lifetime of roles and rituals, those who know what to do. Heidegger said “a completely new method of thinking [would be], at first, possible for but a few men to achieve.” The naturalization of the world would be a new method of thinking for many of us, but an old method for others. So we should begin to train ourselves for this new way of thinking, and start listening to those who are already the masters.

A few years ago I watched clip from a Thelonious Monk concert. The song began with the bass player, drummer, and saxophonist playing first, with Monk walking across the stage to his piano. But halfway there he just stopped, and then started to tap his foot and snap his fingers. For the next few minutes he just tapped and snapped, then walked back and forth in a casual, rhythmic dance, staring upwards at nothing, lost in the music. Minutes later he finally sat down and started to play too. After the concert someone asked him why he didn’t play right away, and he said something like “they were already in a good groove, so they didn’t need me playing yet.” This is my best metaphor for what we should do in the natural world. We should try to be Thelonious Monk with the natural world. We should listen to nature, find its rhythms, snap our fingers, enter into its music. It’s already in a good groove, so it doesn’t need us stepping all over the notes. And if we listen well, we’ll know exactly when to sit down and play along.

Random Out-of-Context Paragraph #1

In my fifteen years as a teacher, I always knew I was working in the very heart of education. But after s300-s301, I am now engaged in the scholarship of education. Before my focus went no further than the four walls of my classroom; I was a teacher and only a teacher, and in no formal way was I a writer, commentator, analyst researcher, or philosophizer about teaching. But now I’ve spent a year thinking broadly about education, I’ve talked with researchers and people working on policy, I’ve begun some of my own research, and I’ve started to think about the field contextually. And I feel ready and confident to do so. Maybe I needed fifteen years of teaching and one year of graduate work at Harvard before I could adequately begin to be a scholar in the field. If I had done it any earlier, or without my work at Harvard, I might not have spoken from a place of deep experience and conviction. And nothing is worse than making assertions while simultaneously trying to justify (to yourself and to others) that you are worthy of those assertions. Or to use Edward’s metaphor, Luke left Degobah for the first time too early, before he was ready to be a Jedi. I wanted to be a fully trained “Jedi” educator before I could be a commentator on the field.

Poems from This Year - Part 3

Two more:

"Window Washer"
"Bedtime"

In the Bowels

Well, I'm deep in the bowels of some Harvard library at an old wooden carrel working on my final paper. This last essay is a heavy one: it tackles Heidegger and Confucius (together again) and indigenous philosophies and more. And it's running away from me--over 30 pages already.

Very hard to birth such a project. But it's a labor of love my friends, a labor of love. I'll be sad when it's over.

Apocalypse

For the past few days it seems like armageddon has arrived. And let me tell you, it's a mighty bleak feeling.

First, devastating earthquakes seem to be happening everywhere.

Second, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is spreading by the second, choking and killing everything in the sea, delicate ecosystems, etc., and is heading for poor, beleaguered New Orleans.

Third, the Red Line broke down a few days ago, which is how I get around.

Fourth, a major water main broke that serves over two million people in the Boston area, and our tap water has been contaminated for days. You can't drink it, you can't wash your clothes in it, you can't wash your dishes in it, they say that even if you used soap to wash your hands, you should still sanitize them right afterwards. There's serious shortages on bottle water--if you go to a CVS or a grocery store, you'll see empty shelves of where all things drinkable used to be.

(Not to mention that I have a horrendous, growing, inflamed face rash that is leaving me horribly disfigured).

What is going on? Have we not been praying enough? Are the cosmos angry?

And if the U.S. doesn't watch out, we'll be demoted to a 2nd world country sometime soon. Though we probably deserve it.

The End Is Near

Well, three classes down, one to go. The end is near. Some reflective thoughts.

1. I love studying and taking classes. It seems like a human right that should never be denied. Because as much as you love studying, you have to break from it eventually to enter the job force to make some money. I know, you can be a PhD student and prolong it all for another 5 years, but PhD work is different--it has to be narrowly focused, and I'm not so sure that's for me.

2. When I'm not teaching I exist differently. I have an appetite, I sleep deeply and soundly. I have more energy. I take naps. Have you ever been able to take naps regularly? It changes your WHOLE life. I nap four or five days every week. That's another human right that shouldn't be denied.

3. What a rare treasure it is to find a really good teacher. Teaching is a tough job. It's very hard to do well. Very few teachers are REALLY good at it. At Harvard I've been lucky to have some pretty good teachers, and I've (for the most part) gotten everything I wanted out of my classes. But it's still rare to get that great teacher, that life-changing teacher. They're an unbelievable treasure if you ever stumble across one.

4. You know how teachers say "there aren't any stupid questions"? That's a lie. Of course there are stupid questions. Lots of them. I've heard them in my classes from time to time. Someone will speak, and I'll think to myself "now THAT was a stupid question."

5. You know how when you get out of the pool your swimsuit clings to your legs? That's one of my least favorite feelings.

Harvard to Homeless

Well, the honeymoon is over. When I hit Cambridge, I was in a fantasy of sorts . . . or maybe a pleasure vacation that didn't seem to have an ending. All I knew is that I didn't have the burdens of teaching, I could go out on a Tuesday night and I had a lot of reading and writing and thinking to do but I'd enjoy it all. And for 8 months or so, I pretended that was all that was happening to me . . . all that would ever happen to me.

But today was the last day of classes. I've got a paper due tomorrow, another one due on May 5th, and then my last one due May 6th. And then that's IT.

So, unavoidably, I have to think about what I'm doing next year. And I have no idea. At all.

Which makes me think back to my very first weekend in Cambridge. My parents and I had driven out in my minivan and a moving truck. After we got all my stuff into my new place, we headed out for a goodbye lunch at Veggie Planet, a local restaurant that serves a stellar peanut/broccoli/coconut rice dish.

As my father, mother, and I sat and ate, my parents started in on me.

"So, what will you do after this year?"

"Um, I don't know."

"You gave up your teaching job in Mundelein, didn't you."

"Um, well, yes."

"A job with tenure, that paid you well, with benefits, and with a good pension."

"Yep."

"And now you gave it up to get a second master's, one that you don't functionally need."

"I guess so."

"So what will you do after this?"

"I don't know."

"Does this master's give you any new job opportunities?"

"I'm not sure."

"Are you thinking about your employment beyond this yet?"

"Not really, not yet."

"You know you can't count on us to support you. You're 38 years old.

"I know."

"Do you know what you're doing?

"I'm not really thinking that far ahead, I guess."


The rest of the lunch went on like this. When we were done, we walked out of the restaurant, and AT THAT EXACT MOMENT, walking right by us, was a homeless man who had his stuff in a Harvard Graduate School of Education bag. You couldn't have scripted it any better.

My mother, without missing a beat, said "That'll be you in 9 months."

Well, now it's nine months later, and I have a debt and no real job prospects.

We'll have to see if my mother was right.

Forgetting

I'm going through a period where I'm forgetting everything. Has that ever happened to you? For the past month or so, I've forgotten to zip my fly about 50% of the time.

Or how about this: you sit down to send an email, and the entire purpose of the email is to attach a document. And then you send the email, but you've forgotten to attach the document.

I do that about 80% of the time.

A few times a year I will think there's 60 cents in a dollar (I suppose because there's 60 minutes in an hour). I'll look down at the coins in my hand, see that there's 59 cents, and then think to myself "Whoa! Only one penny short of a whole dollar!"

When I used to smoke and play darts in college, inevitably I'd throw the cigarette at the board, and put the dart in my mouth.

I think these would be called "senior moments," if I was a senior. But I'm not. I think I'm middle-aged. Can you have "middle-age moments"?

New Song for My Nephew

I wrote a song for my two-year old nephew, Theo.

Even though lyrics usually don't work as poetry, I'll post them anyway. If something doesn't work rhythmically, just imagine that it does when I'm singing it.

"Run Around"

Glasses

Well, I now wear glasses. I got my first pair this morning. I've probably needed them for about 5 years, and I finally submitted.

Just a few thoughts:

1. Expensive! Mine cost $300. College students don't have that kind of money.

2. I predict I will lose my glasses within the next two months. I lose about 6 pairs of sunglasses in a year. This will not go well.

3. Damn it's a crisp and detailed world out there!

4. I can no longer mock the other members of my nuclear family who all need glasses. The last Jordan has fallen.

5. I may have been pushed into buying glasses when I read an article that claimed wearing glasses (if you need them) helps prevent Alzheimer's. That doesn't mean NOT wearing glasses CAUSES Alzheimer's, but rather that wearing glasses and being able to see the world helps prevent the onset. Seeing a detailed world gives your brain a lot more to chew on, and that keeps your neurons alive and firing.

6. Now what do I do about sunglasses?

7. Do people still wear contacts?

8. Anytime I hear someone with a British accent, I always think they're smarter than they probably are. I hope people do the same with me when I'm wearing glasses.

9. What did people do before the invention of glasses? Just put up with a blurry world? Well, maybe not. Here's what I heard: before we invented glasses, those with blurry eyes would just die early. They would fall off a cliff, hit their head on a tree branch the didn't see, etc. And since they would die early they'd remove themselves from the gene pool and thus wouldn't pass on their substandard genetics. Those with great vision would still be alive, and they could birth some sharp-sighted babies. But then glasses get invented, so us poor-sighted folks stay alive, pass on our bad genes, and our collective eyesight just keeps getting worse and worse.

So my new glasses better save my damn life at some point, because I'm going to have to eat Ramen noodles for the next 3 months just to cover the cost.

Walter Payton Poster

Why do I have a Walter Payton poster in my wall?

I suppose I put up the poster because I am now in Boston, and I have a LOT of Chicago pride when I'm in Chicago. I want to remember my roots, and brag to people that I come from a cooler city than they do.

And my friend Erin got me the poster for my birthday, so it's a reminder of her.

A bit more deeply,

For most of my childhood I had two heroes: Walter Payton and Mick Jagger. So this is definitely a reference/homage/recalling/calling up of my childhood. Why call up your childhood? Perhaps it was a more innocent time, a more pure time, and adulthood--for all it's advantages--is one messy affair. When I was running around outside as Walter Payton, or diving over the basement couch like he used to dive over defenders on fourth and inches, I had nothing else on my mind. I was free. Now, no matter what I am doing, I've always got a LOT of stuff in my head . . . my job, relationships, money, what the future will bring, etc. I carry around a lot more, I'm a lot heavier, and that makes it a lot harder to jump over the Green Bay Packers defenders when it's fourth and goal, ball on the one yard line.

Poems from This Year - Part 2

Here be some more.

"Dear Bonnie Prince Billy"
"So These Aliens"
"Gecko"
"Cook County Caelus"

Poems from This Year - Part 1

Well, some of them at least.

"Coltan"
"Chicago River Lament"
"Wanting In"
"Praise"

Aunt Pat Responds to Chomsky

Well, Aunt Pat read the post on Chomsky, and asked me a good question.

Let me back up for a moment. Aunt Pat is a Peter Gabriel FANATIC. She follows him around the country when he's on tour, she flies to England to see him record, she undoubtedly dreams about him most nights.

So when she saw that I wrote about Chomsky, she asked about the Peter Gabriel line in "Animal Nation" that goes “Chomsky and Skinner, how could they be so blind?" Well, I'm going to try to make Aunt Pat's day.

I THINK PETER GABRIEL IS RIGHT AND HE IS SMARTER, WISER, AND MORE ENLIGHTENED THAN CHOMSKY AND SKINNER. (And of course, by association, I am saying [in this case] that I am smarter and more enlightened than Chomsky and Skinner too . . . Harvard trains you in this kind of intellectual arrogance). So here's the quick explanation of what I think Sir Gabriel is saying:

Chomsky's linguistic analysis says that language is a specific feature of human beings . . . it distinguishes us from other animals, even more dramatically than opposable thumbs do. This also implies that animals don't have a rich language amongst themselves, either inter and intra species.

But if you're Peter Gabriel, or an American Indian, or a hunter gatherer, or a dweller of the rainforest, (or a white suburban man from the suburbs of Chicago who wishes he was in touch with nature) you would say that not only do animals have rich and ongoing languages, but that the natural world speaks amongst itself all the time. Rivers talk to fish who talk to the wind who talks to the worms who talk to the sunset who talks to the mountain range who talks to the coyotes. And those nature-based people can hear and speak the language too--and NOT as a metaphor. Us "civilized" folks in modern times might say that it's a nice "metaphor" when they think they "talk" to nature. NO. The nature-based people would say they aren't talking to nature as a metaphor, they are ACTUALLY talking to nature. They know the language still, while we have forgotten it. Russian is unintelligible to me because I never grew up speaking it. The language of nature is unintelligible to me because, also, I didn't grow up speaking it.

I know, it sounds crazy . . . it sounds crazy to me too. But I always wonder, who is crazier? The culture that talks to nature, and treats it with respect as a friend and mother, or modern culture that doesn't talk to nature, and has cut down 75% of its trees (globally), and sends 100 species into extinction every single day?

Not bad Peter Gabriel, not bad.

What Could Be Worse?

I'm sure we've all had the following experience at some point: as you are saying something TERRIBLE about another person, you realize they are right behind you, listening to your every word.

With the advent of modern technology, I think this happens a LOT more. Landlines, cell phones, lists phone numbers, text messaging, the internet . . . it's all ripe for hitting the wrong button and saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.

(I bet it used to be a LOT easier to cheat on your spouse when you couldn't leave endless clues in your inbox, or on your cell phone bill, etc.)

Recently I wrote an email to a friend in which I called someone "a caricature of a human being." Only I didn't sent it to my friend, I SENT IT TO THE PERSON I WAS INSULTING.

What could be worse? How could I be so careless?

What do you say after that? How can you take it back? You can't. You can only feel sick to your stomach, and resolve that you'll never ever say a mean thing about anyone ever again.

(Which lasts for about an hour, tops).

El Salvador Part 5

I knew there was a reason I'm in an Arts in Education program.

When I was in El Salvador, I had the chance to talk to the director of the only art museum in the country. He started by telling us some of their recent history, including a brutal 10 year civil war, followed by the crime and delinquency that still grips the nation.

I asked him what could curb the violence, and without hesitation he said, "more art."

El Slavador Part 4

Oscar Romero is the national hero of El Salvador. He was a Catholic priest/activist who stood up to the oppressive, U.S.-backed Guatemalan government in the 70's. He cared deeply about all of his followers and the people of El Salvador. In 1980 he was killed by an assassin (trained by the U.S.) while he was conducting mass.

In as San Salvador university you can find a moving display of Romero's clothing, books, and artifacts, some of them blood-stained from the violence. But most affecting of all is his Bible that was torn through the middle by a stray bullet. It looks like a metal speed boat had cut through the pages, leaving a widening wake behind.

I'm not religious, but I might have been for a moment or two as I stood and stared.

El Salvador Part 3

In both Tanzania and Ecuador, the people would often fawn over a white visitor from the U.S. They wanted my friendship, they wanted me as a guest, they wanted me as a connection to the richest country in the world. A lot of it was their kindness and hospitality, but it often felt like it was a sense of inadequacy that made them glorify me and my country.

Not so in El Salvador. The country is so tough, so (recently) war-torn, so crime-ridden, that the people don't have time to fawn. They don't have the same insecurities, because they've seen to much, and they've survived too much. It's sort of like, "Oh, you're from America? O.K. What else have you got?"

El Slavador Part 2

In every poor country I've ever been to, you can always find a bland, cheap carbohydrate that makes up the bulk of the diet. In Tanzania it was ugali, a tasteless corn mash. In El Salvador it was a thick, heavy tortilla. In Ecuador it was mostly rice.

Pick your 3rd world country, and then look for their cheap calorie-delivery system.

El Slavador Part 1

Being in El Salvador reminded me of an unpleasant fact in a world divided into rich and poor.

Some bellies are very full, some are not.

There's usually enough food to go around.

So why are some bellies empty?

Ethiopian Food

Lord knows I have tried, but you cannot get good Ethiopian food in Boston or the Boston area.

My Mother Wants Shorter Posts

So the other day I was on the phone with my mother, and I asked her if she'd read my blog lately. She said, "Yes, I've read them. They're getting a little long, aren't they? Can't you write shorter ones?"

Well, since I'm always the dutiful son, I will soon write some shorter posts. But not just yet. How about one more long one. But I'll be nice to my mother--I'll make it one of great interest to her. It'll be about her husband (otherwise known as my father).

A few years ago, for my father's birthday, my mother asked all of her kids to write something about their Dad, which she would compile as a lovely gift. Little did my mother know that she was prepping me for a future Harvard assignment.

Two weeks ago in my Moral Development class we were asked to write about a moral mentor. I took some of the ideas and structure from the birthday writing, and spun it into a whole paper. Thanks Mom. I'll paste it below:


My Father as Moral Mentor

I learned about morality at the International House of Pancakes. I was seventeen years old, and my father and I were driving back to Chicago after a college visit to Marquette. On our way home we stopped for dinner at an IHOP that was just off the highway. We both ordered a big meal, and then sat chatting in our booth. A few minutes later the waitress came with all our food and drinks on one tray, but as she approached she tripped and sent the tray flying . . . right into my father. He tried to move out of the way, but a tidal wave of milk, sauce, grease, meat, and soup crashed into him. The waitress, visibly upset, apologized profusely and cleaned up as best she could, then scurried away in shame. Five minutes later she came back to our table with a second waitress who apologized for her, because our waitress was too upset to speak.

I would have understood if my father had been agitated. It had been a long day; we had just sat in traffic and faced miles more of it before we would be home. My father sat doused in food and drink that would be on him until he took a shower later that evening. And the IHOP décor can put anyone in a bad mood. But without hesitation, my father looked directly at the tearful waitress and told her to think no more of the incident. Accidents happen, we’re all human and we all make mistakes. It’s just food and stains wash out, and it could have happened to anyone. Watching my father as he spoke, I could tell he wasn’t just “saying” the right thing. He truly meant it. He harbored no anger, and he didn’t want the waitress to continue to feel so bad.

I’ve thought of this incident when the class discussed the issue of shame. The waitress appeared to be shameful instead of just regretful, since her reaction was so intense. If she had been merely regretful, she would have apologized, chalked it up to bad luck, and moved on with her day. But her accident seemed to access some deeper insecurity, which led to her feeling of deep shame. But my father’s response encouraged her to trade her shame for regret. When he said “accidents happen” or that “it could have happened to anyone,” he made the spilling of food a common occurance, not something that defines a self. My father knew how painful shame is, and he helped me see the obligation we all have to minimize the shame others may feel.

I also thought of this IHOP incident when the class talked about the importance of modeling morality. Professor Weisbourd spoke of how small, daily examples of moral behavior are much more effective than grandiose edicts of what’s right and what’s wrong. I cannot recall a single time that my father ever instructed me on moral behavior. But I don’t think he had to, because his moral behavior at the IHOP speaks volumes. And maybe it was better that he never told me how I was supposed to conduct myself. If he had spent my childhood talking about the importance of kindness, then forgiving the waitress would have seemed like he was trying to live up to his words. But because my father never spoke of it, when I saw him forgive the waitress, it seemed like it emerged from the core of his being, as if it was a part of his DNA. Therefore it was even more powerful, because I knew this is how he was. And because I was in the process of idealizing him, it was how I wanted to be too.

Professor Weissbourd also emphasizes the importance of appreciation, and my father helped me develop this moral capacity as well. For example, I remember one Memorial Day when I was very young, perhaps in third or fourth grade. Our suburban town was holding a fair, a parade, and other activities at one of our parks, including a cadre of local soldiers who fired rifles and cannons into the air to honor those who serve our country. During the gunfire, I remember my brother and I delighting in the booming noises we felt in our chests, and we started to run in and out of the gun smoke. But then I looked up, and I saw my father with his head down, standing silent, with his baseball hat over his heart. My father had emigrated from war-torn Yugoslavia and Germany when he was in his teens, settling in Chicago and making a life for himself that included a college degree, a successful career, and a family. As I saw him standing with his head down, I knew immediately that he was in deep appreciation of the U.S. and the chance it had given him. I often struggle with the concept of patriotism, wondering what part it plays in the narrow mindedness and war-mongering that sometimes afflicts this county. But maybe patriotism wasn’t the issue on that Memorial Day. That image of my father standing with his hat in his hand still resonates with me years later, because it helped me realize the value of deep, genuine appreciation.

I could write pages about my father as my model of morality, about how he refused to eat at a restaurant that wouldn’t serve his African-American teammate, how he put no pressure on either of his sons to continue playing sports when we lost interest, and how I truly felt free to attend any college I wanted. But I will end this essay on the soccer field. When I was young, from first grade through eighth grade, my father was the coach of our local soccer team. And he always made sure Mark Christensen played at least half of each game, even though Mark was the worst player on the team. Mark was slow, uncoordinated, and lacked fundamentals. He also suffered from severe learning disabilities and had trouble tracking the flow of the game. But my father always put him in, even if the score was close. I don’t recall any player ever getting upset—it just seemed like something that was supposed to happen. This was a good example of being committed to other people, in this case the people on your soccer team. The team would have had a better chance to win if Mark wasn’t on the field, but my father prioritized our commitments to each other over the happiness or self-esteem that comes from winning a game. A few years later, when I was in high school, I had a class with Mark. I chose to sit by him, not because I felt like he needed the charity, or that I was doing some honorable thing. I sat by him because once again he was an inextricable part of the community of the class, and he was a distinct individual that I wanted to know better. I realize now that this approach towards Mark was the same as my father’s. My moral capacity had been well developed by high school, thanks to the moral mentoring I had received. And I can only hope that my father’s influence is with me to an even greater degree as an adult.

Arts in Education - Those Vicious Debates

What? Are there debates in the world of Arts in Education? And they're vicious?

I figure that anytime you get deep enough into one field, you will always uncover some kind of crucial debate. You should see how cutthroat it gets at those model railroad meetings.

But one of the BIG debates in Arts in Education is whether or not you can measure art, or the artistic experience. Or even should.

Well, since this is a blog, and I've already fully accepted the obsession with self that comes along with it, I will tell you my position.

You should never, ever, ever try to measure it.

Last semester a great philosophy professor named Catherine Elgin and a teaching fellow named Edward Clapp gave a lecture about art. And in said lecture, Mr. Clapp innocently suggested "you cannot measure the sublime"--which sent the audience into an uproar as they began to insist (shout) that you COULD measure the sublime.

May I just say that I agree with Mr. Clapp. Fervently.

Not only do I think the sublime can't be measured, I don't think we should even try. Because once you attempt to start measuring, you will create a condition in which the experience of the sublime will be less likely to happen. Too much measuring, and the possibility of the sublime will disappear altogether.

And Mr. Clapp is in good company. As we talked about this during section, I began to write down a list of authors who agree with Edward, who have agreed in their poetry, novels, and essays. They say it in various ways--sometimes it's a comment on science, or literary criticism, but I think the point is the always same. These authors are concerned with the mechanical mindset of modern times, that then gets projected onto the sublime, and therefore destroys something vital--destroys one of those rare things that make us feel truly alive.


Here is Edgar Allen Poe on what science can do to art:

"Sonnet--To Science"

"Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?"


Here is David Foster Wallace on what kills the sublime in literature (and jokes):

"We all know that there is no quicker way to empty a joke of its peculiar magic than to try to explain it -- to point out, for example, that Lou Costello is mistaking the proper name "Who" for the interrogative pronoun 'who,' etc. We all know the weird antipathy such explanations arouse in us, a feeling not so much of boredom as offense, like something has been blasphemed. This is a lot like the teacher's feeling at running a Kafka story through the gears of your standard undergrad-course literary analysis -- plot to chart, symbols to decode, etc. Kafka, of course, would be in a unique position to appreciate the irony of submitting his short stories to this kind of high-efficiency critical machine, the literary equivalent of tearing the petals off and grinding them up and running the goo through a spectrometer to explain why a rose smells so pretty."


Here is Walt Whitman, who like Poe wonders about the costs of using science to explain the sublime:

"WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars."


From Frederico Garcia Lorca:

"These black sounds are the mystery, the roots that probe through the mire that we all know of, and do not understand, but which furnishes us with whatever is sustaining in art."

"[I]ntellect is oftentimes the foe of poetry because it imitates too much."


Goethe:

"[Paganini has] a mysterious power that all may feel and no philosophy can explain."


And though no one can ever fully explain what is happening in the lyrics of a Pavement song, I think this applies:

"And the stories you hear, you know they never add up
I hear the natives fussing at the data chart."


And jazz musicians always seem to know about these things before the rest of us do:

"If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know." - Louis Armstrong

"I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later." - Miles Davis


A couple of quotes from a previous post, which relate (and are so good they bear repeating):

"How can we know the dancer from the dance?" - William Butler Yeats

"How wonderful it is . . . except after explanation." - Herman Melville


And why might all this be so important? Because I think, culturally, we are mired in an epidemic of numbness--of intellectual and spiritual deadness. A sort of desiccation of the soul that is so pervasive for so many, that it begins to just feel like life itself. And this is everywhere. For example, it might be the point of pornography:

"At the essence pornography is the image of flesh used as a drug, a way of numbing psychic pain." - David Mura

Or it might be the point of technical language or PR language:

"Every emotionally significant moment or event or development gets conveyed in either computeresque staccato or else a prepackaged PR-speak whose whole function is (think about it) to deaden feeling." - David Foster Wallace


In closing, (and to continue this quote-a-rama), I think this is one of those times when Wittgenstein is right, that "The solution is to be seen in the disappearance of the problem." The problem for many is how to measure the sublime. I think the solution is to not even make that a "problem" in the first place.

I know, I know, sometimes the only way to get money is to work within the system. Yes, if some evil company like Texaco (poisoning the Amazon) or GE (poisoning the Hudson) were to give me money to help a school where I was teaching, I would take it in a second. No, I wouldn't shortchange underprivileged kids by being such an ethical purist that I would turn down funds or opportunities that would help them.

But, BUT, I am always watching for that line, that exists somewhere, that when you cross it, you are no longer doing the work you intended and you are no longer the person you wanted to be. Or as Thomas Paine said:

"Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul."

Steve

Chomsky in the House!

I saw Chomsky! I saw Chomsky! I saw Chomsky!

What can I say . . . Noam Chomsky has been a hero of mine for years. When I thought about going to Harvard for the first time, my second thought was "well, Chomsky works in Cambridge, maybe I'll get to see him live."

And I did. And it's a good thing, because time is running short. I think he's well into his 80's, and his wife and colleagues like Howard Zinn have already passed on.

But that 80 year old dissident is as sharp as ever. He may walk like an old man, but he doesn't talk like one. He talked about Iran, 9/11, the Vietnam War, Obama's foreign policy, on and on and on.

My guess is that a brain like his comes along once every few hundred years.

And when he passes away, we'll have to take his life as an inspiration and continue to do the most trenchant thinking for ourselves. Which is what he wanted all along.

Getting an Earful

I saw Ralph Nader speak last week.

O.K., let's settle down, let's get a grip. I know many are angry about Ralph Nader, about how he effected the 2000 election, etc. I bet my father, if he reads the blog, has already smashed the computer screen upon reading his name.

I have no interest in rehashing that past history. And when I set aside that problematic dimension of his career, I see Nader as an amazing man who deeply loves America, and has dedicated his entire life to justice. He very well have saved more lives than any single person in our country in the last 100 years. Really.

So last week he was at Harvard to talk to the Harvard Law Students. And if you CAN set aside all of his old baggage, he said some pretty striking things. Such as:

Harvard Law School “is filled with highly proficient drones.”

Harvard Law School “doesn’t ask any of the big questions.”

Harvard Law School “needs to be picked up by its neck and shaken,” because it's a “massive waste of human resources,” and the students will graduate and become “strategists and greasers of corporate power.”

Harvard Law School “is a puppet of the oligarchy.”

Harvard Law School “doesn't fight the ongoing lethal destruction of people and the environment.”

Additionally,

"The academic world needs to have an arm's length distance from the corporate world to retain its freedom and critical inquiry."

"Dissent is the mother of all assent."

"To know and not to do is not to know." (Chinese proverb)

"University curriculums are brilliant at denying reality."

So there you go. Whether you think the Harvard Law School is deserving of such commentary or not, it can be really refreshing (sometimes) to hear someone who doesn't bother to qualify anything he really thinks.

And I couldn't help but wonder what he might have said to the Ed School if he had the chance.

Values in the Classroom

Here's a tough one . . . something I've been trying to figure out for years.

Teachers have their own personal values. Do you voice them to the students in your classroom?

It always bothers me when teachers brag that when they discuss crucial issues with their students, they always stay neutral. One of the reasons it bothers me is that the teacher wasn't even being a human, who undoubtedly has opinions about important issues. And more than just about anything, teachers are giving students a model of one way a person can exist in the world, and what are you modeling when you pretend like everything is neutral? I always think about a classroom in the early 1800s in America, where a class in the south was debating whether slavery was justified or not. What was that teacher supposed to do, keep valuing both sides of the debate? Keep encouraging students to come to their own conclusions about slavery, even if 75% of the class decided they were pro slavery?

Of course there is a danger here when teachers do express their opinons, because teachers are very influential just by the nature of their position. They have the authority in the room, so when they say something, it will have extra (more than extra, a lot) of weight. And if a teacher is throwing around their position, some students might be very reluctant to speak up, especially if they disagree. And that would mean you're no longer having a healthy discussion. Ideally the teacher has to pull off a very difficult thing (though not impossible). They have to be able to say what they believe, but hopefully they have constructed a classroom environment in which a student would still feel comfortable disagreeing with the teacher. It would be the best of all worlds.

So let's try to follow an example of how this might play itself out in a classroom. (This is a real example from the last few years of my own teaching).

I am adamantly pro gay. I am for gay marriage and gay adoption. I wish that students could be openly gay in high school without any ridicule or condemnation. I wish gay adolescents could go to the prom together, hold hands, kiss in the hallway (like heterosexual couples do).

I made my position very well-known to my students. I know that there are a LOT of teachers and parents who would disagree with my disclosure. They might say I am trying to assert a political viewpoint, or that I am promoting my own values, or that there is no place for such comments in the classroom.

And I can see their point. Because if I heard that a teacher down the hallway told the students that homosexuality was a sin, that gays were going to hell, and that homosexuality would undermine our society, then I would want to muzzle that teacher.

Then again, I know that my open assertion of support for homosexuals made a BIG difference for students who were in the closet, because they told me at the end of the year.

So now what are we supposed to do? I was asserting my sense of morality. Then again, I am SURE that other homophobic teacher (who really did exist in my high school) sincerely thought he was promoting what he thought was morality by denouncing gays.

I suppose if I want the right to express my views about homosexuality, then I must be ready to accept the possibility that the teacher down the hallway will be expressing his.

So we're left with a cost benefit analysis of sorts. Do the benefits of my overt position on homosexuality surpass the cost of having the homophobic teacher express his position?

Television and Passivity

Here's a critique of television.

I know, I know, you watch television, you like it, you have great shows that you watch, television at its best can be a work of art, it's entertainment, it gives you something to talk about with other people, etc., etc.

I understand. I watch television too. I will watch every episode of Family Guy this season. Same with 30 Rock. I often needs me some Daily Show. Parks and Recreation seems to be finding its legs this year.

But that doesn't mean I'm happy about it.

So here's a bit on television, the arts, and marginality. Or something.


"You have two choices. You can either play Guitar Hero, or play a real guitar. Guitar Hero will ask you to match the colors streaming down your TV screen with corresponding buttons on your toy guitar. Real guitar will entail hours of practice, interaction with a teacher, and a consideration of musical styles; in a few years you may even start writing your own songs. Though Guitar Hero demands some small motor skills, it mostly asks for your passive participation in matching their color streams. Real guitar demands you take an active and committed role in developing your new craft.

Amongst many other possible factors, I would like to consider the phenomenon of passivity and how it contributes to the marginalization of the arts. To start, art making is the antithesis of passivity. When a painter stares at the blank canvas, or an author at the blank paper, she knows she is responsible for every forthcoming detail of her creation. But because art is so challenging, it can also provide the deepest reward. In every high school where I’ve ever worked, I’ve seen a marked difference in the way students feel about their art classes: they excitedly talk about their work, they eagerly show it to their teachers and friends, and they say it’s their favorite class. Much of this love comes from the pride they have in making art that is truly their own. They see their hand in every brush stroke, every poetic phrase, every melody.

In stark contrast, watching television demands very little of the viewer; an imagination need not stray any farther than the images on the screen. Comparing the act of making art with the act of watching television helps us see the degree to which our culture is mired in passivity. 99% of American households have a television, and the average citizen watches over four hours a day. What percentage of Americans work on art for over four hours a day? Suppose 99% of American households had ample art supplies, and everyone worked on their chosen art form for four hours a day—how would our country be different? How would our schools be different?

I first thought about a culture of passivity when I was traveling in Belize years ago. One evening, while I was staying in San Ignacio, I chatted with an archeologist who had lived in the area for the past five years. He told me when he first arrived, all of the families would emerge from their homes after dinner to walk the streets, mingle, run into neighbors, and generally talk the night away. Then the families started to by their first TV sets, and in months the evening streets were bare and everyone was inside watching TV. I realized the same thing had happened to the U.S. years ago, before I was born.

I think this culture of passivity has made its way into our education system. Standardized exams insist on the passivity implicit in rote memorization and multiple-choice questions. A poorly conceived rubric will elicit formulaic writing, never insisting the students struggle with their thesis and organization. And I have had valedictorians in my classroom from time to time, and they are never the most interesting and curious of my students. Usually they display a striking subservience to the teacher and an affinity for following the rules. I had to conclude that obsequiousness was what the school system wanted most, since it rewarded these students with the highest honor. But an art class demands originality, creativity, curiosity and experimentation, which run counter to the above trends. So it is no surprise that the arts are sent to the margins of school curricula.

Last year I started a Voluntary Simplicity program with some students. For the entire month of December, we didn’t watch any T.V. By the end of the month the students were saying things like 'I find my homework a lot more interesting,' and a junior named Ryan said his head had been 'exploding with ideas' for his next paintings. Without television, the students had stepped away from some of their passivity, and their active impulses had come to the fore. Earlier in the year I had tried to make the program a regular class for regular credit, but the administration said no. I could only run it once a week, in the evening, for no credit. My students had been pushed to the margins of the high school. Maybe they weren’t being passive enough."

How Can We Know the Dancer from the Dance?

Last week, in my "Moral Adults: Moral Children" class, we read articles about adult development. One of the articles explained that adult development is characterized by an increasing ability to have a meta-awareness of yourself. It seemed that maturity was marked by the ability to step outside of yourself, to almost watch yourself as a third person, to see what your decisions meant and how they were related to the contexts in which you exist.

I suppose that does make sense, but it also bummed me out a bit. Because some of the best moments of our lives are when we aren't outside of ourselves, or aren't watching ourselves in any way. That's why it was so great to be a kid--because when you played make-believe, you really were what you were imagining. When I was in my backyard pretending to hit a ninth inning home run for the Chicago Cubs, I wasn't outside of myself observing how I was role-playing. Instead, I was in the stadium, hitting a baseball as the true hero of my beloved team.

This still happens, occasionally, even though we're now adults. It's those times when we are no longer ourselves, because we have merged with something. Artists know this feeling well--the transcendent moments when you are no longer aware that you're painting, but instead become part of the paints and the canvas. Or you are no longer playing an instrument in the symphony, you are the song. It's why Yeats wrote "[H]ow can we know the dancer from the dance?"

Or why Melville writes in Moby Dick, "[H]ow wonderful it is . . . except after explanation."

Or why Alan Watts says the biggest mistake a person can make is to think they're just a "skin encapsulated ego."

It happens when you see a great movie and forget you are in a theater, because you're livinginside the film. And then the lights come up and you have to look around and remind yourself that you actually exist in this world.

There's more. It's when you have a first kiss. Or when you play your stereo and dissolve into the sound waves. When you sit on top of a mountain and linear time falls away.

(And yes, it's what happens when we have an orgasm. I know you were wondering).

And athletes know this experience as well as anyone. That's why they say "be the ball" when you're shooting a free throw, as in "don't be yourself, merge with the game." Or when a player has an especially good night, the slang is to say he or she was "unconscious," meaning they reached the optimal, desirable state where they were no longer an individual with deliberate actions, but instead had let the game play them.

That's how I knew I loved poetry. In 1990 I was sitting in professor Jacobson's class at the University of Illinois as we worked through Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning." At some point I was no longer a student in a room at a desk with a professor and an American Lit anthology in front of me. Instead I crawled up inside the beautiful lines of that poem and rolled around in the words and forgot who I was.

So I wonder, as we get older and become more meta-aware of ourselves, can we still have the ability to lose ourselves in something? Can we move back and forth between the two? Because what we had when we were children was so good, I'd hate to think that magic is slowly leaking away.

I'm Rather Old

Well, I'm much older than I'd realized. Hanging out with a bunch of twentysomethings will do that.

Apparently only old people have hotmail accounts. When I give a twentysomething my email address, they always say "Hotmail? Is that still around?" Apparently it's like saying you still have 8-tracks. Or that you watch your movies on Betamax.

Here's something else that cracks up all the twentysomethings: when I say I remember the Carter administration. I swear, it makes them roll in the aisles every time. They've even begun to request it when I see them in class.

Do you know another way I've realized I'm old? I had to buy a bigger pillbox. I used to have the smallest pill box, with enough room for one, maybe two pills in each day. But I had to buy the next size up so all of my daily medications could fit. Pretty soon I'll be like my 95 year old grandmother, who has a pill box so big it looks like seven bread boxes all in a row.

So I'm this old, and yet I'm in some sort of arrested development. I have a Walter Payton poster on my wall. My parents drove me and my stuff out to college this summer. I have a locker at the ed school. I know people who live in dorms. Someone even passed me a note in class this week.

I bet I'll be hitting puberty soon.

Longing for El Salvador

I suppose I'm longing for my trip to El Salvador for many reasons. But here's one: I miss having only one shirt to wear. It was a red plaid shirt with snaps.

This was the only button-down shirt I brought to El Salvador. Sure I had some undershirts or t-shirts to mix in, but every day it was back to the same red plaid shirt with snaps.

And why do I miss it?

I like not having to think about what I'm going to wear. Every day I woke up, realized it was that same red plaid shirt with the snaps, and then all my fashion thinking was over. And when you wear the same shirt for days on end, it will begin to soften itself. And a week or so later, you don't just wear it--instead the shirt curls into your contours, cradles you, becomes a friend and a second skin. As Heidegger says, if we are really connected with the world around us, certain objects seem to choose us as much as we choose them. And towards the end of my time in El Salvador, the shirt was practically leaping out of my backpack to hug me and say hello every morning.

Same Problem

Once again I'm ensconced in my Harvard problem. (Yes, I used the word "ensconced." Very Ivy League isn't it?)

The problem? Too many speakers, too little time.

Yesterday I had to pick between a poetry reading and a Jonathan Kozol lecture. Today, I just saw Ralph Nader and Bruce Fine take the law students to task. I'm about to hustle to the Ed School because the chief of the Choctaw Nation is speaking. And tonight there's a poetry reading with 15 poets (a benefit for Haiti) with the likes of Robert Pinsky and Jorie Graham.

When will I ever do my homework?