Recipe Call Out

Does anybody have a good recipe for a cilantro and lime vinaigrette? Just checking.

Officially Fed Up

Hm . . . . for a couple of weeks now I've been wanting to post the fabulous pictures from Plantboy's beautiful new vegetable and fruit garden. I have all these ideas rolling around in my head about how planting a garden is such a great example of faith, how gardens represent beauty and permanence, how much my kids love being outside, etc.

But, today, I scraped an inch of snow and ice off my car to deliver papers, was snowed on delivering papers, and didn't warm up until four hours after I'd been home. I'm waiting to get the stomach flu my men have passed around this week from being cooped up in the house, and I've done 10 loads of laundry in the last five days.

So, instead of glorying in the beauties of Mother Nature's awakening, I AM OFFICIALLY COMPLAINING ABOUT WINTER TO WHOMEVER WILL LISTEN.

That's all.

Monsters and Love Triangles and Why I Can't Breathe Life Into a Real Woman

I finally broke down and read the third Stephenie Meyer book. Now, don't go looking all smug on me. I've known that I would, I was just waiting for someone to loan me a copy and a day to read it.

Well, the stars were all in alignment today and so I read it. I guess you can call that one sitting if you subtract out time to provide nourishment to the children, clean up throw up, do two loads of laundry, wipe several poopy bums and generally (if abstractedly) offer encouragment to my wonderfully patient children.

I was pleased to see Bella use a few "hells." We are after all, dealing with very tense situations and Bella is not, herself, a Mormon. Bella still loves to say "crap" more often than most people I've ever met, but if Meyer LOVES her editors, than who am I to argue? (And while I'm not arguing, I won't bring up her dialogue that goes on for ages and doesn't always move the plot, and how you sometimes lose the thread of the conversation because every expression, nuance, and utterance is painstakingly recorded. But I digress again.)

Once again, Meyer has written a highly entertaining, even engrossing, story based on a very clever plot. Her symbols rooted in sappy and dark romance novels are apt, as her descriptions are thorough. Her love triangle story is truly wrenching and, yes, it must be admitted, VERY sexy.

(Note here on the last word: I wouldn't let my teenage daughter near this stuff without careful screening first. There is plenty of bald attraction tied up in Meyer's brand of love with Bella herself twisting the need for sex to be stronger than marriage. I know that this book would have ruined STM age 16 from any REAL relationship for a long time.)

But the more I read, the more I think Bella is a real . . . .

I won't say it. I won't. This blog is G, or maybe PG rated, but I wasn't going to fill in sweetheart after the ellipse. More like the exact opposite. To her credit, she realizes, too late (a whole book too late for you Jacob fans out there), what a monster she is and even owns it up to both men she loves. Who, of course, are willing to forgive her for every twisted situation she thrusts these two into. Is Bella weak? Or is she so strong that she wreaks havoc on every life that becomes even remotely connected to hers? Hmm. . .

Maybe that is the point. I've realized lately, as I've been looking through some of my old writing material and formulating ideas for new, that I have a much easier time writing a believable male character than a female one. I finish my stories and find myself really liking my men for their humanity. Their struggles and imperfections make them, well. . . perfect.

On the other hand, my female characters are all very together. Oh, sure, bad things happen to them, but they bear it with amazing fortitude and strength. Their faults are not really faults: more like quirks that just make them more lovable. You know, the "acceptable" imperfections--shyness, stubborness, powerful independence, not-quite-beautiful, lonely, girls-that-don't-cook, that kind of thing. No big, overpowering character flaws. The bad things, really bad things, that happen to them are hardly ever the consequences of their own choices.

Why is this?

I'm not sure, though I've given it a lot of thought lately. First of all, most of the women I'm really close to, admire, want to be friends with, etc., are AMAZING. And while they are not all alike, they are each strong, incredibly strong, in their own way. When I write a novel, it is engrossing. My thoughts are consumed by characters, situations, events. Some of which, I must admit, I feel I have very little control over. If I am going to spend, literally, hundreds of hours at my computer to produce a work of (probably mediocre) fiction, I want to feel like I'm among friends.
Also, my favorite books have always been peppered with incredible girls and women. When I read stories of undeveloped or weak women I am unimpressed, bored and ruthless in my critique. This is not merely a development of my adult life. In the 9th grade, we read a book called "Izzy Willy-Nilly" by Paula Danzinger (I think). The story was of a girl who was really awful--petty, popular, mean--who lost a leg (or both legs?) in a car accident. Afterward she went through this big life change, but she pretty much cried all the time and she still wasn't great to people. I hated this book for some reason and I thought Izzy was not tough. At. All. Didn't Nem post a few months back about the dying-of-terminal-cancer novels we all loved as teenagers? I think this was in the same vein. Anyway, I hated my English teacher and I really challenged the idea of Izzy's bravery, out loud, in class in front of my more indifferent and acquiesing peers. I remember that teacher's mean, little eyes burrowing right into mine, daring me to have a different opinion. And I did.

How ridiculous! Do I really think I'd be tough or brave for two minutes if I lost my legs? No, of course not. Because I'm HUMAN. Just like the other women I know. Maybe that is real strength--carrying on in the face of our humanity. Our limitations.

Some years back I had a friend going through a very difficult situation. A situation I didn't learn about until after the fact and from somebody else. I spoke with my mother about the incident and was in disbelief that I had never seen this difficulty coming, and that she had hidden it so carefully from me, a good friend. My mother said a couple of things that revealed much to me about myself. She said that I was an intensely loyal friend, and that this loyalty sometimes made me blind to a person's real character. She said that I was sometimes better at seeing people as I wanted them to be than how they really were. On the other hand, my good opinion was really important to my friends and they would do anything to maintain that image in my eyes. Her words confused me. The upshot was basically that I translate my high self-expectations into high expectations for those around me. And while, this often makes people want to be better, it also makes them feel like they can never really be themselves around me. They are too afraid of my criticism.

I was a little bit speechless by her forthright assessment of my character, but in the years since I've come to see just how much she hit the nail on the head. I'm not sure that even getting that our there in the open has changed me much. I'm painfully aware now of the way I unwittingly alienate people, but I don't always rein in my personality to make more friends and be more inclusive, either.

I'm embarking on a new writing project. I'm creating a female character who has many faults. Real ones. Deep and hard to expose or expunge. But she too will be strong. I just can't help it. Women ARE strong. But I'm going to try to make her vulnerable, too. And maybe, just maybe, I'll finally have created a character that I don't just look up to, but one that I identify with. Wish me luck.

Political Rally?

Obama is coming to the U of O tonight.

I have said to myself for weeks if one of the president-wanna-bees made a stop here, I would go. Especially Senator Obama.

But now I'm not so sure. He won't take the stage until 10 pm. Hubby would want to go too, so we'll have to get a babysitter. Papers at 3am. Four hours of sleep last night. Busiest day of my life today. (Okay, like anyone can know that, and I did make time to BLOG for crying out loud.) Parking will be a nightmare. The arena will be packed with thousands of screaming college students, which makes me really feel every minute of my nearly 33 years. We'll have to get there hours before he speaks . . . .

Maybe I'm getting too old for this kind of thing?
Maybe I just was never that spontaneous to begin with?

If only Desmama lived close . . .

Teachers

I've just read another story this morning about a couple of teachers doing something stupid in front of students. I say "another" because I can't believe how many of these I've read recently. It seems FoxNews would have the public think that teachers are little more than violent, uncontrolled pedophiles preying on our children.

And while it might be obvious to point out that these teachers are the exception rather than the rule, there is still painfully little good press for public schools these days. In case you haven't heard the latest funding debacle, Governor Swcharnegger's balanced budget plan for California next year includes pink slips to 20% of the teachers (not administrators) currently employed in the school system. I'm sure that will do a lot for classroom size, student management and learning.

School is getting to be a harder and harder environment to work in all the time. Granted, school has always been a place where kids assert a degree of independence and, particularly as they get older, spend a fair amount of time unsupervised. I had an acquaintance tell me the other day that she'd heard in the last 10 years or so that our public schools are turning out dumber and dumber kids every year. She cited some random statistic (you know, 90% of statistics are made up on the spot), and sounded very authoritative. I've thought about her remarks the last few days. As a person who has, and will again, make her living by teaching public school and who will send my children to public school, I feel a very personal stake in how it all works out.

Schools do need work, and though throwing money at a problem won't solve it, correctly applied money could do a lot--better equipment; technology that allows teachers to communicate quickly, effectively and transparently with home; clean, well-lit buildings; a student-teacher ratio that doesn't exceed 25:1 (and much less before 3rd grade); assessments not merely based on testing; revamped and respected vocational programs in high schools . . . .

I could go on, but I won't. I think that any one of you could look at your child's public school and see a place where improvement is needed. In fact, schools that function the best are schools that have a lot of local control with a powerful community of parents, administrators and teachers pulling for common goals. In my mind, this control is why charter and private schools have gained so much ground in recent years. As they are not tied to federal funding, and therefore the accountability standards of No Child Left Behind, the schools are run as the community sees fit, not as bureaucrats in Washington mandate.

The elephant in the room that nobody is talking about is classroom management. Oh, the discussion on out-of-control classrooms is masked under more funding for "teacher training," but it doesn't address the heart of the issue. College (particularly for science and math teachers) is already rigorous and certification requirements are getting worse and worse all the time. What teachers are unprepared for when they walk in the door to the classroom is the chaos that often awaits there. And while the best teachers know the fine art of classroom management (a skill almost impossible to acquire if you don't have a feel for it) and can keep a classroom in line, there are far too many kids coming to school socially unprepared for the school experience because their homes have set them up to fail long before their school careers begin.

Let me explain:

Children who spend hours a day watching television--particularly television filled with commercials and programming only valuable as entertainment--will have a very difficult time concentrating in school, even if they have no disorder to speak of. School will not be funny enough, exciting enough or instantly gratifying enough to compare to the lives of the people they see on TV. And don't even get me started on the sex: even during commercials for programs (usually sports) that have NOTHING to do with sex.

Children who watch any kind of programming where adults are treated with a great degree of sarcasm, sassiness and disrespect will interact with the greater world this way, thinking it is appropriate. Or if not appropriate, at least hilarious to their peers, and sometimes all they are looking for is a laugh.

If your son or daughter takes a cell phone to school then they are more likely to cheat on tests, pass texty notes during class and be in violation of school policies. I believe kids are losing the ability to concentrate on and follow the nuances of a face to face conversation because of cell phone use and text messaging. I currently tutor a student who thinks nothing of listening to music, IM-ing on her computer, texting on her phone, surfing the web and watching television all AT THE SAME TIME. But to ask her to concentrate on her science for 15 minutes? It is like pulling teeth. She is impatient and antsy. She is also 100 pounds (at least) overweight. She is 13. What kind of a future does a child like this have, even though she is generally very sweet?

Dress codes are nearly impossible to enforce when parents allow their children to leave that morning wearing tight or revealing clothes. As for the boys? Their own tee-shirts now are riddled with suggestive and disrespectful sayings. Even young boys. These things are so detracting from a learning environment that even the best management makes it difficult to keep a class of hormonal teenagers in line.

If you have allowed your children to be in charge entirely at your house--calling their own shots about bedtime, what kind of groceries you buy, no consequences for naughty behavior, etc. then they are likely to be sassy, temperamental and argumentative at school.

If a normal child (meaning no disease or disorder) under the age of 14 or 15 is morbidly overweight, that is almost always a parenting failure. Kids this overweight have health problems that keep them from full participation at school, sleep apnea that affects their brain development and social issues that can dog them for life.

Kids who are never required to be still, play by themselves, or focus on a task for more than a minute or two will find school boring. On the other hand, kids who have been read to frequently and taught that hard work is a joy, will begin to understand the long term benefits of daily attendance at school.

Lax parents often complain of teachers not being kind enough to or forgiving enough of their slacker children. I agree that teachers need to treat children with respect, kindness and even charity. But I don't agree that teachers should dismiss rude behavior or lower their expectations because a child's home is run that way. How forgiving do these parents think cops, judges and bosses will be? Particularly in this age of VAST amounts of information, school has to do far more than just teach information (they can never teach enough), they are attempting to teach young people to function in a social framework, which, love it or leave it, involves conformity to appropriate social norms.

If you think your child is lazy at school because he is brilliant--you are probably wrong. I have had many parents give me this excuse over the years when the truth was that junior could hardly tie his shoelaces without a diagram and someone to hold his hand (I'm not talking about kindergartners here). In the last ten years I've worked with probably 1000 students (a small sample compared to more veteran teachers), but I can only think of one or two students that I thought fit the "brilliant so I misbehave/tune out" scenario. Chances are, your kid is just pretty average like most other kids. Sure, he is the world to you and you see his gifts in a way that others don't, but just make sure you are honest about his limitations too. Others will be. And don't expect your child's teacher to treat her as the most special kid in the room. Each child is worth more focus than they can reasonably get at school. It is YOUR job to give the kind of attention your child needs, not her teacher. Even the very best teachers are frustrated by the logistical demands of trying to help each child as much as they need helped.

Even a few years ago (when I first started teaching in the late 90's), a teacher in an average school might have a handful of kids in a classroom of 30 that were difficult. This could mostly be dealt with by seating charts and teacher proximity. But when a teacher with 35 students and 33 desks has ten or fifteen students with classroom behavior issues, it becomes nearly impossible to keep problem students separate from one another.

A generation of children is being raised up with too few checks on their behavior. The best parenting advice I ever got was from my mom when she said, "Somebody is going to be in charge at your house. It may as well be you: you are the grown-up." Yes, public schools need to be smaller, better equipped and staffed with better trained teachers, but they need to be attended by children who have been taught to respect adults, concentrate on tasks that are difficult and understand that there is a real difference between public and private behavior.

I am a great believer in a (relatively) free public education for every child: I think it is at the heart of any democratic society. But if our homes are failing, then our schools cannot succeed.

An Easter Haiku

the dawn comes early
life symbols abound, but please
pass the Cadb'ry Eggs

Perspective

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to the NPR podcast on religion. The story, at first, confused me. It was about how women in Turkey, an Islamic country, have finally won the right to wear head scarves in public places.

Huh?

Apparently Turkey, which has a strict separation of church and state like the rest of Europe, has never allowed any form of religious expression in its public buildings, such as universities. The head scarf counts as a form of religious expression. Conservative Muslims have won a victory to be public about their faith. Women's rights advocates are split on the issue--some say it is a huge step forward that women have lobbied to be able to do this and now they can, others say it is a huge step backward toward a government controlled by conservative clerics who were also pushing for this to pass.

My husband and I spoke about this story this morning over breakfast, and how the idea that Church and State should be separate is fundamental to democracy, and therefore to our right to practice the religion that we choose. Ironic, that. The tricky part is that the extent to which they should be separate means different things to different people.

When I was in high school (yes, yes, living in 1993 again for a minute, bear with me), there was a landmark case that went before the Supreme Court that I knew only sketchy details about: details given to me by a very conservative government teacher. The upshot of the case was that a suit was brought before the Court by the ACLU in which the Court determined that it was unconstitutional to perform various religious practices at public forums. Local ACLU chapters all over the country threatened to sue schools attempting to hold prayers at their graduations in spite of the ruling.

The ruling made me mad, despite not being that overtly religious, and having lots of friends who were probably more atheistic than other-religioned. I wrote a speech, very loosely based on facts with a few "historical quotes" (or at least here say quotes) thrown in. I won many awards for myself and our debate team with that angry and eloquent speech. I chafed when we studied President Benson's pride talk in Seminary about where he said that civil disobedience and breaking the laws of the land was a form of pride, as some of us began looking at ways to go ahead and pray at graduation anyway. After all, the Supreme Court had effectively legislated from the bench, right? That didn't make it a law.

We did pray at our graduation. Despite threats of withheld diplomas if we did so, most of our class broke into a circle just before marching onto the field and one of our class officers prayed very loudly. Many who didn't care about the issue, happily joined in, it was a just a prayer, but it was one last act of high school defiance so it was worth doing. There were 1000 students in my graduating class. No diplomas were withheld for the prayer.

Now to the point in my title. Some years later, living in Texas, I picked up a random copy of a magazine (no idea which) that was some years old. There was an article in the magazine about the case. I thought it looked interesting and began to read. In that half and hour, my eyes were open in a way that months of lobbying and speech-making had never done.

The case, which eventually made it to the Supreme Court in the early 90's, actually began a few years earlier in South Texas. A Mormon girl was attending a high school with a strong born again Christian, particularly Baptist, population. She did not have a lot of friends, most students at the school thought she was a member of a cult and headed straight for Hell. The students set about actively trying to convert her, as they did other "non-believers" at the school. One of the favorite tactics, encouraged by a local minister, was to share a free copy of the Bible. The girl was pressed time and again at school to take a Bible. She always refused, saying that she had one at home, which she did.

Well, from there, the simple offer of conversion turned to outright harassment. When she sought help from a trusted teacher she was told, "I don't see what the big deal is; just take the Bible." She was effectively told the same thing by a school principal frustrated by what he saw as her stubbornness. School became a living nightmare for this girl, and she began to receive threats. There was another girl at the school, Catholic by birth but not really a believer, who was taking similar harassment and the two became friends.

When nobody at the school or even district level would satisfy the parents of the two girls in regard to the bullying, they sought an attorney who would take their case. The ACLU, of course, jumped all over it. Rather than focus on the Bible issue--probably protected under free speech--they instead looked at the broader school community for practices that were clearer violations of a separate church and state. The second amendment is a little tricky: it is true that laws cannot be passed to permit a person from freely exercising their religion, but a government entity also cannot do anything that suggests they are trying to establish a religion either. The ACLU learned that the community held a prayer prior to every football game in the school's stadium: this invocation was always given by one of a small handful of Christian preachers from an area church. There were other things going on in the community too, but this prayer issue became the hot-button topic.

Anyway, the aftermath of one little Mormon girl trying to just practice her religion as well as get a free, fair and safe public education ended up with national repercussions. As I read that article, I began to walk two moons in her moccasins. What if that girl had been me? Or my daughter? Or a friend? Would I have been so critical of their decision to seek legal help when all efforts at a local fix had been thwarted? How would I react to the emotional bullying that girl had been given? And while the ACLU probably hoped to get just the right, high-profile case to make their point in a national court, I doubt that girl and her parents expected such a long, drawn-out battle.

Before somebody misunderstands, I'm not necessarily saying that prayer and religious expression in public places is bad (aside: the Ten Commandments on county courthouses, etc. kind of drives me nuts, though. Our laws are really not based on most of the commandments. Not. At. All. Adultery isn't criminal. Coveting and various forms of idolatry are practically encouraged by a capitalist society. Swearing? Great! Lying? Everyone's doin' it, just don't do it under oath. Okay, the biggies--stealing, murder--those still carry some weight, but the rest? I can appreciate it is more a Judeo-Christian value symbol, but I still think those who are pushing so hard just need to give it a rest. End aside.), and I think that communities need some local control and discretion regarding how these issues are approached. However, now that I've moved around some and seen a little bit more about what it means to be a minority (mostly religiously/culturally, though I taught at a school where it was racially also), I can see that keeping religion, particularly practice, not fundamental decency or morals, out of public life is the very thing that protects those of us who DO choose to practice our religions.

The religious litmus test that so many candidates now must pass--Republican or Democrat--is not what our founders had in mind. I think the question "Is ____ a fundamentally good person?" is very different than "Is ___ a religious person?" It is important to remember, for all their intelligence, morality and inspiration, most of our founding fathers were not religious. They didn't go as far as Marx ("religion is the opiate of the people") but they believed in humanity's ability to rise above any circumstance through study, hard work and good governance. Most of them believed that God had basically set the world spinning and then walked away.

I guess all of these thoughts above are why I'm nervous to chain my wagon to the Conservative Christian voting block. I'd like an America where everyone is welcome.

Shameless Self Promotion: But Aren't They So Cute?

The family pictures I had taken at JC Penny a few weeks back really did turn out beautifully. Unfortunately, JC Penny is nazi when it come to protecting their intellectual property: the only way for me to get a digital copy of my own kids' pictures was to pay $100 for a CD. Really. If I had known that when they took them, I probably would have JUST ordered the CD, but what do you do?

Anyway, take a minute to watch the videos. I think little kids can only be fully appreciated in action. They never hold still long enough for any other medium.

The first video is called "The Youngling."

The second is called "Freckle-Nose: The Short-legged Racer."

This is the baby who is rolling over so quickly now that there is hardly time to change his diaper. His video is titled "Baby G." The background noise was a rousing game of Candyland.