Dear President-Elect

Dear President-Elect Obama,

Today I mailed a packet of 65 sixth grade students’ letters, letters filled with introductions, advice and questions for you, the President that will hopefully carry these young students from childhood into adulthood. My students live in the South Bronx, in one of the poorest congressional districts in the country. The majority of them receive free lunch. The letters they have written you are filled with hope for the change you seek to bring to our country. I try to teach my students that their voices are worth being heard. Please read and consider their statements. I think their dreams reflect what many of us across the country want to see. In a selection of their own words:

“My wish came true you became president.” “I am happy because you are the first black man to be a President. And I am sorry because of what happen to your grandmother.” “You are the president that gets to change this world and make it a safer and better place for all of us to live in.” “I hope that you will do a great job fixing all of former President Bush’s mistakes.” “I wanted to work for you but I am only 11.” “I am writing to you to give you my opinion. I have great ideas.”

“I hope that over the next four years you will change the war. I hope the war will end soon. I think that because people are dying for no reason when maybe you just need to sit them down and tell Iraq that we don’t want to fight anymore.”

“Another thing I think you should do is make taxes lower because people spend too much money and barely have any leftover. I think it would help millions of people. Also it would give people a little more money in their pockets and more money to spend on food. Especially when you have a family you need as much money as possible so you can feed everyone’s mouth. I know this because I have a family with one sister, one brother, and a mom and a dad just like you I know you have children and a wife. That’s why I know you understand.”

“You should make a college for poor people so that they can learn.”

“Are you going to put a basketball court in the white house when you move there?”

“You made history from what Mr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, he said “We Shall Overcome” and that’s what you did on Tuesday, you overcame Obama.” “I believe in you and look up to you because you make me think that maybe when I get older I might be able to become the first female president of the United States.” “I know you have a tough road ahead of you, but you can do it because you know what I believe in you.” “Lastly I know you will be the best president ever.”

Sincerely,
Ms. Edmonds and various Sixth Graders

“P.S. I hope you like being the president!”
“P.S. You are the man!”

Donors Choose Me, Please!

I did a cool project with my students last year in which they wrote creation myths and then illustrated the myth in a little book. We invited their parents and read and celebrated their work. It was a proud occasion and I'm looking to recreate it this year, but I need some funding (I know, not the best economy to be asking for that)- but anyway, here is the link for the full proposal on Donor's Choose:
http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=224650

Maverick

On election day, my dad, who is a member of the East Hampton Town Democrats, went to his local polling place to hold up an Obama sign with the other Town Democrats. Now, tradition in East Hampton dictates that Democrats hold up signs on one side of the street, Republicans on the other. My dad decided to stand on the Republican side. Some folks were miffed, so the chair of the Town GOP walked over and told my dad he needed to stand on the Democrat side. In characteristic fashion, my dad refused, explaining that he was a "Republican for Obama." Later, the GOP leader learned that my dad is in fact a big ole Dem. So he goes back to my dad and says "You're on the Democratic committee. Why did you say you were a Republican?" My dad's response: "Because I'm a Maverick." (written by my sister)

Letter to the Editor

My Letter to the Editor on this NY Times article, Next Question: Can Students Be Paid to Excel?

To the Editor:

Re “Next Question: Can Students Be Paid to Excel?” (front page, March 5), about a program to reward teachers and students for test performance at P.S. 188 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan:

I was a student teacher at P.S. 188 and am familiar with the school’s focus on state tests. I was shocked that educated professionals would support an initiative to pay students for test scores.

As a middle-school English teacher who constantly strives to help students realize that reading and writing are a larger part of life than a short state test, I detest the concept of rewarding their performance with money. Poor students who do basic academic work because it results in cash are merely being coached to perform, and the people really benefiting are school professionals and politicians.

This initiative sends the message that learning for learning’s sake is obsolete. Paying students for test scores reduces the teaching of English to a transaction, one in which a teacher sells students methods of fooling test graders.

This is not an education.

Julie Edmonds
New York, March 5, 2008

I'm Not Running for President

In college my housemates and I spent a disproportionate amount of time personifying objects, which is part of why I find this ad, about the wind and for wind turbines, awesome.

Miracle Berries

I cannot eat sour foods. I pucker uncontrollably, turn red, cry, and my throat closes up. It is truly horrible. Unfortunately, my sour receptors are also very keen- oranges, for example, are a bit too sour for me to really enjoy. Limes, Granny Smith apples, kumquat and grapefruit- out of the question.

For Valentine's day, Adam came up with a gift to address this issue. A magical gift by the name of "miracle berries" or "miracle fruit."

Miracle berries are just that; berries from West Africa that, for about 20-40 minutes after you eat them, make sour foods taste sweet. It is hard to imagine or believe, but it is true, and amazing! The proof I offer you, besides personal testimony, is in the form of pictures. The one at the top is a before (horrific face caused by lime) and the ones on the left are befores, on the rights afters (kumquat-induced):

I love the last lines of poems.

Navigating in the Dark
by Erik Campbell

Papua, Indonesia

In this mining town in Papua the electricity
Has a habit of giving up at night, and this

Is a miracle of modern stasis, a secular Shabbat,
Reminding us of what is expendable, of how so few

Of us ever truly experience the dark. We are amazed,
My wife and I, with the heavy darkness

Of the no moon jungle, insect sounds lacerating
All illusions of silent places. "It's so absolute,"

My wife says, and I like to think she means
More than the darkness; the naked places

Of ourselves we dress in sunlight, lamps,
And recorded music like antithetical

Blanche DeBois's fearing a different sort
Of scrutiny. "We could pretend it's 1940,"

I say, "put a Jack Benny tape on the short wave
And drink coffee, light candles." She suggests

A walk outside instead, where there are dozens
Of others already out on paths bounded by jungle,

Stepping small and laughing loudly through various
Uncertainties; flashlights as eyes, ears like animals'.

Soon we are trying only to remember not to disappear
Altogether; everything is so absolutely, so darkly possible.

Happy St. Valentine's Day!

Vote

"Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote."
Nathan, George Jean American editor and drama critic (1882-1958)

from Toothpaste for Dinner-

All Hallow Dreaming

I had the worst dream last night. It wasn't a nightmare, but I am going to argue it was worse than a nightmare, because there was no sense of relief when I awoke. I dreamt I needed to get an oil change, and then I woke up and realized I did, in fact, need to get an oil change. Practical dreaming! Horrid!

Neglect

Awesome- Interview with Sharyn-the-playwright, righting all our wrongs!

3Graces presents a GraceNotes workshop production of NEGLECT in repertory with NICKEL AND DIMED.
NEGLECT is written by Sharyn Rothstein, winner of this year's Samuel French Original Short Play Festival, and is directed by Catherine Ward. Based on the 1995 Chicago heat wave that claimed the lives of over seven hundred elderly residents, mostly African-Americans who lived in social isolation, NEGLECT is the story of an elderly woman, Rose, and her young neighbor, Joseph, who come together on the first day of the heat wave to escape the unbearable heat and their own feelings of loneliness. A story of social responsibility, NEGLECT is an often funny, deeply moving play about what holds us together and what keeps us apart.
Directed by Catherine Ward
Dramaturgy by J. Holtham
with Geany Masai* and William Jackson Harper*featuring Ange Berneau*
GraceNotes is 3Graces' forum for studio theater and experimental works, including solo shows, one-acts, and works-in-progress. Co-artistic directors Elizabeth Bunnell and Annie McGovern call it an "artistic playground," where company members, guest artists and audiences share in the delight of developing and performing new works.
NEGLECT will run October 10 - 25 at the Bank Street Theater, located at 155 Bank Street.
Performances: Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday at 7pm.
Tickets for NEGLECT are $15 and are on sale through Ticket Central at http://3graces.pmailus.com/pmailweb/ct?d=CHLeqwCHAAEAAAgXAADM2w or 212-279-4200.
For more information, visit http://3graces.pmailus.com/pmailweb/ct?d=CHLeqwCIAAEAAABpAADM2w.

* Appearing courtesy of Actors Equity Association

Too Hot to Handle

This is the kind of thing that freaks me out about becoming a teacher:

"...Ms. McGee, 51, a popular art teacher with 28 years in the classroom, is out of a job after leading her fifth-grade classes last April through the Dallas Museum of Art. One of her students saw nude art in the museum, and after the child’s parent complained, the teacher was suspended." (from New York Times).

An art teacher getting suspended because there happens to be some nude art at the museum? The child whose parent complained is going to grow up with some unfortunate complexes about nudity. The statue at left is one of four of the "offending" sculptures. Of course, now that this case has made the news the pictures of these nude sculptures are being shown on the news (with the anatomy blacked out- thank God), so even the schoolchildren that didn't go on the field trip can get offended. Considering the lives American children lead nowadays, with their internet access, video games with scantily clad women spurting blood, and the music videos shown on tv, getting upset about some classic art may be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

(Sculpture pictured- Shade, Auguste Rodin)

haha

Failed t-shirt idea from Toothpaste for Dinner:

Hot day, Summer in the city

I went to a coffeeshop the other day. As I was waiting impatiently for some iced coffee concoction, I listened to the sort of nervous-looking middle-aged guy in front of me request his order, a frozen coffee drink. The woman behind the counter nodded and turned to make it, then asked, "do you want whipped cream?"
The man, all awkwardness, quickly replied, "Not for the coffee-" paused for a while, then added, "or anything really."

Domesticated Apes

A wacky quote from the New York Times article, "Nice Rats, Nasty Rats: Maybe It's All in the Genes";

His strategy is to cross the tame rats with the ferocious rats and then score the progeny for how much of each trait they inherit. He hopes to identify 200 sites along the genome at which the tame and ferocious rats differ. If one or more of the sites correlate with tameness or fierceness in the progeny, they will probably lie near important genes that underlie one of the two traits.

The genes, if Mr. Albert finds them, would be of great interest because they are presumably the same in all species of domesticated mammal. That may even include humans. Richard Wrangham, a primatologist at Harvard, has proposed that people are a domesticated form of ape, the domestication having been self-administered as human societies penalized or ostracized individuals who were too aggressive.

Case Work

I encourage you to check out this article on New York Times online. The article, entitled "The Case of Marie and Her Sons," was the lead in the Sunday magazine this past weekend. I happened upon it today online and it "gave me the heebie-jeebies" as my mom put it, as it was exactly the job I was doing the year before last, child protective casework, in the nearest office to where I was doing it, and the case worker they focus on started around the same time I did. I wrote about it before here. It's a job I quit, but still think about frequently, wondering how my clients are doing- how their stories played out, if they're okay. The work forever changed my perspective on how lives are lived in America, and how people are affected by their family. It's a job I'm incredibly glad I don't have anymore, for my emotional well-being, but part of me wants to go back and do it over again, perfectly. Which, as the article shows, is not possible.

School Project Time

Anyone feeling magnanimous can head over to this site and follow the directions...
Thanks!
(if you're not feeling magnanimous, I understand. It is Wednesday, after all)

Epalpebrates!

Where Words Go To Die

I guess I was in a morbid (morose, gloomy, melancholic, sinister, macabre, gruesome) mood today, as I have spent significant time pondering death- the demise of words, that is--

You too can delve into this otherworld of words (The Phrontistery), and ponder what has become of:

alabandical
adj
1656 -1775
barbarous; stupefied from drink
His behaviour after the party was positively alabandical.

And

foppotee
n
1663 -1663
simpleton
What a pitiful foppotee he was, always oblivious to our jeers!

Did we outgrow them? Grad school is going to lead me to need the word “alabandical” (RIP 1775) and “foppotee” (RIP 1663). Why would these gems fade out and others like “inebriated” and “moron” remain? Perhaps answers to all our philosophical queries can be found in these lost words… especially words like epalpebrate and stiricide:

(I include this one because I liked the sentence):
cacatory
adj
1684 -1753
accompanied by loose bowels
For the diners, the effects of the chicken cacciatore, alas, were cacatory.

epalpebrate
adj
1884 -1884
lacking eyebrows
If you don't stop plucking, soon you'll be epalpabrate!

jobler
n
1662 -1662
one who does small jobs
We've found a great jobler who takes care of our repairs quickly and cheaply.

murklins
adv
1568 -1674
in the dark
She stumbled murklins about the house until she found the light switch.

pigritude
n
1623 -1656
slothfulness
Despite the college student's pigritude, he continued to maintain a 'B' average.

stiricide
n
1656 -1656
falling of icicles from a house
The untended tenement was very dangerous in winter due to stiricide.

uglyography
n
1804 -1834
bad handwriting; poor spelling
Your uglyography conceals the cogency and brilliance of your ideas.

Subaru Time

(picture from Natalie Dee)

As it turns out, Subarus are the official car of the Hudson Valley, so my car and I are fitting right in from the getgo with this return to country living. Ways I am not fitting in includes expecting something, ANYTHING, to be open past eight o'clock at night.

Strange aspects include the bleating pygmy goat that has suddenly appeared in my backyard ("Not in my backyard!" I cried, when it chewed on my bicycle), and the fact that all I have to do with myself is sit around reading on the porch.