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Coming of age: in 60s & 70s fiction. Helping kids come of age today. |
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Since a finite mind can't, by definition, grasp the infinite, why do we have to try? A jesuit priest explained that our spirit was like a bucket of seawater: it's still seawater, and wants to be part of the sea. A lot easier to remember that the Baltimore Catechism, but harder to practice. How this philosophising will help me to write my math book so I can go on and finish New California is something I'm not sure of. Someone once said that everyone needs to warm up, for running as well as writing. So . . . thanks for stopping by. Evey:Are you, like, a crazy person? V:I'm quite sure they will say so. |
| If God will let us get involved in all the horrors of the nightly news, does it make any sense for us to thank a higher power for a bird, a few green lights when we’re late to work, a chance meeting with an old friend we needed to see? Hmm . . . “The first person who gets drafted in any war,” the teacher said, answering is own question, “is God.” Lincoln’s meditation on the civil war: Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other . . . one must be, and both might be, wrong“. did stretch our junior high grammar. And in 1970, schools were trying to stretch our minds rather than our grammar. The questions was good--if there is a benevolent God, why did he allows us to get involved in someone else’s civil war all these years later, when the work of our own wasn’t even finished? The problem with the 60s was that we got questions, but not answers. A step in the right direction, actually. Beyond blind faith in a father figure, vulnerable to the disappointments, disillusions, resentments, passive aggression, and anger to which all disappointed children are vulnerable. ”If God didn’t make enough oil he wouldn’t have given us cars.“ said a resentful woman--really. I feel for her; it’s easier to live with questions that the disappointment she will probably suffer. After all, God--by definition--is infinite; we’re finite. Someone knowing His mind is about as possible as a cat knowing Einstein's mind. But we’ve still got to ask the questions. With my own History students, ”The Rule of Law“ usually starts with the Magna Carta. (Duh). But there’s something else as well: remember the petty Greek and Roman gods, who were really just super-powerful people. Get a god jealous, you’ll get turned into an animal, killed in a war . . . The only real moral code was power--call it Emperor worship, personality cult, fuherprinzip. The only place where people could actually challenge God, under law, was the Old Testament. ”Yo, God, you said this . . . see, you have to do it.“ So . . even God has to follow God’s own law. Where God really screwed himself is giving people free will. So he can’t be the old man with the beard, even the bull with the lightning bolts. If God will let us get involved in all the horrors of the nightly news, does it make any sense for us to thank a higher power for a bird, a few green lights when we’re late to work, a chance meeting with an old friend we needed to see? Yes. That’s all God or spiritual energy or karma can do. If we’ve got to anthroporphasize him, Christ’s dad might be more Coyote than King. He’s got to figure out ways to beat his own system, in the little ways he can. When ”The Godfather“ first came out, the logo was a hand holding the puppet master’s strings. God cut those strings himself, and after he sees what people do he’s probably angry enough at himself to work through all those little things. Maybe, like Don Corleone, he needs a Michael to do the work he swore not to do--to help us transcend our own nature. If he can’t--by his own law--enforce a grand plan, he can send the bodisatvahs--Christ, Buddah, Lincoln, & Co--to get us going where He wants. Later |
| I'd vote for any candidate who doesn't use the phrase "fight for you" in a campaign. Who would he be fighting? "Liberals" "Conservatives" "Pro-Lifers" "Pro-Choicers" "Fundamentalists" "Unitarians"? Take the phrase "fight for you" to its extreme, and we we have a worse civil war than Iraq. What gave America it's goodness, influence, and power was that we were too busy working to fight. Working for a lot of things. Cash, sure, but also building a better place for the kids, a place where people would be judged by the content of their character, the only "empire" in the world where everyone could communicate and call themselves Americans. Think about it: when just about any other country acquired other territory, that land was a colony of some sort; it's people a lower class of citizen. But when Jefferson planned the Louisiana Purchase , it was to be divided into states which had the same rights and status as the original states which bought it. That's the revolutionary idea which became the American tradition. While the culture warriors of today--on either side--think they're trying to preserve America, what they're creating is a nascent Iraq. Fortunately, people recognize this. At a recent single-parents discussion, I mentioned a group a nieghd, but I didn't really feel comfortable with the Church where it was based. "It seems like everything they said boiled down to the attitude 'We're cool; everybody else sucks". While I thought I was being discrete, everybody in the room--who came from three different counties--immediately recognized the church I meant. We are all not only smarter, but more empathetic and compassionate, than people caught up in culture wars believe. In fact, the very people who want to take refuge in an ideological fortress often do so from the desire to protect their loved ones. So . . . |
| Back in the early seventies, Alternative School was a place where teachers would turn students onto learning just as students turned each other onto pot. Since the place was run like a college campus, with an open-door policy except during the three hours a week one took classes, only seniors with suspected susceptibility to the turn on got accepted. So I actually graduated from an old mansion the school district had condemned for a new school; complete with a gazebo, terraced gardens (where we could smoke--tobacco at least), and classes which wouldn't let us get away with scholck papers. Since this time was practically the 60s, where we might have been Slouching towards Bethlehem but "the GNP was high and [sorry I don't have the book for a better quote--and that Didion forgot to mention we were still a creditor country] it should have been a spring of great promise", I'd taken a few shots at some great opportunities: selling to electronics manufacturers, retiring to raise my son and teach some programming skills. After CLC folded, something like Enron, and most of the lower-level programming jobs went offshore, it was time to finally take the plunge back into what I'd always wanted to do: teach. Districts in my area pay pretty well, so about the only way to get in is to sub: by the day, as a long-term sub, or a 'building sub', where you go in the school every day. First day out, in a neighboring District which touches the city, I walked into a building sub job in an alternative high school: no mansion this time, but a trailer out back. And this school wasn't for the kids who wanted to get more out of school, it was for the those on the last step from getting kicked out of school. Not the dumb kids, no. Maybe just the kids with too much reality. They usually don't have the middle-class families to rebel against, like we did in the day. In fact, there's almost no real rebelliousness at all. Sure there's some passive aggression, a few kids will tell you to f off, and many haven't got the idea that they can jump on a computer and knock a year or so out in just a couple months. (What mimeographed packets and workbooks did for us in the day). Their real problem is that they've bought into the material culture which started in the 70s. All they lack is the opportunities we had back when this country still produced wealth . . . and they know this fact, whether they say it or not. We could "live off the fat of the land" pretty easily. Kids may laugh I'd say I had to fight for a raise to $2.10 and hour, but that would buy 7 gallons of gas. Today: what, $21? Most kids' parents{/} don't make that. About the only constant is kids talking about getting high until the whole subject becomes, well, boring. Just like back when the turning somebody onto the lifestyle the evangelism of the time. Except that our kids can't afford to be that generous. One time people would have greeted discussion of legalized pot as with a chorus of "the times they are a-changin". Now: Hey I heard somebody talking about legalized pot. No. Hey, if they legalized it, you could get it right at CVS. CVS-brand pot. that's ______-up man. Hey wait a minute. They could put it on sale. Yeah, think how cheap it could be. That's _____-up man. If the price gets that low, how are we gonna make any money? Well, maybe they could advise some people on economic reality for starters . . . |
Bob--I always called him Mr. Willits at the diner because I didn't want the old guys saying it was a disgrazia, disgrace, for me to call him Bob--Bob saw that Grandpop was waiting for me at the diner. We knew that because he was alone, staring at a used Bulletin with a coffee, at the far end of the counter, away from where the old men sat in the morning. The old men . . . I wish I'd never taught Tim the old Italian curse words. Now he'd know when they would mean when they'd point to us with their figlio di puttana, son of a whore. For me, it was kind of cool to have a Mom who ran away from home. I mean, we wouldn't be stuck in the whole nuclear family meltdown thing. Funny. I kind of hoped Jennifer would be covering. We could have a laugh or two about it, and I know she likes serious conversations. I'd even sneaked a copy of her note to school and made a copy of it. But Grandpa, uncle Pete, Zi Tony . . . there was something in the way they cursed in Italian. Like when we were little kids and got in trouble at the table. There was nothing more embarrassing than a holiday dinner when all the parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents switched to Italian and pointed at you. We'd imitate them, and got a good idea of the curse words. My cousin Sal even made an Italin Curse Word Dictionary. So Timmy--he could be at little league and understand them! Well, I'd have to deal with that later. Bob just said a quick hello to grandpa and then left us alone. "You must be hungry. You always liked Salisbury steaks, with the mushroom gravy, right?" The diner still had real fried onions, not like these new plastic places, so he didn't even ask, just ordered quick, like a businessman. He even had a jacket on, the kind where old guys keep appointment books in the top, inside pockets. "Your sister's at band. Tim's going home with that Robby kid." he said, patting the pocket, accidentally. "So it looks like we're on our own." I expected Grandpop to go on about the ladies--women, they'd say--in Mom's group. He'd tease her, saying how Marla's chanting reminded him of Aunt Josephine's daily Rosary, how Joan going on about the joys of homemade bread inspired his hope that women would begin making homemade raviolis again, how they were right let the kids stay out during their meetings, since, he remembered, women talked about things like the time Aunt Louise -- then he noticed Tim and I were there, and stopped. "I'll just say if you girls keep looking to find yourselves, one day you'll find yourselves back in South Philly," he teased them. But now he just flipped through the paper. Quiet--like he was trying to get on my nerves, like when you can't sleep and you hear sink drip. When the quiet in between drives you nuts. Every once in a while, he'd say something about a picture, an article. Arabs hijacked another plane. He stops a while. People went around picking up trash for Earth Day. He just says thanks to Janice as she brings our dinners, and stops talking. Some woman gets so into Primal Scream therapy that the neighbors call the cops, and she moves to something called a woman's group home. He stops again. I'm tired of his trip now. "She can go off and do her own thing, go get with . . . " I wanted say something worse, but I just couldn't, especially since I think Janice is looking at me, sideways. I must be louder than I thought. "She can go get with a whole commune if that's what she wants. As long as I don't have to hear about it or see it. Really, grandpa" "Then why are you stabbing your steak like you're trying to kill it. It's already dead," Grandpop says, picking at his stuffed peppers, slowly. "Timmy," I told him. "He struck out three times yesterday. He's faking sick to skip practice, he wants to quit." Grandpa said of course Timmy had too much on his mind to play right. That was just not fair, laying the whole poor-kid-with-the-crazy-mom trip on a little kid. He put his fork down and looked at me, like he was thinking, patting something in his "Bravo, un bravo ragazzo, un bravo fratello". "Grandpop, what's up" I said. He wasn't using any words from the Dictionary, so I had no idea what he was saying. "You're a good boy, a good brother," he translated, then went back to finishing up his stuffed peppers. I got hungry too, and since I had the special, I asked for some rice pudding for desert. "I didn't think you kids liked sports so much," he teased me, thinking about the time Ken and Scott and Glen and I sacrificed Keith's basketball [ booth entry 2]. Janice came up with the pudding, but Grandpop gave her a look and she didn't say anything. She did come back and spray some extra whipped cream on the top, though. I told him I didn't want Timmy on some fascist uniform power gig, but it helped him get into the groove in his new school. "It's like a high, you know, when he's bouncing around, going on about the new friends he's making at Nash, like he's high on life. You know about a contact high, Grandpop?" I asked. The pudding was good. He pushed his plate away, smiled, and just said "Yeah. I got a couple kids myself, you know. . . Janice, can you get him a coffee, please." He pulled out a couple of cigarettes from his other jacket pocket, not in a pack because he didn't really smoke, he just bummed them sometimes. He gave me one. Like he was turning me on. I took a puff or two, but coughed. Natural tobacco would probably be cool, but the chemicals are probably bad for you. "It's OK," he said, about me putting out the cigarette, but I saw he was getting mad. Dad had always told me I didn't want to see Grandpop get really mad, and I didn't believe him. Until now. There weren't any funny Italian curse words, and he didn't jump up and down, waving his hands. No, his eyes just drilled into you, and he shook his head back and forth, slowly, biting his bottom lip. You could hear him breathing out, through his teeth, as he shook his head. Almost like an ffff sound. It was scary. "He's distracted now, Can't really keep his mind on the ball. And that's a disgrace. When he fumbles around the ball and they put him on the bench, he might quit." I tried to put a happy face on things, telling Grandpa that things would be OK, but just kept shaking his head. "You know how you have that crush on that girl Jennifer?" he says. "Wait a minute." I said, starting to get angry. Janice just put my cup down. "OK," he says, sipping his coffee. "There's not really a good word for an older woman--and she isn't really a girl anymore--who is your picture of what you want." I started to argue, but he just waved the cigarette before he put it out. "Call her a Lady in a White Dress, like in the fairy tales." I just shook my head, yes, OK, let's see where you're head's at. So he tells me that a Mom is always a little boy's idea of the Lady, and no way, no way can he go out and compete if she's not there, in the stands, like in the movies where the Lady is waving the handkerchief. "You're a real gentleman, grandpop, you know that," I said. Sometimes I think it's not cool that old guys like him just hang out and talk about the old days. They usually don't seem relevant, you know. But today, the way I was squirming as he told me what I was thinking, grandpop kind of blew my mind. I could almost believe the story about how Grandpop named the town by accident. "Bob didn't let you use the chain saw today, did he?" Grandpop almost whispered. My mind was more than blown, and I couldn't say anything, or even play with my pudding. I wondered what Grandpa could be getting to. "I talked to him," he said. "You're more distracted than you think. That's why Bob and I aren't letting you hurt yourself with that saw." I went ballistic on him; well, I didn't curse, so maybe that's why he let me go on. I told him how he was destroying the one space where I felt comfortable. Being up there in the trees, above all of the people like nuns talking about who'd go to hell, like Mom's friends with their 'A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle' bumper stickers. Above Nixon's Silent Majority which wouldn't shut up, and the idea that I might end up in a rice paddy which stunk like the scum on the bottom of a creek. Up in the trees you could hear birds, the chain saws, and smell the fresh wood as the saw bit into a branch, the hot spicy tar we used on the pruned branches. I'd look out and see other trees we'd done, and my legs could remember how they balanced themselves on this or that branch, how they held my weight. It was the best gig, not really work, but I could get the bread I needed. For some reason, Janice brought be a Black and White milkshake, I think Grandpa told her when I wasn't listening. I pushed it towards him, well, the glass anyway. She always gives me the big steel cup for the blender, and I noticed she still had the perfect balance of syrup and vanilla. "So what am I supposed to do now?" I asked him. Did he want me to something for Dad, Mom. He didn't mention "First, drink up. It's starting to get busy here." He flipped a twenty onto the counter where the sandwich had been. "Thanks Janice" he called out. Then he pulled a wad of cash, thicker than a stuffed wallet, from his jacket pocket,"Get her." His grandson stared at him, wondering about all the lectures about caution and care. His grandpa enjoyed the questioning look in his eyes, didn't realize that his own look was that of a very young man. "Take Tim if you need to. One thousand, five hundred to start". "But, but " I couldn't say anything intelligent, so Grandpop just went on. "Don't let her whore around in front of him. She's his mother. Other than that, what hasn't he seen already?" he asked. I mentioned Dad, but he just said he'd take care of his boy, while I take care of Tim. "But school," I asked. "If you can't handle a job you really want, you won't handle school right anyway. Don't waste your time. A few days of school won't make the difference between a genius and a jackass," he said. But I just sat there like a jackass, for a bit. "Go. Anybody ask, you're driving the car for me. You can call if you need to, but I think you'll handle things on your own. Good luck" He stood up to shake my hand, then he just split. |
| The great thing I found about a block in the E.D. class, for science, was that the once the basic lesson was done, the students could still act like kids and ask some great questions, even if they were a little off the lesson-plan topic. Force = mass times acceleration. Easy enough: would you rather get hit by your little brother's Big Wheel, or by a bus (assuming the same speed.)? Math as the language of science. How big a toaster will blow a fuse? How come people can stand up buy Lego men can't? How does the CIA encrypt data? Why were the Wind Talkers the only people whose code wasn't broke in WWII . . . . We even skipped around and ahead in the book. No real behavior problems, just a little friction to smooth over. Then one student: "Mr. S, do you believe what's in that book. "Sure. Why not? It's science" "But do you believe it?" "How can a math sentence lie?" I don't know. But I can't trust the book because it was written by The Man. I wish these kids could get over this mentality. It's not like we're running a chocolate factory and trying to squeeze the most work out of them to get the most for ourselves. . . . The problem is that we're teaching without a contract. Not a teacher-union contract, but a Social Contract. OK, we're not the first teachers to do so; in the 30s schools trained kids for jobs which didn't exist also. But this time we created the lack of opportunities ourselves, by exporting the opportunities we [baby boomers and before] enjoyed. The kids don't see much out there, and if they know they're not headed for the top 10%, it's easy for them to loose faith in what we're doing. Unless we can somehow convince them that what we're trying to do is make them stronger, that we can't guarantee them a good life, but we can guarantee them a nasty, brutish, and sometimes short existence if they drop out . . . |
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