Fyo loves several things about my sister, his Auntie Sis, but most of all he loves her for her iPhone. When Auntie Sis visited us in Bali, she showed him her "Cowbell" application. He ran around the house tapping on her iPhone to make the cowbell noise. This last visit from Auntie Sis she showed him "Coy Pond" so he could watch all the fish.
Except that when watching the fish, he'd always hit the button to turn the fish off. Sis shortly grew tired of this game, setting him up with Coy Pond only to have him hit the button that turned it off. She moved onto the next of her iPhone applications: The U.S. Constitution.
She started reading Fyo the Constitution. Fyo said, "Sing?".
Sis said, "I don't know if I can sing it. The language is so yadda yadda wadda wadda."
But she did. She sang the Constitution to my son. Kent and I were rather impressed. We joked the Constitution could be the source for a new musical. At one point she paused to point out the beauty of the language and the eloquence of one sentence in particular.
"Listen," she said, "this one sentence is beautiful." When my sister (or anyone for that matter) says such things it makes the heart of the English teacher in me go all a flutter. She is right of course; the beauty and construction of the language in the Constitution lends itself perfectly to admiring, pondering, savoring and diagramming in order to admire it at a more profound level. Diagramming the sentences in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence is the kind of thing I used to do as a form of meditation (back when I had that kind of time).
Fyo, however, didn't want any part of the admiring the language. He just yelled, "SING!" So she did. He liked her singing the U.S. Constitution more than he likes my singing of "You Are My Sunshine" or that I love you song we learned from our friend Francesca. He bobbed his head and danced in his car seat the way he does when we play music that he likes.
Lesson learned from Auntie Sis: just like it's never too early to start reading to your child, it's never too early to begin your child's Constitution literacy.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Ah... Portland Hippie Homeless Goodness
Granted, we could have used this bumper sticker earlier in the day, when we had parked the car on NW Broadway to walk over to the block of food carts on 5th and Oak for some lunch. Kent was pushing Fyo in the stroller while I was walking along enjoying my new green shoes when a woman walking towards me got in my face and yelled at me. I don't even know what she yelled; I just knew that it was in my ear. We both continued walking on our way. Kent turned to me and said, "How did you not respond? I would have hit her." But I was too surprised to respond. And really, what do you do in such situations except briefly lament deinstitutionalization. She was clearly crazy, and much like how in The Princess Bride Vizzini says to not get into a land war in Asia, it is equally pointless to get into a verbal street fight with Portland's crazy homeless population. But if I had had that bumper sticker in my hands, I probably would have smacked her with it - though I would have amended it with a sharpie to say, "If you lived in your heart, you wouldn't be homeless."
Friday, October 22, 2010
War Play
One afternoon while we were in Bali, my husband, then 22 month old son and I were playing soccer with our friends, an Australian couple with four children (ages 8, 6, 4 & three weeks older than our son Fyo). My son Fyo learned his love of soccer from our friends the Australians; he fell in love with chasing the ball, then setting it in the grass to kick it. So I was surprised when out of nowhere, he quit paying attention to the ball and instead picked up a stick in the grass and used it as a gun to shoot our friend’s six year old.
My husband and I haven’t owned a television since before we were married. Our friends didn’t own a television. In Indonesia, possession of a gun will get you life in prison. If the gun discharges a bullet, the owner faces the death penalty. I felt pretty secure in knowing that my toddler son had not seen any outside influence where he would have learned such a thing, excepting other children. I felt baffled as I watched what I of course consider my perfect child participate in potentially violent pretend play.
Guns and violence in general makes me squeamish. I don’t like the sight of them. I can’t help but feel sickened when I see children playing with toy guns. I don’t want my son to own a toy gun. I don’t want him to want one.
But I don’t want to be that mother who forbids something and is unwilling to have a discussion about it either. I especially don’t want to be that mother who, when she sees her son shoot his pretend stick gun, flips out in some kind of Mommy Dearest tirade.
In that moment, what I instead do is act nonchalant and as if my son’s gun pretend play is no different than his pouring a cup of tea pretend play.
My Australian friend reassures me that mothers disliking gun play is perfectly normal, but that she’s noticed Americans especially are scared and squeamish around guns. I point out that Americans have earned their fear of guns. As a nation, we’ve faced several tragedies involving guns. She points out that guns are a tool and like any other tool require instruction and respect in handling. I agree with her, but I still can’t help my stomach turning over when I see a gun.
When I get home to my family in Portland, gun pretend play again becomes a topic of conversation between my siblings and I, as the three of us all have sons (not a girl in the lot). My sister points out that it’s unfair to not allow boys to have their pretend play while girls can pretend play with kitchens, babies, Barbies, and princesses as much as they want even as that too makes us squeamish about the potentially sexist messages we may be sending them.
Yet my sister-in-law was raised in Serbia where there is still a compulsory 2-year military service. She was a shooter. She describes the strength, focus, and mindset it takes to fire a gun well. She just as easily could be describing a yoga practice. She did give her son a gun with strict rules for playing with it, and shortly after he lost interest in it.
At my grandmother’s house, my son pulls out the toy box full of toys that my siblings, cousins and I played with, and some of the toys, my dad and uncle played with. He finds the collection of water guns at the bottom. I ask myself if my squeamishness includes water guns – when I remember innocently running around my grandparents yard and shooting water at my siblings and cousins, thoughts of pretend wars the farthest thing from my mind. My son piles the water guns into the back of a dump truck. He isn’t thinking about war either.
My husband and I haven’t talked about how we’ll handle the subject of guns or war play with our son. I suspect gun education is much like sex education, in that it should be talked early and often so it’s no big deal; probably it is also similar to talking about sex in that kids are more aware of your discomfort with the subject than with what you are saying. So it’s my own discomfort – not my son’s pretend play – that I first am grappling with.
My husband and I haven’t owned a television since before we were married. Our friends didn’t own a television. In Indonesia, possession of a gun will get you life in prison. If the gun discharges a bullet, the owner faces the death penalty. I felt pretty secure in knowing that my toddler son had not seen any outside influence where he would have learned such a thing, excepting other children. I felt baffled as I watched what I of course consider my perfect child participate in potentially violent pretend play.
Guns and violence in general makes me squeamish. I don’t like the sight of them. I can’t help but feel sickened when I see children playing with toy guns. I don’t want my son to own a toy gun. I don’t want him to want one.
But I don’t want to be that mother who forbids something and is unwilling to have a discussion about it either. I especially don’t want to be that mother who, when she sees her son shoot his pretend stick gun, flips out in some kind of Mommy Dearest tirade.
In that moment, what I instead do is act nonchalant and as if my son’s gun pretend play is no different than his pouring a cup of tea pretend play.
My Australian friend reassures me that mothers disliking gun play is perfectly normal, but that she’s noticed Americans especially are scared and squeamish around guns. I point out that Americans have earned their fear of guns. As a nation, we’ve faced several tragedies involving guns. She points out that guns are a tool and like any other tool require instruction and respect in handling. I agree with her, but I still can’t help my stomach turning over when I see a gun.
When I get home to my family in Portland, gun pretend play again becomes a topic of conversation between my siblings and I, as the three of us all have sons (not a girl in the lot). My sister points out that it’s unfair to not allow boys to have their pretend play while girls can pretend play with kitchens, babies, Barbies, and princesses as much as they want even as that too makes us squeamish about the potentially sexist messages we may be sending them.
Yet my sister-in-law was raised in Serbia where there is still a compulsory 2-year military service. She was a shooter. She describes the strength, focus, and mindset it takes to fire a gun well. She just as easily could be describing a yoga practice. She did give her son a gun with strict rules for playing with it, and shortly after he lost interest in it.
At my grandmother’s house, my son pulls out the toy box full of toys that my siblings, cousins and I played with, and some of the toys, my dad and uncle played with. He finds the collection of water guns at the bottom. I ask myself if my squeamishness includes water guns – when I remember innocently running around my grandparents yard and shooting water at my siblings and cousins, thoughts of pretend wars the farthest thing from my mind. My son piles the water guns into the back of a dump truck. He isn’t thinking about war either.
My husband and I haven’t talked about how we’ll handle the subject of guns or war play with our son. I suspect gun education is much like sex education, in that it should be talked early and often so it’s no big deal; probably it is also similar to talking about sex in that kids are more aware of your discomfort with the subject than with what you are saying. So it’s my own discomfort – not my son’s pretend play – that I first am grappling with.
Toy Story
My sister, a friend of ours, and I were sitting in a café in North East Portland while my husband played outside in the small courtyard with my almost-two year-year old son and our friend’s four year old son. Outside, they were collecting rocks. Our friend’s son was demonstrating his yoga and my husband, quite the yogi himself, gave him new poses to try.
Inside, over coffee and pie, we enjoyed the break from entertaining the “older” children, and indulged in holding my sister’s seven-month old baby. In talking with my sister and friend, we talked about what we often do together: parenting, education, and with my son’s 2nd birthday at the end of the month, and Christmas just around the corner, we talked about toys.
My sister and I have a fear of battery operated single function toys. We like the classic toys, the wooden toys, and especially the toys that represent our values, those from green companies, or small businesses or etsy shop owners or the ones from our own childhoods that we find in thrift stores or our mother’s attic. We want toys that last, that grow with our children that encourage their intellect and creativity in a myriad of ways. Because my husband, son and I spent the last year living abroad, it was easy to get out of owning any battery operated toys. Or toys with television characters. Or toys that were poor quality that would end up orphaned and scattered in a million pieces with no one remembering what the original function of the toy was.
I look out the window into the courtyard and see my son, my husband, and my son’s new four-year old friend running around and playing chase, when my son stops suddenly to pick up another rock for the collection he has growing in his hands. It’s when I catch him in such small moments that I wonder if he really needs toys at all.
But he does, because I don’t want to spend my life outside while he collects rocks, leaves, acorns and acorn tops. Though I really do love these collections of his, I just need him to play independently but safely inside in the evening when I’m trying to get dinner on the table. So for those moments, I do want the good quality toy that entertains him in a myriad of ways while encouraging his intellect and creativity, but does not make heinous noises that might inspire a parental migraine or the making of a martini.
Our friend is a smart, pragmatic parent who views everything as a potential learning opportunity and conversation with her children. She says, “At some point, someone will give you the annoying single function battery operated toy. Either, you don’t put the batteries in it, or you do, and they play with it until the batteries die, and then you explain that at some point, everything dies (unless you want to teach them how to maintain it). Then they leave the toy outside, and it rains, so the toy falls apart and you explain that things eventually fall apart, especially when abandoned. They get it. And then you no longer have to deal with the annoying sound.”
She shrugs in her matter of fact way. I admire her approach to parenting and agree with a lot of her views. Still, the thought of walking into a Toys R Us for my son’s birthday just feels incongruent to who my husband and I are. Later, we instead opt for the gently used wooden play kitchen that we found on craigslist. My husband brings it home; we don’t bother waiting for his birthday to give it to our son. Within minutes, my son is opening the play oven, the play refrigerator, putting his toys inside, taking them out. He spent the rest of the evening playing and pretending. No batteries required.
Inside, over coffee and pie, we enjoyed the break from entertaining the “older” children, and indulged in holding my sister’s seven-month old baby. In talking with my sister and friend, we talked about what we often do together: parenting, education, and with my son’s 2nd birthday at the end of the month, and Christmas just around the corner, we talked about toys.
My sister and I have a fear of battery operated single function toys. We like the classic toys, the wooden toys, and especially the toys that represent our values, those from green companies, or small businesses or etsy shop owners or the ones from our own childhoods that we find in thrift stores or our mother’s attic. We want toys that last, that grow with our children that encourage their intellect and creativity in a myriad of ways. Because my husband, son and I spent the last year living abroad, it was easy to get out of owning any battery operated toys. Or toys with television characters. Or toys that were poor quality that would end up orphaned and scattered in a million pieces with no one remembering what the original function of the toy was.
I look out the window into the courtyard and see my son, my husband, and my son’s new four-year old friend running around and playing chase, when my son stops suddenly to pick up another rock for the collection he has growing in his hands. It’s when I catch him in such small moments that I wonder if he really needs toys at all.
But he does, because I don’t want to spend my life outside while he collects rocks, leaves, acorns and acorn tops. Though I really do love these collections of his, I just need him to play independently but safely inside in the evening when I’m trying to get dinner on the table. So for those moments, I do want the good quality toy that entertains him in a myriad of ways while encouraging his intellect and creativity, but does not make heinous noises that might inspire a parental migraine or the making of a martini.
Our friend is a smart, pragmatic parent who views everything as a potential learning opportunity and conversation with her children. She says, “At some point, someone will give you the annoying single function battery operated toy. Either, you don’t put the batteries in it, or you do, and they play with it until the batteries die, and then you explain that at some point, everything dies (unless you want to teach them how to maintain it). Then they leave the toy outside, and it rains, so the toy falls apart and you explain that things eventually fall apart, especially when abandoned. They get it. And then you no longer have to deal with the annoying sound.”
She shrugs in her matter of fact way. I admire her approach to parenting and agree with a lot of her views. Still, the thought of walking into a Toys R Us for my son’s birthday just feels incongruent to who my husband and I are. Later, we instead opt for the gently used wooden play kitchen that we found on craigslist. My husband brings it home; we don’t bother waiting for his birthday to give it to our son. Within minutes, my son is opening the play oven, the play refrigerator, putting his toys inside, taking them out. He spent the rest of the evening playing and pretending. No batteries required.
Re-Thinking the Over-Thinking
I don’t consider myself particularly intellectual or erudite, but I have always been a library lovin’ card catalog addict kind of researcher. The kind that comes home with stacks of books, knowing full well that I will never get to read all of them and even if I am writing on the topic found within the pages, I may never even crack the spine, or if I do, it’s to skim one paragraph. I really actually just want the books there, in my presence as a form of security blanket. I also tend to think a lot about things- some would say too much, (I’ve been accused of over thinking more than once and by more than one ex-boyfriend) though it is a trait I got to nurture into a reflex-like habit while in graduate school.
When it comes to parenting, I’m no different. I research a lot. I read a lot. I promised myself I would when I was a teenager; that I wouldn’t parent like I was being parented- not that I didn’t have parents who meant well and not that I haven’t learned a lot from the vast amounts of things they did that worked. Yet now as I am writing once a week on my parenting life, I am starting to feel a bit self-conscious as I reveal myself in all my neurosis. I start to wonder if other parents think as much about things. I take comfort in my friend from Australia who thinks about things as much as I do. She has four children. She too battles this, and confides in me, that one of her sons could spend hours watching television and playing video games. She doesn’t want him to; she’s read all the same studies as I have about the potential effects to creativity, the ability to entertain one’s self, or what happens to a child’s emotional development when they learn a lot with no face-to-face interaction. She says to me, “I’ve been told to just let him do as he wants, and that if I don’t let him it’s because I’m too controlling. Is that true? Does that make me too controlling?”
I don’t want to say yes, because I agree with her – I don’t want my son to watch hours of television or play video games for hours either – and I know if I say yes, that it does mean she’s over controlling, it means I’m over controlling too. And I’m guessing – given my added number of things I don’t want for my son – I’m way more over controlling than she is.
And over controlling is just the beginning of negative connotations that I imagine get connected to how much I over think things. Probably I’m overly critical about most of what’s out in the world for kids in terms of education, toys, clothes and videos (I know of only two other parents who dislike Thomas the Train as much as I do). Probably I’m picky – about who baby sits my son, what he eats, what he plays with, what he does watch on TV, or that while most of the children’s programming on PBS is so surprisingly crappy I prefer he not watch any of it, and if he does watch Sesame Street, I prefer he watch the older episodes of Sesame Street, before it got turned over to Elmo and what’s-her-face-fairy-wings.
The scenes in When Harry Met Sally, when Sally orders in her “this, but not this, and that, but that in a certain way and I want it how I want it” way – I’m the parenting version.
Sometimes I catch glimpses of how I must look through the eyes of others, when I share my disappointment in PBS, and my mother-in-law says, “It’s far better than everything else out there.” My father-in-law pipes in, “They’re the only ones not selling something.” I don’t say anything else, except that this is not saying much about the overall quality of children’s television. While in my mind I begin my rant, that after every show on Oregon Public Broadcasting, they show the show’s sponsor. It turns out Chuck E Cheese is responsible for most of the morning’s television. Before OPB, my son had never heard of Chuck E Cheese. I never went there as a child; needless to say that I don’t want him going there either. I start to think maybe I should admit to being full-fledged neurotic.
Then I wrote a post about toys and I wrote it while in one of my moments of wondering is there really just a few of us who don’t want their children playing with battery operated crap? Is it just me? Do people think I bitch about everything when it comes to what’s available for children?
Some might, but plenty agree with me I learned in the days after my post. I don’t know why company is comforting, but it is. I felt reassured again and again as people left their comments. It had me re-think my over-thinking, that maybe it’s not over-thinking, but just thinking and questioning.
When it comes to parenting, I’m no different. I research a lot. I read a lot. I promised myself I would when I was a teenager; that I wouldn’t parent like I was being parented- not that I didn’t have parents who meant well and not that I haven’t learned a lot from the vast amounts of things they did that worked. Yet now as I am writing once a week on my parenting life, I am starting to feel a bit self-conscious as I reveal myself in all my neurosis. I start to wonder if other parents think as much about things. I take comfort in my friend from Australia who thinks about things as much as I do. She has four children. She too battles this, and confides in me, that one of her sons could spend hours watching television and playing video games. She doesn’t want him to; she’s read all the same studies as I have about the potential effects to creativity, the ability to entertain one’s self, or what happens to a child’s emotional development when they learn a lot with no face-to-face interaction. She says to me, “I’ve been told to just let him do as he wants, and that if I don’t let him it’s because I’m too controlling. Is that true? Does that make me too controlling?”
I don’t want to say yes, because I agree with her – I don’t want my son to watch hours of television or play video games for hours either – and I know if I say yes, that it does mean she’s over controlling, it means I’m over controlling too. And I’m guessing – given my added number of things I don’t want for my son – I’m way more over controlling than she is.
And over controlling is just the beginning of negative connotations that I imagine get connected to how much I over think things. Probably I’m overly critical about most of what’s out in the world for kids in terms of education, toys, clothes and videos (I know of only two other parents who dislike Thomas the Train as much as I do). Probably I’m picky – about who baby sits my son, what he eats, what he plays with, what he does watch on TV, or that while most of the children’s programming on PBS is so surprisingly crappy I prefer he not watch any of it, and if he does watch Sesame Street, I prefer he watch the older episodes of Sesame Street, before it got turned over to Elmo and what’s-her-face-fairy-wings.
The scenes in When Harry Met Sally, when Sally orders in her “this, but not this, and that, but that in a certain way and I want it how I want it” way – I’m the parenting version.
Sometimes I catch glimpses of how I must look through the eyes of others, when I share my disappointment in PBS, and my mother-in-law says, “It’s far better than everything else out there.” My father-in-law pipes in, “They’re the only ones not selling something.” I don’t say anything else, except that this is not saying much about the overall quality of children’s television. While in my mind I begin my rant, that after every show on Oregon Public Broadcasting, they show the show’s sponsor. It turns out Chuck E Cheese is responsible for most of the morning’s television. Before OPB, my son had never heard of Chuck E Cheese. I never went there as a child; needless to say that I don’t want him going there either. I start to think maybe I should admit to being full-fledged neurotic.
Then I wrote a post about toys and I wrote it while in one of my moments of wondering is there really just a few of us who don’t want their children playing with battery operated crap? Is it just me? Do people think I bitch about everything when it comes to what’s available for children?
Some might, but plenty agree with me I learned in the days after my post. I don’t know why company is comforting, but it is. I felt reassured again and again as people left their comments. It had me re-think my over-thinking, that maybe it’s not over-thinking, but just thinking and questioning.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Reading: Half the Sky
When I was in Cambodia traveling with my dad, his wife and my then 18-month old son, we took a floating village tour near the small town of Siam Reap. It was our last day; we had spent most our time there at the Anghor Wat temple, but now wanted to see something else. We asked the tut-tut driver we had hired for our stay, how should we spend the last day in Cambodia? The Kampong Phluk floating village was his recommendation.
The first stop of our floating village tour was the village gift shop, full of the same things you see in every other gift shop in Siam Reap, but with the addition of books about Cambodia, and hand woven scarfs and fabrics made by women and girls in the village. On our way to the gift shop, a young boy hopped on board the back of our boat to sell us water and bananas; we didn’t buy any, as we had already bought water. Then, not long after a woman rowed her narrow canoe up to our boat. Laid across her lap was her sleeping newborn. Sitting next to her was her older daughter holding up a bunch of bananas, and next to her was her brother, shirtless - wearing only a snake around his neck. The boy held the snake head up to us; the mother held out her hand.
I looked at her and her baby, as I held my still nursing and napping toddler in his carrier. I gave her a five-dollar bill.
When we arrive at the gift shop, we are helped off our boat by a greeter, who points up the plank connecting to the rest of the boat. We walked past cages of snakes on the ground. Farther ahead is a deck where you can look over the edge and see the crocodiles they keep on the lower level of the boat.
The things made by the local villagers in the gift shop are gorgeous. I pick up a hand woven scarf. As a knitter, I recognize the craftsmanship (crafts(wo)manship?); it is outstanding. A woman comes over and asks me to buy it. I say, but I don’t need it, it’s wool, and I live in Singapore.
Please, she says.
There are two. I love them both and try to think whom I could give them to that doesn’t already own a dozen scarves I have knitted and given to them.
Five dollars, she says.
Five dollars? I ask. Usually, when I say the price back in a question in a tone of utter disbelief, it’s because I think they are trying to charge me the outrageous white girl price. But this time I say it back in the disbelief of how cheap the labor and craftsmanship sells for. I could find the same scarf in the States at Anthropologie or other hip design-y boutique/small business for close to seventy.
I bought one. I’m still sorry I didn’t buy both.
While we were in the gift shop, declining offers of coconuts and the tricks their caged (barely) crocodiles could perform, I lost count of the numbers of boats of children that came up begging. I battled my own inner conflict, that I don’t mind being generous and helping, but I don’t like being constantly asked. I also don’t like the feeling that it’s my dollar they depend on, even as I know it beats the alternative. But this is a tricky line many countries in the third world face, that as their local populations earn a living selling tourists their traditional crafts and preserving some aspect of their local heritage, it also has them put all their eggs in one basket. If tourism stops – much like it did in Bali after the bombings- then the locals are again desperate. Also, Cambodia faces much of what Eastern Europe faced in the fall of communism, that when communism fell, it left economic distress in its wake, which, as history has taught us more than once, is the perfect conditions for the birth of gangs. Capitalism grants the opportunity to make a dollar, but also the opportunity to make a dollar at someone else’s expense, especially in a country, so traditionally sexist a wife is considered defiant if she dares to look at her husband in the face.
The next stop on our floating village tour was supposed to be a school, where you could see the school kids and buy them school supplies, but I didn’t want to see the school kids. I felt like they needed all the education they could get; they didn’t need distractions by tourists. My dad gave the guide money and told him to give it to the school for whatever they needed, but we didn’t want to stop. The guide said the final stop was at the village orphanage. My dad looked at me. I am known for falling in love with random children. And Cambodian children I find gorgeous. They have black eyes, rich skin, black hair. And I know what kind of life await many of the baby girls in the orphanage.
“Dad,” I said. “I can’t go there. If we go to that orphanage, we’ll be spending the next few days at the American Embassy getting my new baby a birth certificate and passport.”
My dad looked at the guide. “Skip it. Please take us home.” He used my son as an excuse, that it had already been a long day.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I thought about the mother with her baby sleeping in her lap, the same way I used to lay my son across my own lap while I read or ate. I thought about the boy and his snake around his neck. My dad thought it was cruel of poverty to put parents into the position of using their children as wage earners. I thought they didn’t consider it cruel at all, but just part of survival and giving them the skills for survival. I thought it was cruel of the floating village to offer to take you to the orphanage. I spent most my night tossing and turning, wondering if I should have gone ahead and adopted a second child without consulting my husband still in Singapore. I wondered if he would have been really mad, or if he would have taken one look at the baby girl and melted – his usual response to when he sees baby girls. I rationalized that I was still breastfeeding so I could have breastfed the new baby-I assumed-girl, I just couldn’t wrap my head around how it could all work. I couldn’t even wrap my head around how I would travel by myself back to Singapore with a newly adopted baby and an active toddling son.
I came home and told my husband about the children I did see, how beautiful they were, but there viewed as unlucky or as ugly because their skin is dark, while white or fair skin is prized. Like in Bangkok, and sections of Singapore, Fyo turned heads and inspired (literally) parades of photographers and admirers. People wanted to touch his head and legs. Waiters in restaurants picked him up and carried him around to show him off to the rest of the staff. He was white. He was a boy, even the first son. He was lucky.
When I told my husband about our trip, the children, the floating village, the poverty, the orphanage, the baby I would have adopted if I had gone. He agreed, saying it was like going to the pound without the intention of adopting a kitten. I said I still felt conflicted, that I only wanted two children, and that because I loved being pregnant, I wanted to be pregnant again, but now I wanted to adopt our third child, a daughter from Cambodia. He laughed at me when I said I no longer judged Angelina Jolie so harshly, that I now saw exactly what moved her and what she fell in love with.
Cambodia is a magical place. It’s an easy country to fall in love with and have your heart broken again and again. There’s beauty in the people and scenery that breaks your heart and there’s hurt and pain and wounds on in the people and literally carved into the landscape that breaks your heart. It’s a country that is just intensely human, in that it continues to deal with the best and worst of humanity; in Cambodia, you are never far from the best or worst of what the human spirit is capable of.
After my trip to Cambodia, I spent some time reading up on the country, the culture, the war, and the history. Sadly, most of the literature on Cambodia is based in the country’s negative experiences, either the Khmer Rouge or the sex trade. However, books such as Louise Ung’s Lucky Child
and First They Killed My Father
and Somaly Mam’s The Road to Lost Innocence
leave one awed by the strength of spirit, that such women not only survived such horrors, but then dealt with them head on to write and tell their stories.
Because of my short time in Cambodia, I immediately fell into Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
. The first two chapters begin with Sex trafficking and slavery in Cambodia, but Kristof and WuDunn lead you on a tour through a good chunk of the world, through Asia, India, Afghanistan, Iran. They tell the personal stories of women who have battled oppression in healthcare and education, some of their stories have heartbreaking endings, including girls killed by their own family members or women who were in a hospital, but didn’t have the money to pay and essentially left to suffer. But their stories aren’t just anecdotal; they have the startling statistics to support why it is these stories they are relaying. One of the most quoted statistics is that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century.
I think it is this statistic (but it is hard to choose one that startles me the most) that gets me, not just in the sheer amount of girls, but how until reading this book, most people would have no idea. Yet, thanks to holidays like Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day, there’s not much of a chance of anyone forgetting about the men who died in wars, or that these men are often cited as having died defending democracy (even though democracy wasn’t at much risk for falling out of existence). I don’t want to devalue the lives of men lost in war, but the girls who have died in the last fifty years – when the greatest strides have been made in health care, sanitation and refrigeration (all improvements which should theoretically improve their chances for survival, let alone a healthy one) – they have no holiday. They have no plaque or eternal flame and they have no burial ground included on a list of National Monuments and tourist sites. As Kristof and WuDunn illustrate over and over, the inequality is multilayered and intricate: it is a knot that begs to be teased apart.
It can be easy to get overwhelmed and depressed reading the horrors of what half the earth’s population goes through on a daily basis, but Kristoff and WuDunn include more stories with happy, and even triumphant endings. While they may infer that a society wide overhaul may be beneficial in some cases, they repeatedly find the research that supports an unexpected simple solution that makes the greatest impact. Often, the solutions with the most success are ones you’d never suspect, programs that essentially bribe or pay families to keep their daughters in school, or providing school uniforms for girls. They more often than not point to small things that make a huge difference; what they note over and over again is that focusing on the details is much like adjusting the launch of a rocket a few degrees and completely changing the arc of the trajectory.
They also delve into the complexities of aid work, that while US or European aid agencies mean well, it often complicates situations or makes things worse because of the lack of anticipation of cultural, social, religious differences. The motivations of Western aid agencies do occasionally sound more like those of their 19th century imperialist ancestors instead of the well-meant-intentions of Westerners who do just want to help.
Yet, this is one of the complexities of aid work, in that while it is well meant, it can be demeaning. Much like in face-to-face conversations, when one person just starts offering suggestions or how-to guides, it kind of assumes the other can’t do something. My step-mother often quotes AA in these situations as she says, “Unsolicited advice sounds like criticism.” Some Africans argue that more aid isn’t what Africa needs. Kristof cites, “Andrew Mwenda, a Ugandan, complained about the calamitous consequences of ‘the international cocktail of good inentions.” And “James Shikwati of Kenya has pleaded with Western donors: ‘For God’s sake, please just stop.” They repeatedly say that the best solutions don’t come from Westerners, or UN peacekeepers parachuting in with canned goods when there’s not a can opener to be found in whatever country they landed in. (It is funny, Westerners so desperately cling to the fairy-tale-superhero-comic-book narrative arc: there must be somebody we can rescue or save and who will be forever grateful to us for saving them…). The best solutions have come from people within the countries or ex-pats who have spent considerable time in the country and done their homework and who work with the locals. Novelty of novelty, it is partnership – it is the cooperative efforts that so often gets talked about on my son’s Sesame Street DVD that yields the best results, and sometimes, as Kristof and WuDunn say, there are girls they can’t save.
This is the kind of book I do want to read all in one sitting and if I didn’t have a toddler to chase after in the day and if I wasn’t already getting up at 4am to squeeze my writing in, then I’d stay up all night finishing it (I just recently stayed up until 3am finishing The Girl With Dragon Tattoo
and paid for it desperately the next day). It’s the kind of book that makes me love reading and has me remember why I love reading. It’s the kind of book that sent me to the library for another stack of books piled high up to my chin between my arms. (In my stack for next up: Greg Mortenson's Stones for Schools
and Three Cups of Tea
!)
And it’s the kind of book that since I started reading, I haven’t stopped talking about or citing stories or statistics from or bits of perspective or insights. It’s the kind of book I don’t want to stop talking about, an important book that needs to be talked about, much like Betty Freidan’s The Feminine Mystique
, that sobers and startles and surprises all while simply pointing to what is there beneath our noses, but failed to see, or that we did see, but felt that it was so overwhelming or all encompassing that you don’t know where to begin in grappling with it.
Which is essentially how I felt in Cambodia, falling in love with the country and people, having my heart broken, wanting to adopt baby girls I had never even met, knowing that many of the women there had survived things that no one should and mostly as a repercussion of poverty. I left that country feeling moved in ways I never had before, but also reeling from the intricate-ness of the knot of issues that the country faces. I didn’t know how one would even know where to begin. So I am thankful to Kristof and WuDunn for beginning to tease it apart.
The first stop of our floating village tour was the village gift shop, full of the same things you see in every other gift shop in Siam Reap, but with the addition of books about Cambodia, and hand woven scarfs and fabrics made by women and girls in the village. On our way to the gift shop, a young boy hopped on board the back of our boat to sell us water and bananas; we didn’t buy any, as we had already bought water. Then, not long after a woman rowed her narrow canoe up to our boat. Laid across her lap was her sleeping newborn. Sitting next to her was her older daughter holding up a bunch of bananas, and next to her was her brother, shirtless - wearing only a snake around his neck. The boy held the snake head up to us; the mother held out her hand.
I looked at her and her baby, as I held my still nursing and napping toddler in his carrier. I gave her a five-dollar bill.
When we arrive at the gift shop, we are helped off our boat by a greeter, who points up the plank connecting to the rest of the boat. We walked past cages of snakes on the ground. Farther ahead is a deck where you can look over the edge and see the crocodiles they keep on the lower level of the boat.
The things made by the local villagers in the gift shop are gorgeous. I pick up a hand woven scarf. As a knitter, I recognize the craftsmanship (crafts(wo)manship?); it is outstanding. A woman comes over and asks me to buy it. I say, but I don’t need it, it’s wool, and I live in Singapore.
Please, she says.
There are two. I love them both and try to think whom I could give them to that doesn’t already own a dozen scarves I have knitted and given to them.
Five dollars, she says.
Five dollars? I ask. Usually, when I say the price back in a question in a tone of utter disbelief, it’s because I think they are trying to charge me the outrageous white girl price. But this time I say it back in the disbelief of how cheap the labor and craftsmanship sells for. I could find the same scarf in the States at Anthropologie or other hip design-y boutique/small business for close to seventy.
I bought one. I’m still sorry I didn’t buy both.
While we were in the gift shop, declining offers of coconuts and the tricks their caged (barely) crocodiles could perform, I lost count of the numbers of boats of children that came up begging. I battled my own inner conflict, that I don’t mind being generous and helping, but I don’t like being constantly asked. I also don’t like the feeling that it’s my dollar they depend on, even as I know it beats the alternative. But this is a tricky line many countries in the third world face, that as their local populations earn a living selling tourists their traditional crafts and preserving some aspect of their local heritage, it also has them put all their eggs in one basket. If tourism stops – much like it did in Bali after the bombings- then the locals are again desperate. Also, Cambodia faces much of what Eastern Europe faced in the fall of communism, that when communism fell, it left economic distress in its wake, which, as history has taught us more than once, is the perfect conditions for the birth of gangs. Capitalism grants the opportunity to make a dollar, but also the opportunity to make a dollar at someone else’s expense, especially in a country, so traditionally sexist a wife is considered defiant if she dares to look at her husband in the face.
The next stop on our floating village tour was supposed to be a school, where you could see the school kids and buy them school supplies, but I didn’t want to see the school kids. I felt like they needed all the education they could get; they didn’t need distractions by tourists. My dad gave the guide money and told him to give it to the school for whatever they needed, but we didn’t want to stop. The guide said the final stop was at the village orphanage. My dad looked at me. I am known for falling in love with random children. And Cambodian children I find gorgeous. They have black eyes, rich skin, black hair. And I know what kind of life await many of the baby girls in the orphanage.
“Dad,” I said. “I can’t go there. If we go to that orphanage, we’ll be spending the next few days at the American Embassy getting my new baby a birth certificate and passport.”
My dad looked at the guide. “Skip it. Please take us home.” He used my son as an excuse, that it had already been a long day.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I thought about the mother with her baby sleeping in her lap, the same way I used to lay my son across my own lap while I read or ate. I thought about the boy and his snake around his neck. My dad thought it was cruel of poverty to put parents into the position of using their children as wage earners. I thought they didn’t consider it cruel at all, but just part of survival and giving them the skills for survival. I thought it was cruel of the floating village to offer to take you to the orphanage. I spent most my night tossing and turning, wondering if I should have gone ahead and adopted a second child without consulting my husband still in Singapore. I wondered if he would have been really mad, or if he would have taken one look at the baby girl and melted – his usual response to when he sees baby girls. I rationalized that I was still breastfeeding so I could have breastfed the new baby-I assumed-girl, I just couldn’t wrap my head around how it could all work. I couldn’t even wrap my head around how I would travel by myself back to Singapore with a newly adopted baby and an active toddling son.
I came home and told my husband about the children I did see, how beautiful they were, but there viewed as unlucky or as ugly because their skin is dark, while white or fair skin is prized. Like in Bangkok, and sections of Singapore, Fyo turned heads and inspired (literally) parades of photographers and admirers. People wanted to touch his head and legs. Waiters in restaurants picked him up and carried him around to show him off to the rest of the staff. He was white. He was a boy, even the first son. He was lucky.
When I told my husband about our trip, the children, the floating village, the poverty, the orphanage, the baby I would have adopted if I had gone. He agreed, saying it was like going to the pound without the intention of adopting a kitten. I said I still felt conflicted, that I only wanted two children, and that because I loved being pregnant, I wanted to be pregnant again, but now I wanted to adopt our third child, a daughter from Cambodia. He laughed at me when I said I no longer judged Angelina Jolie so harshly, that I now saw exactly what moved her and what she fell in love with.
Cambodia is a magical place. It’s an easy country to fall in love with and have your heart broken again and again. There’s beauty in the people and scenery that breaks your heart and there’s hurt and pain and wounds on in the people and literally carved into the landscape that breaks your heart. It’s a country that is just intensely human, in that it continues to deal with the best and worst of humanity; in Cambodia, you are never far from the best or worst of what the human spirit is capable of.
After my trip to Cambodia, I spent some time reading up on the country, the culture, the war, and the history. Sadly, most of the literature on Cambodia is based in the country’s negative experiences, either the Khmer Rouge or the sex trade. However, books such as Louise Ung’s Lucky Child
and First They Killed My Father and Somaly Mam’s The Road to Lost Innocence leave one awed by the strength of spirit, that such women not only survived such horrors, but then dealt with them head on to write and tell their stories. Because of my short time in Cambodia, I immediately fell into Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
. The first two chapters begin with Sex trafficking and slavery in Cambodia, but Kristof and WuDunn lead you on a tour through a good chunk of the world, through Asia, India, Afghanistan, Iran. They tell the personal stories of women who have battled oppression in healthcare and education, some of their stories have heartbreaking endings, including girls killed by their own family members or women who were in a hospital, but didn’t have the money to pay and essentially left to suffer. But their stories aren’t just anecdotal; they have the startling statistics to support why it is these stories they are relaying. One of the most quoted statistics is that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century. I think it is this statistic (but it is hard to choose one that startles me the most) that gets me, not just in the sheer amount of girls, but how until reading this book, most people would have no idea. Yet, thanks to holidays like Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day, there’s not much of a chance of anyone forgetting about the men who died in wars, or that these men are often cited as having died defending democracy (even though democracy wasn’t at much risk for falling out of existence). I don’t want to devalue the lives of men lost in war, but the girls who have died in the last fifty years – when the greatest strides have been made in health care, sanitation and refrigeration (all improvements which should theoretically improve their chances for survival, let alone a healthy one) – they have no holiday. They have no plaque or eternal flame and they have no burial ground included on a list of National Monuments and tourist sites. As Kristof and WuDunn illustrate over and over, the inequality is multilayered and intricate: it is a knot that begs to be teased apart.
It can be easy to get overwhelmed and depressed reading the horrors of what half the earth’s population goes through on a daily basis, but Kristoff and WuDunn include more stories with happy, and even triumphant endings. While they may infer that a society wide overhaul may be beneficial in some cases, they repeatedly find the research that supports an unexpected simple solution that makes the greatest impact. Often, the solutions with the most success are ones you’d never suspect, programs that essentially bribe or pay families to keep their daughters in school, or providing school uniforms for girls. They more often than not point to small things that make a huge difference; what they note over and over again is that focusing on the details is much like adjusting the launch of a rocket a few degrees and completely changing the arc of the trajectory.
They also delve into the complexities of aid work, that while US or European aid agencies mean well, it often complicates situations or makes things worse because of the lack of anticipation of cultural, social, religious differences. The motivations of Western aid agencies do occasionally sound more like those of their 19th century imperialist ancestors instead of the well-meant-intentions of Westerners who do just want to help.
Yet, this is one of the complexities of aid work, in that while it is well meant, it can be demeaning. Much like in face-to-face conversations, when one person just starts offering suggestions or how-to guides, it kind of assumes the other can’t do something. My step-mother often quotes AA in these situations as she says, “Unsolicited advice sounds like criticism.” Some Africans argue that more aid isn’t what Africa needs. Kristof cites, “Andrew Mwenda, a Ugandan, complained about the calamitous consequences of ‘the international cocktail of good inentions.” And “James Shikwati of Kenya has pleaded with Western donors: ‘For God’s sake, please just stop.” They repeatedly say that the best solutions don’t come from Westerners, or UN peacekeepers parachuting in with canned goods when there’s not a can opener to be found in whatever country they landed in. (It is funny, Westerners so desperately cling to the fairy-tale-superhero-comic-book narrative arc: there must be somebody we can rescue or save and who will be forever grateful to us for saving them…). The best solutions have come from people within the countries or ex-pats who have spent considerable time in the country and done their homework and who work with the locals. Novelty of novelty, it is partnership – it is the cooperative efforts that so often gets talked about on my son’s Sesame Street DVD that yields the best results, and sometimes, as Kristof and WuDunn say, there are girls they can’t save.
This is the kind of book I do want to read all in one sitting and if I didn’t have a toddler to chase after in the day and if I wasn’t already getting up at 4am to squeeze my writing in, then I’d stay up all night finishing it (I just recently stayed up until 3am finishing The Girl With Dragon Tattoo
and paid for it desperately the next day). It’s the kind of book that makes me love reading and has me remember why I love reading. It’s the kind of book that sent me to the library for another stack of books piled high up to my chin between my arms. (In my stack for next up: Greg Mortenson's Stones for Schools and Three Cups of Tea!)And it’s the kind of book that since I started reading, I haven’t stopped talking about or citing stories or statistics from or bits of perspective or insights. It’s the kind of book I don’t want to stop talking about, an important book that needs to be talked about, much like Betty Freidan’s The Feminine Mystique
, that sobers and startles and surprises all while simply pointing to what is there beneath our noses, but failed to see, or that we did see, but felt that it was so overwhelming or all encompassing that you don’t know where to begin in grappling with it. Which is essentially how I felt in Cambodia, falling in love with the country and people, having my heart broken, wanting to adopt baby girls I had never even met, knowing that many of the women there had survived things that no one should and mostly as a repercussion of poverty. I left that country feeling moved in ways I never had before, but also reeling from the intricate-ness of the knot of issues that the country faces. I didn’t know how one would even know where to begin. So I am thankful to Kristof and WuDunn for beginning to tease it apart.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Day Late; Dollar Short
Which is typical of me. There are certain risks of living only half-heartedly connected to your calendar; the main one being that when you see something cool happening "today" you always think it is today, as in the day you are on, and because you haven't looked at your calendar (and for the most part don't really even know where it is, except when you have to add a book to the "To Read" list scribbled in the back) you aren't going to bother verifying a small detail like dates.
So I woke up (way too) early this morning (I've come to terms with that the only way for me to get writing done is by getting up at 4am) and saw that it was Blog Action Day 2010 and the subject was water, I was immediately inspired. What is Blog Action Day? It is this: Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action.
Pretty cool, huh?
This year's topic is water. I read the stats on water - just a few. (I have to work fast when I get up at 4am, because my son could wake at any moment.) Here's what I learned:
- African women walk over 40 billion hours each year carrying cisterns weighing up to 18 kilograms to gather water, which is usually still not safe to drink.
- Every week, nearly 38,000 children under the age of 5 die from unsafe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions.
-Many scholars attribute the conflict in Darfur at least in part to lack of access to water. A report commissioned by the UN found that in the 21st century, water scarcity will become one of the leading causes of conflict in Africa.
- Today, 2.5 billion people lack access to toilets, but many more have access to a cell phone.
I thought of our time abroad; in Singapore, the water is pretty safe, in that you can drink it out of the tap, but like most major cities in the US and around the world, you are wise to have a water filter. In Bali, the water out of the tap won't necessarily make you sick, but you are best off to drink bottled water. Like most things, the bottled water is a mixed blessing. As Josh Tickell tells us in the film, Fuel
if you take your empty plastic water bottle and fill it one quarter full, that is the amount of petroleum it took to make that plastic bottle of water. At the same time, plastic water bottles get clean, safe drinking water to places like Bali, Bangkok, and other places throughout SE Asia and Africa that otherwise wouldn't have safe drinking water. The downside of this is most the pollution you see in such places is plastic water bottles; either they are thrown in piles of garbage, littered on the sides of roads, or they are burned and locals then inhale the fumes of empty plastic water bottles burning.
The water in Bali could be drinkable and safe - it starts out as such, but it becomes a dumping ground for things the locals don't know what to otherwise do with. If our gardener found a dead rat, he threw it in the stream of water just outside our door. On any given walk through the side roads of a village or the rice paddies you'll see entire families in the streams washing all their clothes with detergents - full of phosphates - and themselves with soaps and shampoos. If they change the oil in a tractor, the old oil goes into a well or stream.
I of course didn't get a chance to write all this this morning. My son woke up. I spent our day perusing playgrounds and visiting with my sister and other fun things all the while itching to get back to my computer. When I finally did, just before dinner, with my blog post fully composed in my head, I realized then, that October 15th was yesterday. Today was the 16th.
Alas, my inspiration, my little bit of activism on my corner of the internet was, as they say, a day late and a dollar short. I signed the petition anyway. I mean, even if it is a day late, people still need water.
I guess there's always next year, which means I have 365 days to get back in the habit of using my calendar and actually keeping track of it. If you want, you can sign the petition too.
So I woke up (way too) early this morning (I've come to terms with that the only way for me to get writing done is by getting up at 4am) and saw that it was Blog Action Day 2010 and the subject was water, I was immediately inspired. What is Blog Action Day? It is this: Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action.
Pretty cool, huh?
This year's topic is water. I read the stats on water - just a few. (I have to work fast when I get up at 4am, because my son could wake at any moment.) Here's what I learned:
- African women walk over 40 billion hours each year carrying cisterns weighing up to 18 kilograms to gather water, which is usually still not safe to drink.
- Every week, nearly 38,000 children under the age of 5 die from unsafe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions.
-Many scholars attribute the conflict in Darfur at least in part to lack of access to water. A report commissioned by the UN found that in the 21st century, water scarcity will become one of the leading causes of conflict in Africa.
- Today, 2.5 billion people lack access to toilets, but many more have access to a cell phone.
I thought of our time abroad; in Singapore, the water is pretty safe, in that you can drink it out of the tap, but like most major cities in the US and around the world, you are wise to have a water filter. In Bali, the water out of the tap won't necessarily make you sick, but you are best off to drink bottled water. Like most things, the bottled water is a mixed blessing. As Josh Tickell tells us in the film, Fuel
if you take your empty plastic water bottle and fill it one quarter full, that is the amount of petroleum it took to make that plastic bottle of water. At the same time, plastic water bottles get clean, safe drinking water to places like Bali, Bangkok, and other places throughout SE Asia and Africa that otherwise wouldn't have safe drinking water. The downside of this is most the pollution you see in such places is plastic water bottles; either they are thrown in piles of garbage, littered on the sides of roads, or they are burned and locals then inhale the fumes of empty plastic water bottles burning. The water in Bali could be drinkable and safe - it starts out as such, but it becomes a dumping ground for things the locals don't know what to otherwise do with. If our gardener found a dead rat, he threw it in the stream of water just outside our door. On any given walk through the side roads of a village or the rice paddies you'll see entire families in the streams washing all their clothes with detergents - full of phosphates - and themselves with soaps and shampoos. If they change the oil in a tractor, the old oil goes into a well or stream.
I of course didn't get a chance to write all this this morning. My son woke up. I spent our day perusing playgrounds and visiting with my sister and other fun things all the while itching to get back to my computer. When I finally did, just before dinner, with my blog post fully composed in my head, I realized then, that October 15th was yesterday. Today was the 16th.
Alas, my inspiration, my little bit of activism on my corner of the internet was, as they say, a day late and a dollar short. I signed the petition anyway. I mean, even if it is a day late, people still need water.
I guess there's always next year, which means I have 365 days to get back in the habit of using my calendar and actually keeping track of it. If you want, you can sign the petition too.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Leaving Your Life Up To The Facebook Quiz
When Kent and I were in Bali brainstorming where we should live, and talking with other people who were in a similar place as we were – all of us trying to figure out the criteria for our potential homes, (did we want to be close to family? What size of city? Out in the country? Kinds of weather?). Some of our friends had decided for the moment that Bali was it.
For us, Bali wasn’t it. Bali was nice, but it failed in some of our criteria. We had it narrowed down to San Francisco and Brooklyn in the states; Amsterdam is also high on the list. So is Sweden. Or Finland. Actually anywhere in Europe. Occasionally Brazil makes it on the list.
Kent and I have spent what seems like months, even years, in this place of weighing our options. Finally, I asked, “Don’t you just wish there was some kind of iPhone app or program that you could enter in some criteria and it would spit out the ideal location for your home?”
Then I saw the quiz I have been looking for in my facebook news feed. Of course, some body would come up with a facebook quiz for exactly such a thing.
Kent and I generally make fun of facebook quizzes. There was a bit where it seemed like everyday, there were fifty new quizzes that people were taking and we began to wonder if our friends actually worked or did they just take facebook quizzes? We made jokes about it, that maybe we would feel complete as human beings if we could just know what Muppet we were in the world of the facebook quiz (we didn’t have to take a quiz. My friends told me that with such a curmudgeon attitude, clearly I was Sam the Eagle.) Kent came close to writing the facebook quiz of all facebook quizzes: What facebook quiz are you?
I have a love/hate thing with such quizzes; I often feel the same ill feeling when I was taking standardized multiple-choice tests in school. In my world two of the answers could work, or I wanted two, and I could make the case for two or whatever it is that prevents me from picking just one (such a fear of commitment and being stuck with the wrong thing). In trying to answer the question about weather, did I prefer cool and rainy? (Which would throw me closer to the West Coast favorite cities of Portland, Seattle, San Francisco) or snow, rain with a bit of sun? (I do love cool and rainy, but I also really loved the snow of Denver, I love snow days, I find winters with snow kind of magical, maybe because I rarely had them as a kid). Or the question about environment where I wanted to choose the city, because I want to live in the city, but I also love forested coastlines. Why can’t I have both?
And schools – the options were good schools or just a good library down the block? A library down the block is a necessity, but so are good schools. Except having spent some time researching public and private schools, what some people would consider good schools, I wouldn’t call good schools at all. So what exactly are they referring to? Is there a footnote somewhere in this quiz that addresses this concern?
There was no footnote. I got New York, New York. I wanted to take the quiz again to see if I got something different. I wanted the quiz to not just be US cities, but worldwide. But then I realized I have been desperate for our own space, to create a home, and I really, really, really miss my Brooklyn based sister. And honestly, we had gone around and around so many times on the matter, I was getting dizzy and was beginning to want someone else or some outside force to make the decision for us. We at one point considered creating a facebook contest, letting all of our facebook friends decide and vote on our next location or travel itinerary.
For the moment, San Francisco is off the table. Now I just need the facebook quiz (or Susan Miller horoscope) to tell me when to move.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Autumn Pumpkins
Fall is my very favorite season. Granted, when I live where are seasons, I say every season is my favorite, especially in the first month or so of that season, but I do really think fall is my favorite with the crispness in the air, the diffused light, and the slight chill in the morning. Fall was what I pined for in living within spitting distance of the equator as well as all the things that come with it, trips to the pumpkin patch and apple orchard, reviewing one's sweater and hat inventory (just in case some knitting needs to happen), even the beginning of school (it's still hard for me to get out of September without buying a notebook or two) and having to slow down in a school zone during daytime hours (even though admittedly in the Spring that will drive me crazy).
So we were not in Portland long before Kent, my mother and I decided it was time for Fyo to visit his first pumpkin patch - and the pumpkin patch that all Portland tots go to and the pumpkin patch I went to as a child out on Sauvie's Island.
I love Portland, but even growing up, I knew I wanted to live my adult life somewhere else, that I didn't want to be one of those people whose children went to the same schools as they did (even though I do find something kind of cool about that - it's just not something I want for Fyo, and it's not something I can really explain). So I was surprised by my own excitement at having Fyo go to my childhood haunts, at having pictures of both of us as children in the same place.
As we walked across the field on our morning expedition - all of us in sweaters that we would eventually peel off as it would warm up to Indian summer weather by noon - and I watched Fyo run ahead to the tractor he saw sitting alone in a field, I considered that maybe part of my wanting a home is wanting the yearly family traditions that come with a home. Not all the traditions, just the comforting ones and the ones that include foods that I like.
This too surprised me, as I am not the most traditional of people. Generally, I find traditions problematic, because, well, they're traditional. People do and follow them without thinking, and then defend traditions - even wildly outdated and discriminatory ones - by saying they are traditional. This somehow makes them good and superior to new ideas and forward thinking.And I don't know that a yearly trip to the pumpkin patch will become tradition in our family, but it felt good. I remembered that I can enjoy the sun - when it is that Fall light, when the sun is no longer directly overhead beating down on you, when the days have started to grow shorter. I remembered how much I love the feel of the Pacific NW air on my skin, that the corner of the earth where I come from is glorious, that just because I don't want to live here, doesn't mean I won't return often. And I remembered that home, at least the one you came from, can nourish you before you take the next step forward.
Monday, October 4, 2010
The Beginning of the Rants - On Education at Least
I'm sitting at my grandmother's kitchen table, having my morning coffee and indulging in reading the paper, The Oregonian. It's not the best paper - despite seven Pulitzer's - but it's the paper I grew up reading, and the morning ritual of reading the paper was one that grounded my childhood.
The paper is running a series about Oregon's money crisis. Like many states, the state faces a lack of funding and consequently, the series is titled "Hard Choices" as Oregon has some hard decisions to make about what stays in the budget and what goes.
Inevitably, the series would have to focus on education. Sure enough, the morning I sat at my grandmother's table, in my pajamas, hand wrapped around my coffee mug, I saw the headline: "Shrinking education funding calls for creative ways to prepare for tomorrow's work force." My grip on my coffee mug tightens. Reading further, I discover that “Businesses will blow off Oregon if the state can’t produce an educated work force and good public schools for workers’ children” so says John Tapogna, president of ECONorthwest, a Portland consulting firm.
I haven't even finished the article before I'm so appalled I'm reading it to Kent and typing my letter to the editor.
I can't help it, but I find the word choice archaic.
The emphasis on tomorrow's work force, the use of the words work force - the language as well as the mindset - harks back to the Industrial Revolution. And during the Industrial Revolution, creating a work force was a valid concern: factories as well as industries needed workers. Yet to now have the aim of the public education system to be creating competent workers - it's outdated. Honestly, if the goal of education is to provide workers for our nation's factories, then the current public education -- even in its depleted state -- is sufficient. If all we need of our students and future workers is follow orders and attend to an assembly line, then maybe we should forgo high school education all together and end it at the 8th grade. In fact, maybe we should duplicate whatever it is China is doing to create workers.
Except that China understands that to succeed as a nation they need to be more creative and innovative. They're putting the arts and music into schools as fast as we're taking them out.
I get that in discussing education the term work force as well as the idea of creating a world class work force is just part of the jargon. Nonetheless, in the articles I've seen in the Oregonian about the public schools, and in listening to the larger nationwide conversation about our public schools, creating a world class workforce isn't just part of the jargon. It's the vision.
But I think it's the problem.
I wrote my letter to the editor. Because I sent it in via email, I wished for a Harry Potter like widget that I could install where when the Oregonian's editor opened my email, he would see my finger come out of the screen shaking at him. In the style of my grandmother no less.
Given that the current unemployment rate hovers around 10%, I don't think America actually needs more workers. It seems we have a surplus and sadly, many of the skills they've depended on to make a living have become as outdated as much as the vision for public education.
We do need creative, innovative, forward thinking individuals with critical thinking and problem solving skills who also have the ability to adapt as fast as the technology that changes and impacts how we work and live. We need the kind of people who have initiative and self-sufficiency and who start businesses, but also have the skills to have their business succeed. Relying on or hoping that outside businesses choose Oregon (or whatever state I happened to be in at the moment) as the location of the business, puts Oregon in the position of the victim. Maybe victim is to strong of a word, but Oregon becomes the object of the sentence – the one acted upon, or waiting to be acted upon. Oregon becomes the girl at the school dance standing by the wall, hoping the cute popular boy asks her.
One of the things I love about Oregon – besides the weather (ah cool crispness! How I have longed for you!) and the coffee and the books – is that Portland especially is known for its small businesses. In business circles, it’s been voted number one for places to a small business. As a result, when you’re in the city at least (and not in the suburbs that still prefer the big box stores) you are surrounded by stores and restaurants full of independent artists, designers, chefs, and creative business owners.
I haven’t lived in Oregon in eleven years, and I’ve only been back ten days. Yet I feel frustrated and heartbroken; I received a good education from Portland Public Schools (and in high school I wasn’t even paying attention, which I do think actually speaks volumes about the education I got, that it reached those of us in the depths of our own daydreams). But the qualities that made it good are gone: the arts, music, and Outdoor School (a week in the 6th grade spent at camp for the purposes of hands-on earth sciences) is on its way out. But these things are disappearing not just because of lack of funding, but because the vision of a good education would rather focus on our students succeeding in the taking of standardized tests. We might as well replace our current education with SAT test prep courses.
You know of course this is only the beginning of my rants about education.
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