Reading Days

I was recently reminiscing about reading days in college.  What kind of magnificent thing is that--a day entirely devoted to reading?  Without having ever really been in the full time work force, I don't think I really understood at the time what a glorious thing reading is--to have the time--to be expected--to read for hours at a time, absorbing information, thinking, making new connections, having internal arguments with the author, challenging my old assumptions or finding a hunch confirmed, discovering that something I thought I had long understood was quite different or deeper than I had imagined.

As the school year draws to a close, I have plans for a couple of quick vacations, one with friends, one with family.  I also have two weeks of unscheduled anything right now.  I imagine how I'll spend my days--sleeping in, making regular running a habit again, finally taking on postponed projects and completing long-neglected errands. But I also imagine hours of uninterrupted reading.  Bliss!

Beautiful

This feel-good Dove advertisement has been making the rounds on social media lately. Knowing that women are increasingly conscious of the way the industry tries to make them feel inadequate, Dove has made the savvy choice to brand itself as the anti-beauty-industry beauty product--but of course it can be pointed out that this is Dove trying to sell you something, just like the rest of the beauty industry.  There's something vaguely troubling and off-putting about the idea that they still just want your money, although they're trying to make you feel like they're in it for your emotional well-being.

I've spent too much of my life worrying about beauty.  When I was younger, it seemed somehow all-encompassing: who I was as a daughter, friend, student, employee, seemed tied up in beauty. While I couldn't articulate it, I truly had the sense that I would be an embarrassment to my parents if I were ugly and perceived as lazy by interviewers if I were a bit overweight; I felt, probably correctly, that I'd be labeled as awkward or unrelatable by potential friends if I had bad clothes, hair, and skin.  I felt like my ugliness would befoul my world--things would be less ideal, less pleasant, less enjoyable, and my life would be less happy, because I was physically flawed.  In pages of my journals past, there are long tirades lamenting my perceived faults.  I railed against so much--wide hips, pale skin, flat chest, thin lips, frizzy hair. Those things are all true to one degree or another, but fortunately the passing of years has allowed me to put things in perspective.  To the great majority of people with whom I interact, my physical attractiveness--or lack thereof--has little to do with what I can contribute to our relationship.  To them I am a friend, a co-worker, a teacher, a fellow church-goer.  What I can bring to our interactions are kindness, competence, patience, compassion, humor, intelligence, wisdom--all things beyond the physical.  As I grow older, and ironically, as the moderate amount of beauty I had begins to fade, my understanding of who I am as a human being has changed and allowed me to find my looks to be less relevant.  I have become both more objective about my physical flaws and aware of how everyone, even me, has some degree of physical beauty.  Yes, beauty would mean more attention and very likely a more successful social life.  But it wouldn't make me a better human being--and while I might have more friends or even more money, in the most meaningful sense, it wouldn't give me more value.

It's such a cliche to openly state that--it's what we overtly say all the time, but then . . .  Look at the successful women out there: Tina Fey, Hope Solo, Martha Stewart, Hillary Clinton, Oprah, even Brigitte Bardot.  Their beauty, their weight, their hair, their skin, their recent plastic surgery or resignation to "let themselves go" by not using botox or not dieting obsessively--all subjects of wide conversation.  We certainly objectify men, too--People's Sexiest Man Alive, Paul Ryan in his weird work out poses--but it seems somehow both quantitatively and qualitatively different; it would be interesting to do a close analysis of how men and women are described differently, and even how the focus of articles about them is often different.  Look at all the strange-looking men who seem to get a pass: Conan O'Brien, Ron Paul, Simon Cowell.  Their looks are commented on from time to time, but it doesn't fill to overwhelm the commentary.

I haven't, by any means, transcended our looks-obsessed culture.  I still worry about it more than is healthy.  I still find myself out with friends or at work or traveling and wishing I were thinner, had more dynamic features, better skin, larger eyes.  But I think the solution to this is not friends trying to stem the tide with compliments in a vain attempt to convince me that I'm pretty enough.  It's stopping to realize that beauty is largely irrelevant--who cares if I'm chubby or frumpy?  There are not enough kind reassurances out there to overcome the onslaught of messages that I am not beautiful enough.  It's like trying to bail out a rapidly sinking boat with a teaspoon.  Instead, I'll just let the boat sink, and recognize that I am powerful and able enough to swim without it.

But for the record, if you have a compliment, I'd love to hear it.  

Not Exactly Sophie's Choice

Today I compiled a list of book series to try to entice reluctant high school readers into reading over the summer months.  Research suggests that lower income students can lose up to 3 months of learning over the summer, while middle and high income students make a month's worth of gains.  End result: after 3 years, lower income students are a year behind--and it actually has nothing to do with the quality of instruction they receive at school or how quickly they learn.  Compelling, no?

So anyway, here I was trying to think of titles that a kid who might not be that interested in reading should read, and the same source as referenced above suggests that series are especially powerful in enticing kids to read.  So naturally, one of the biggest series draws for teenage girls is . . .Twilight.  Now to those who are fans of Twilight, I would say, I am not judging you.  I eat too much chocolate, watch So You Think You Can Dance, avoid running on the flimsiest of pretexts, routinely Facebook stalk, and have an unhealthy relationship with Sporcle (caution: If you have a proclivity for trivia-game-addiction, do not click.  Repeat, do not click!).  My point being that I have quite a collection of my own shallow and potentially even damaging habits --so do your thing.  But promoting Twilight for young students, some of whom have seriously disturbing ideals of romance and gender roles already, is something else entirely.  At the same time, I have already seen a few girls who were unexcited about reading get hooked on books by way of Twilight.  Nothing I could offer them would appeal to them, books with strong heroines and compelling stories, non-fiction, historical fiction, series I actually like, like Chronicles of Narnia or Harry Potter.

The dilemma, then, is which interest wins?  The need to instill values and promote strength of character and independence?  Or the desire to pique interest in books, with hopes of creating a life-long habit and changing students' long-term educational trajectory?  I think we like to believe sometimes that you don't have to choose. That if I were diligent enough, I would look until I found the perfect Twilight-esque book, a paragon of ethical virtue, at the perfect reading level, with characters and a story line so compelling that no teen could turn away, or barring that, write one myself in my free time.  But practically speaking, I have to choose.  And this time, perhaps because I'm doing this in my role as a teacher, I choose books.  Er.  Sorry?

In the Immortal Words of Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson is ubiquitous on Facebook.  It's remarkable how germane his 18th and early 19th century ideas are to contemporary American politics.  For example, according to an acquaintance's Facebook page, Jefferson said, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything you have."  It seems the implications are clear--Jefferson, our beloved sage, a god of political discourse, even two hundred plus years in the past, could foresee the dangers of allowing a more progressive view of government services to exist.

Except, unfortunately (or fortunately, if you disagree with both the quote and the intended application), Jefferson never said that.  Here are some clues: 1.  If a 200+ year old quote seems perfectly pertinent to a 21st century political debate, perhaps it was either taken out of context, or never actually said.  2.  18th century language is not renowned for its pithiness, and this quote is undeniably simple and pithy--frankly, the style of political discourse most similar to contemporary American politics.  Here's a real Jefferson quotation for comparison:

"Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the 1st. condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has it's evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." - Jefferson to James Madison, January 30, 1787

Not pithy; in fact, kind of long and by today's standards, full of subordinating clauses (and the odd Latin phrase) that a modern reader might find cumbersome.  In other words, difficult to use to grab attention in a world of twitter-length attention spans .  

And yet falsely attributed Jefferson quotations persist.  They seem to pop up every month or so, and I constantly have to restrain myself from being the obnoxious know-it-all who points it out (although I am always gratified when another know-it-all does it for me).  The problem is so large that the Monticello website maintains a page dedicated to spurious quotations.  You can see a Monticello librarian discussing it here.

But why should it matter so much who said it anyway?  Why does proving it's not actually Jefferson make me feel smug when a more conservative friend is trying to make a point counter to my more progressive views?  Perhaps because the falsely attributed quote above really says nothing remarkable.  It doesn't make any new or original points or support itself with any kind of compelling evidence.  Its value seems to lie solely in having been said by Thomas Jefferson, and so proving he never said any such thing deflates the entire argument.  Jefferson was an admirable, brilliant man, whose legacy endures to this day.  But why is a 200+ year old quote from him so powerful?  Why does Thomas Jefferson having said it make it any more valid?  What does this say about our need to submit our opinions to an authority figure?  Isn't that somewhat anti-Jeffersonian? Shouldn't we be willing to create our own arguments to fit the times and circumstances, perhaps in staunch opposition to much older notions of what political directions we should be headed?  As the man himself said,

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

Except, of course, he didn't.

Girl Rising

I saw this documentary the other night, and I was very moved by the beauty of the cinematography, the power of the girls' voices, and the artistic way their stories were portrayed.  That's not to say it didn't have its flaws--there were segments of statistical commentary in between stories that became somewhat heavy handed, and the portrayal of women's educational opportunities in Afghanistan seemed overly rosy, at best.  Even so, the overall experience was inspiring and humbling, reminding me to be grateful for how I have always had access to education, to books, to ideas, to travel, to work that is not degrading, but meaningful and lucrative enough for a high standard of living.

The movie was, in my opinion, a nearly perfect expression of why feminism is important movement for creating a better world.  That word--feminism-- is so loaded, so often maligned, and generally treated with great suspicion.  But here's what I think it means: acknowledging that women have value and worth as human beings equal to men, recognizing that this equality is not culturally expressed, and expressing hope that something can be done to give women more opportunities.  That's really it.  There certainly are extreme branches of feminism that clamor for things that can cause great contention and debate, and while it's certainly likely that some of my own views on the matter might be more extreme than everyone is comfortable with, I remain convinced that its essential worldview of the value of women should really be universal.  Acknowledging the value of half the world's population, desiring that their potential might be better achieved--it seems hardly controversial.

Adventures at the National Gallery

What is this photo?  It is performance art, an exploration of the unexpected encounter between the average museum-goer, generally WASP-ish, educated, upper income, and a group of unusual visitors to the National Gallery-- immigrant teenagers, many poor, some with limited literacy, most of whom have never been to a museum before.  The piece highlights the bourgeois discomfort of being confronted with behaviors and norms in conflict with the protocol of a museum visit, and questions established ideas as to who a museum is for and how one ought to interact with art.

So that last paragraph was just me flexing my academic writing BS skills.  (I think this proves that I've generally still got it, even if that reads a bit more awkwardly than I would like--it is, after all, a genre of writing that is by nature clunky and unreadable).  On Friday, three other ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teachers at my school and I took 100 ESOL students to the National Gallery of Art on a field trip.  It was lovely to see the excitement on their faces as the buses rolled into the district and they saw the Washington Monument and the White House for the first time.  As we walked past security into the National Gallery, the energy level was palpable--students were smiling, pointing to sculptures and paintings, chattering to one another in Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Farsi.

The conflict between museum protocol and student enthusiasm started almost immediately, with one museum official yelling loudly at the entire group for making too much noise as we stood just past the entrance in an enormous group.  It didn't get better as we got upstairs and started to view paintings: I watched, amused, as students posed to take pictures in front of Renaissance Art, flashing gang signs and making goofy faces while the other museum goers stolidly walked from painting to painting.  One student was chattering enthusiastically in Korean about a painting depicting Christ, using his pencil to point out a detail to a friend only an inch or so from the canvas--and drawing the ire of the guards, who tended to swarm to whatever room most of our students were walking through.  I felt slightly embarrassed and resolved to teach a lesson on museum etiquette before the next trip.  And then I thought--why do they have to conform? Okay, yes, a lesson about NOT appearing to be on the verge on destroying priceless works of art might be a good idea, but why not strike a pose with buddies?  Why is the slow walk, hands behind the back, hushed whispers to a friend, the only way to experience this?  Here are these students, not your average museum attenders at all, clearly enjoying art.  Shouldn't art lovers be gratified to see art's audience expanding?  Or is what we love not really art at all, but the illusion of exclusivity?  I cannot continue to say, "I am the kind of person who goes to museums, who takes time to memorize the dates and  aesthetic distinctions of baroque, rococo  and neoclassical styles, which makes me refined, special, and better" when the masses are all taking part in the same activities.  

So no, this photo was not taken of performance art, but it does genuinely capture my students' interaction with art as they experienced the museum in a way meaningful to them, making it their own.  They're trying to look cool and tough, gangsterish not because of real gangster connections but because of the invincibility and power it implies, powerful things for boys caught up in lives where they've been dragged to a new country without much say.  Just don't tell them that they look more like a boy band.

Being Good

I just finished Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers.  Boo tells the story of a Mumbai slum unflinchingly and largely without editorializing: Children subsist on rats and frogs, swim in sewage, fight over trash they sell to stave off starvation, and do it without melodrama, matter-of-factly, as a means of ordinary subsistence.  One family endures false accusations, police beatings, corrupt officials, and watches their painstakingly accrued savings rapidly trickle away to fight charges of a crime never committed. Several children kill themselves in despair or are brutally murdered.  Everywhere there is filth, corruption, back-breaking labor, little pleasure, and dwindling prospects.

As I was finishing the book, I started to think that living what I consider an ethical life is perhaps a luxury.  Here I am at what I call an underpaid job, yet without stealing, cheating, or even without taking a job I find to be the slightest bit ethically troubling, I can live in the neighborhood I want, go out to eat several times a week, buy organic food and fresh produce, go on trips abroad, buy new clothes, fix my car, all without batting an eye.  There is no meaningful sacrifice in lifestyle for my self-righteous decision to take the moral high ground.  What would I be willing to do if it meant the difference between starving and eating well?  Between being covered with worms and lice and rat bites or living in a safe and comfortable space?  Or, unimaginable to me, even with no children of my own--what would I be willing to do to prevent seeing my children suffer the same?  The willingness to walk past a beggar dying in the street, to divert funds intended for school children, to extort money from my even poorer neighbor, and the unwillingness to leave work or risk police displeasure to help a severely burned woman to the hospital, suddenly become less unthinkable.

When tragedy arises or human evil erupts, the tendency is to stare, shocked, and ask--how does one become so evil?--congratulating oneself on being more righteous.  I do it all the time. It largely starts with "I don't understand how someone could. . . "

It sounds almost like I'm trying to understand it--almost.  But I'm not really, not at all.  I'm seeking comfort in  essential differences between me and them: They are something other, something monster--I am something moral, rational, good.  But over the course of my life (even as sheltered and narrow as it has been), when immoral acts are observed from close proximity, this otherness is never there.  Cruelty springs from circumstances that compound to create an environment where it ceases to be an incomprehensible evil act in a vacuum, and it suddenly becomes--horribly, terrifyingly--very plausible, if not justified.  The father who beats and intimidates his daughter, the student who sells drugs and joins a gang-- these are not the acts of someone living in perfect peace with an obscene desire to wreak destruction on the world, but are choices made in fear, pain, and desperation--from a lifetime of being treated similarly so it becomes normal, where it ceases to feel like a choice.  And of course we all daily make immoral choices that seem to us to be normal and justifiable, perhaps because of their smaller scale or less immediately visible consequences.  I tell stories sometimes to make myself look better, but try to make it seem like I'm doing it modestly--I feel myself creating this fiction but I'm almost powerless to stop it. It's a deception meant to increase my likableness, and is inherently self-serving.  Or I have a habit of just buying new stuff when old stuff starts to get old because I'm too lazy to repair it, or I don't take care of things well.  End result=increased pollution, animals losing habitats as I consume more, children in Bangladeshi sweat shops producing my stuff, exploited miners in Africa pulling materials for me out of the dust.  But that last sentence almost sounds like I'm so virtuous that I have to reserve my guilt for vague first-world consumerist unease--another case of me trying to make myself look good and be modest about it at the same time.

Beyond the casual selfishness, there are the more vindictive, mean moments--I'll say something to make myself come off as slightly superior to a friend, or I'll bask in the smugness of knowing an acquaintance said something backward, or feel a bit better about myself professionally because of a colleague's failure.  And here I am with no pressing need and a life of luxury by any general world standard--I just want to be the most important, the best, your favorite, the most beloved.