The Very Thought of You

I just finished The Very Thought of You, the last of the Lynn Kurland romance novels Ivy sent me. As usual it was excellent. I've enjoyed all these stories, even if one or two dragged slightly.

This one didn't drag. It was the story of a modern man, a lawyer who had been a corporate raider and not an altogether nice man, and his accidental trip into medieval England where he meets Margaret of Falconberg, the woman of his dreams. As is so often the case in Lynn Kurland's books, Margaret prefers to wear chain mail, tunics and hose rather than the gowns a woman is supposed to wear, and she is an excellent sword fighter.

Alex has been trained in swordplay by his brother in law Jamie, who originally hailed from the 13th century. But he's vowed not to fight again, feeling he is atoning for his past sins. However, when the chips are down and Margaret needs defending (which doesn't happen often) he picks up a sword again.

These two are crazy in love with each other, despite the usual glitches and misunderstandings. The travel in time is also quite an interesting complication. It's of course a pleasure to see them end up happily ever after while the bad guy, Ralf, ends up with Margaret's dagger in his heart.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoy Lynn Kurland's writing. I appreciate her frequent use of time travel in her stories, since I've always liked time travel stories, ever since I read The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov. The problem of disrupting the time continuum and possible catastrophic results has always fascinated me, and the culture clash here between a 12th century woman and a 20th century man is quite entertaining.

And yet, Margaret is way ahead of her time. She fights like a man, reads and writes, and considers herself subservient to no one. Even at her wedding where she must promise to obey Alex, she mutters under her breath that she will obey him when she chooses to. It's hard to imagine a woman so strong willed in that time and place but maybe there were a few like Margaret. Unfortunately, no 20th century men enamored of strong-willed and sassy women were likely to be calling on them.

Lynn Kurland is a fun author who knows how to draw her readers in and give them what they are looking for. I certainly recommend The Very Thought of You.

Merit Pay for Teachers?

Last week I read an article in AM NY, stating that teachers in underachieving schools would receive merit pay if their students’ test scores improved.

Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? But it isn’t.

First off, it has already been shown that SAT scores are not all that closely correlated to success in college. After the terrible scoring glitch two years ago, when several thousand students were given the wrong grades on the SAT (most of them downgraded and a few hundred upgraded) there has been more of a push to do away with them as the entrance key or stumbling block to college. There are a number of schools that no longer even look at the SAT scores.

So there’s no real reason to suspect that all the standardized tests we are shoving down kids’ throats nowadays tell us much more than how kids perform on standardized tests. The burden of testing has grown enormously and teachers, parents and students alike complain that teachers are “teaching to the test” rather than teaching students to think for themselves.

Worse still, if teachers receive a bonus for bringing up the test scores, there’s a powerful incentive to bring up the test scores by any means necessary. There’s already that incentive in schools where principals stood to be removed from their positions if test scores did not improve. What happened?

Cheating, of course, instigated by the teachers rather than by errant students. I heard of one teacher who posted the answer sheet near the pencil sharpener and told students to keep sharpening their pencils as often as necessary. I’m sure the students got the idea. Another woman, a retired teacher I’m friendly with, told me that she taught the fourth grade, and when the time came for them to take the ELA, she would read the correct answer a bit louder than the others. Again, one supposes the students took the hint.

Not only that, but students who are known to be doing poorly are often encouraged to stay home on the day of the test. This raises the school’s overall test scores too, but it’s hardly an accurate reflection of reality. At Inwood House, I learned that pregnant girls are often encouraged to leave school by their guidance counselors, partly because there is still a stigma against them, and also because they, too, are viewed as bringing down the school’s testing scores.

So merit pay for teachers who bring up test scores in an underachieving school is more problematic than it seems. There’s got to be a better way than all this constant testing, to help students learn. Merit pay is not the answer.

A Link to Guiding Change

A couple of years ago, I heard Deb Howard speak and was impressed with her approach to helping nonprofit organizations change and transform in a positive way. I always thought that the organization I worked for in 2004-2005, the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, could have benefited greatly from her knowledge as it entered a period of intense, painful, and ugly conflict. Possibly some of it could have been averted if they had turned to her rather than to an organization that gave them cookie-cutter solutions that did not differ to any great degree from advice given to similar organizations in crisis.

I've just learned that Ms. Howard has launched a blog so I am including the link here for those who have a stake in a nonprofit organization's peaceful and productive continuity and growth. And no, I don't work for her! http://guidingchange.org/blog/

Midnight by Dean Koontz

I finished another Dean Koontz novel, Midnight, yesterday. This concerns a variation on "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" in which the enemy is a human who thinks he's smarter than the rest of us. This person, Shaddack, has devised an incredibly tiny microchip that can be injected into the human bloodstream turning human beings into either soulless and unfeeling creatures who can only feel fear because it is a survival mechanism, or else, they regress into animalistic creatures that live to hunt, feed and rut, without intellect or higher emotions, and without any sense of human morality.

It takes place in a small town, Moonlight Cove, where already quite a few of the townspeople have been "converted" when the story begins. Four people find themselves on the run from those who would turn them into unfeeling cyborgs: Tessa, the sister of a woman who was killed by the "regressives," Chrissie, an eleven year old girl who has seen her parents regress and escapes from a forced conversion, Sam, the FBI agent who has come to investigate too many deaths in a sleepy town and finds himself on the run, and Harry, a disabled veteran who has never lost his will to live and be engaged with life.

As the story progresses we learn that it is not just a few of the converted who regress to an animal state. The potential is in all the converted, as an escape from their emotionless existence. While still outwardly human they can remember and vaguely mourn the depth of feeling they have lost, but the regressive state is attractive to them because once regressed they simply live for pleasure and excitement and do not care. So whenever they are faced with a regressive, the converted are in danger of regressing themselves.

We also see the other side of the conversion to a cyborg state, where the "new people" evolve into a complete fusion with their computers, becoming joined to them by new organs, and incorporating wires and chips and switches inside their formerly flesh and blood bodies. This is a "Frankenstein monster" situation that somewhat accurately mirrors the effect of the internet, which in 1989 when Koontz wrote Midnight was just beginning to be available. Sometimes I feel so plugged into my computer that I might as well be one of these cyborgs, and how much more so is that the case for all the people carting their laptops and blackberries and mobile internet connections around with them?

The basic theme is that we can't afford to lose our finer emotions to either animal pleasures or to the silvery lure of the machine, because when we do we cease to be fully human. We also need to keep our love of life alive, lest losing it impact on our loved ones as well. The last scene, which I won't reveal, was one man and one boy's redemption and a "recall to life."

No Place Like Home

I finished Mary Higgins Clark's No Place Like Home a few days ago. Suspense novels are actually scarier than most horror, I find, because everything in a suspense novel could actually happen, while many horror stories rely on the fantastic or the supernatural. So I can maintain an element of disbelief while reading them. But with suspense, the events in the story could conceivably happen.

In No Place Like Home, Liza Barton, now living under another name and married with a child, is suddenly brought back to live in the very house where she accidentally shot her mother to death and tried to kill her abusive stepfather. Because the townspeople believed her stepfather's side of the story, she was nicknamed "Lizzie Borden" and the house was dubbed "Little Lizzie's house."

Her husband Alex has purchased this home for her, not knowing her history and not knowing of the terrible events that took place there. Even when he learns about the house and its history he insists he loves the house and wants to stay there. The real estate agent, meanwhile, is worried because she did not disclose the house's stimatizing history to Liza and that was a violation of the law. So she offers to show Liza (now known as Celia) another house nearby. But when Liza goes to keep their appointment, she finds the real estate agent murdered.

The plot becomes more complicated from there. There isn't just one bad guy involved; there are several. I'm not going to reveal the ending but I was pleased to discover that I did in fact spot the worst of the bad guys, and it was someone the reader wasn't supposed to suspect. So now should I go collect my detective badge?

This was a hair raising book, and I found it almost impossible to put it down and go to bed. I'm glad I read it.

In the Flesh Erotic Reading Series

Last night Bruce and I visited the Happy Endings lounge in Chinatown and attended the "Virgin Night" of the In the Flesh Erotic Reading Series. Their blog can be found at www.inthefleshreadingseries.blogspot.com.

The lounge is a small bar over a Chinese health club. We could hear Asian music wafting up from the downstairs club, since the stairway was not blocked by a door. I haven't been in a bar in years and it was hard to get used to the dim candlelight. Even in the bathroom, the light was dim since they used only red lightbulbs in there. The drinks cost $12 each. That may be normal Manhattan pricing these days but it sure made me glad that I am not allowed to drink.

The hostess put candy and cupcakes on the tables and I have to admit I broke down and ate a chocolate cupcake, but it was tiny. So I figure it was about two bites of a normal cupcake.

The reading started a few minutes late and was led off by the hostess, who has a prolific imagination. She hastened to inform us that the story was pure fiction. Good thing because otherwise she'd be exhausted from her sexual exploits!

Some of the pieces that were read were calculated to raise the temperature in the bar (though none did, and I was wearing my raincoat around my shoulders because of the air conditioning). Others were not only sensual but also hilarious. The tale of James Blond, hairdresser and environmentalist spy, saving the world from bad air and bad hair, brought a lot of chuckles. But I nearly wet my pants laughing at the story of two yuppies who had determined that the best place and time to conceive their baby was sometime slightly after 2:30 AM on Monkey Island at the Central Park Zoo. So they sneak in without attracting the attention of the guard or waking the monkeys and they begin going at it.

But then one of the monkeys wakes up, alerted by their moans, and they find themselves face to face with a curious and intrusive snow monkey...

The description was absolutely hilarious, and they still succeeded in conceiving their child. What a story they will have to tell when that kid asks, "Mom, how did I get here?"

The hottest erotic scene was read by Colette Gale, who read an excerpt from her novel, Unmasked, An Erotic Novel of the Phantom of the Opera. A close second was the young man who read last; about a man who finds himself in a compromising position with another woman, not his girlfriend, and is subjected to her bad poetry before she takes him to bed.

These readings take place every third Thursday of the month, and since we aren't drinkers we didn't have to spend a cent. Next time, I'll bring my own snacks so I won't be tempted to break my diet with all that candy. Since most of the people there were young (20's and 30's) they hadn't yet reached the age when candy and cupcakes become evil and forbidden fruits. Much better for me to munch on celery and just enjoy the sensual stories without blowing the diet!

This was different and fun, and I recommend it to anyone close to the New York City area.

Hideaway

In the past week or two I've concentrated on suspense and horror novels. I go through occasional periods where I enjoy them even when they scare or disgust me. Then I move away from them again, sometimes for years.

Hideaway by Dean Koontz was quite good. It concerns a man who dies in an accident, drowns in extremely cold water, and is brought back to life by a new technique that turns him into a modern-day Lazarus. The only problem is that he comes back with a mental link to a vicious and sociopathic murderer, and he is tormented by the visions he receives from the killer's mind. It's an epic struggle between good and evil, and they are just about evenly matched. The plot swirls around the threat to a little handicapped girl who represents innocence and goodness, even though she is not the least bit nauseatingly sweet.

I also enjoyed Koontz's afterword where he stated that this was the first of his novels that attracted hate mail. Apparently some atheists were highly offended that he wrote a book that assumed the existence of God, and some even threatened him! In a sense, though, that's the ultimate compliment to his writing, because they were clearly emotionally moved.

I recommend this book.

My Favorite Music

Every time I make one of these lists, I forget quite a few of my favorites, but I will put down what comes to mind anyhow. Sometimes it is hard for me to remember the names of the artists or the names of the songs. Still, here's at least a partial list, if anyone out there wants to make me a CD (joking!).

Groups and Musicians:

The Beatles - Yes the Fab Four are right up there, even if I didn't fully appreciate them in 1963 when they made their American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. Can you believe that my first comment on JPG&R was, "Why is everyone screaming? They're just four guys who need haircuts!" In my defense, I was not yet 9 years old.

The Rolling Stones... Mick and his amazing rubber lips
The Grateful Dead...come hear Uncle John's Band!
The Jefferson Airplane, and later they went anaerobic and became the Jefferson Starship
Simon and Garfunkel made a lot of beautiful sounds, none of them silence.
Leonard Cohen - I loved his music in the sixties and I still do. "Suzanne" and "I'm Your Man" are big favorites.
Bob Dylan -- "Come mothers and fathers all over the land, and don't criticize what you can't understand, your sons and your daughters are beyond your command..." Who could have imagined, first hearing those words, that someday I'd be on the "parent" side of that great divide between the generations?
Judy Collins -- looking at clouds, love and life
Buffy St. Marie
Joan Baez
Country Joe and the Fish, for their most famous song: today it might go, "Come on all of you big strong men, Uncle Sam needs your help again, caught his tail in a terrible crack, way down yonder in Iraq..."
Mamas and Papas -- They made me dream of California
Billie Holiday -- Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do
The Beach Boys
Celine Dion
Mark Anthony
Janis Joplin
Sweet Honey in the Rock
Bob Marley -- "emancipate yourself from mental slavery"
The Bermuda Triangle (a folk group that never attained great notoriety but played often at Folk City and was just a lot of fun!)

And some random favorite songs:

My Heart Will Go On
The Tide is High
You'll Be In My Heart
Come Sail Away
Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream
Hurts So Good
Redemption Song
Blowing in the Wind
Coming to America
Piece of My Heart
Where Have All the Flowers Gone

This is just a round up, since I can't think of them all, but I think our favorites tell something about us. Obviously I lean heavily to the sixties, classic rock and protest folk. I also enjoy classical music and classic jazz. Do post comments with your favorites too!

Blaze

I just finished reading Blaze by Richard Bachman, Stephen King's now-abandoned pseudonym. This is an interesting, non-horror novel about a not very bright man who attempts the "crime of the century," and has it all go awry. He's either hallucinating or hearing the spirit of his dead partner in crime, and follows his instructions for the most part in order to carry out the kidnapping, which he realizes (or believes) he is not smart enough to plan and execute on his own.

Blaze is pathetic as criminals go, and he has been sinned against pretty often, which makes his crimes somewhat understandable. Just about everyone's hand has been against him all of his life. When he kidnaps a rich couple's baby in order to hold it for ransom, he finds himself caring for the baby and wanting very much to protect it at the same time that he wants his ransom money. In fact, it seems that he has come to love Joe and see him as the one person who could really be his. Of course, that dream too is shattered.

Stephen King wrote a preface in which he spoke about his ambivalence regarding this novel and his doubts as to whether he should publish it. It might not be his best novel, but it was well worth reading and I'm glad he went ahead with sharing it with his readers.

Nocturne

I've just finished a collection of horror stories by John Connolly, contained in an anthology titled Nocturne. They were all fairly good stories but the one that stands out most in my mind is the story titled "Cancer Cowboy Rides." While we all should know today that cancer is not contagious, this story feeds on that lingering fear that sometimes makes friends and loved ones shy away from a person with cancer. The Cowboy isn't even a Typhoid Mary, immune in himself while infecting others with death. He's suffering himself, and the only way he can alleviate his suffering for a short while is to infect other people. It's pretty gruesome and I won't describe his symptoms here, but they go far beyond anything that really exists. Certainly, his "misery loves company" attitude is taken to an extreme in this story.

Though he is apparently vanquished, in the end we learn that he is indestructible and rises again like a contaminated and deadly phoenix. What a great metaphor for diseases that can recur, like cancer or better yet, AIDS, which continues to mutate and makes itself so hard to outpace with vaccines or medications.

The other story that sticks in my mind is "The Furnace Room." In this one, the classic horror story morality comes into play. The main character murdered his wife years ago, and finally gets his comeuppance when he is dragged into the furnace by the shade of his wife and three ghostly creatures that are similar to the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" monkeys. In this case, one has no ears, so he cannot hear his victims' pleas. Another has no eyes, so she won't have to see their sufferings, and the third has no mouth, so he cannot speak out on their behalf. Yet, since this victim is a murderer, it's hard to feel much sympathy, and as he is dragged to his fate I mentally agreed that justice was served.

For those who don't mind a little revulsion along with a good plot and vivid writing, I do recommend Nocturne.

The Lovely Bones

Spoiler Warning: If you have not read The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, you may not wish to read this review. I tend to give away too much.

The Lovely Bones begins with the rape and murder of a fourteen year old girl by a deranged neighbor. The entire story is told from Susie's viewpoint, describing the horror of her murder and dismemberment, and then proceeding to describe her experience of heaven and her years of observing the toll her murder takes on her family and friends. So many lives are changed irrevocably by her death and particularly the gruesome manner of her death. Her body is never found, leaving it difficult for her parents to find any closure for their grief.

Susie's heaven is "a separate peace." She can have pretty much what she wants but she seems to be trapped in one part of heaven because she has not yet let go of her family and her earthly life. Her loved ones don't necessarily find their way to her the moment they pass, and she is not waiting for them with open arms at the end of a shining tunnel. They find their way to her, but some arrive sooner than others. And they don't always stay in her corner of heaven but sometimes return to their own versions of the afterlife. She finds that she can have the things she wishes for but that doesn't mean eternal happiness, just as things on earth cannot make happiness.

Somewhere at the beginning of the book Susie mentions lamp lights that resemble those in a stage set of "Our Town," a play that also deals with the relationship of the dead to the living. I remember seeing "Our Town" when I was around Susie's age and feeling Emily's frustration when she is allowed to return to Earth to relive her twelfth birthday, but no one really sees her, no one realizes that she is not a twelve year old but a grown woman who died young.

In Susie's case, she does get that magic moment. A girl she knew at school, Ruth, felt her touch as she hastily departed her body the night of the murder, and knew it was Susie's soul departing. She becomes obsessed with Susie and with death, and with the death of women and girls, the souls of whom she is able to see. Finally, after years of observing Ruth befriend Ray, the boy who gave Susie her first and only kiss, she is for some reason permitted to inhabit Ruth's body just long enough to make love to Ray. And Ray is able to perceive her and know that he is making love to his dead girlfriend Susie contained in Ruth's body. She succeeds where Emily failed, in making contact with a living loved one. Others see her also but this is her most tangible manifestation of all.

At the end, she realizes that her violent murder has influenced so many lives and that her family has turned out the way it has because of the "lovely bones" built by her death. There is transcendent joy in the ending: although they still think of each other the grief is over. Susie has moved on in her heaven, and her family has moved on to new beginnings; even a little niece is named after Susie.

This was an excellent read especially for someone who believes in an afterlife and has great curiousity about what the "dead" think and feel about us. We won't know for sure until we get there but I appreciated Susie's voice and her imagined thoughts and emotions. I recommend this book.

Inwood House Staff Meeting

It was a pleasure attending the staff meeting at my new job with Inwood House. We met last Friday at the Bronx site up on 148th Street and Courtland Avenue. This is a section of the Bronx I never knew as a child and young adult, but when I got off the subway I saw several buses heading to destinations I did recognize. It gave me a wave of nostalgia to see buses going to Fordham Road, Kingsbridge Road, and the Grand Concourse, my old stomping grounds.

The staff meeting itself was an upbeat experience. I came out of it feeling much more like a member of a family, even though I didn't get a chance to chat with that many people before we began. We got a quiz on the history of Inwood House, and I learned some fascinating and relevant facts from that quiz.

Our Executive Director, Linda Lausell Bryant, led the meeting. She reported some positive and some disturbing news. I'll start with the disturbing news so I can return to the positive stuff last. First, the Department of Education closed all four of the schools for pregnant teens this past June. While those schools were reflective of an unfortunate attitude toward pregnant teens and were not demonstrating high standards or expectations for the young women in attendance, it surely doesn't help to simply close the schools and insist that these teenagers go back to their home schools. Although it is not permitted on paper, guidance counselors often push these girls out of their schools or don't want to accept them back in. So it's a serious problem and Inwood House is engaged in a long battle to address this issue, perhaps by bringing back the "P schools" but with higher standards and expectations and with the kind of back up services needed by pregnant and parenting teens.

Another problem is that ACS has taken the position that all children should be with a loving family and therefore they are downsizing all forms of residential care. But for some of these kids that loving family just doesn't exist, and if the residences are closed down, a lot of kids will be left to fall through the cracks.

On the positive side we have Christine Quinn as an ally and we have good relationships with all the potential candidates for Mayor other than one, and that person will be approached soon also. Also Governor Spitzer has recognized that the "abstinence only" programs are not supported by evidence, and has turned back the federal money for these programs but is still making the matching state money available to agencies working on teen pregnancy prevention. Kudos to Governor Spitzer!

Some of the goals for Inwood House's future are to strengthen our ability to affect public policy and to help the youth we serve to not only finish high school successfully but also go on to get a higher education, since the evidence shows that it is difficult to earn a middle class wage without a college education. We're also moving to offer more support for young families, which face a lot of negative attitudes, and to help teen parents to provide early childhood education for their children, in order to give the next generation a better chance to pull out of poverty.

Ms. Bryant has a dynamic vision for helping the youth of NYC achieve their dreams and become independent and healthy adults. I'm excited to be part of this effort!

We had a section of the meeting known as "shout outs" where staff members gave appreciation and praise to various other staff. I got up and thanked the staff as a whole for creating the feeling of an extended family that I was getting at this meeting, and the development department in particular for welcoming me and giving me the opportunity to learn so much about Inwood House and the clients we serve in just my first month.

Inwood House's website is at www.inwoodhouse.com. I'll be writing updates on our work from time to time.

Boycott the Skies

Here's the letter I wrote to AM-NY, a free newspaper distributed during the work week around NYC. It's a great paper that I enjoy reading for its brevity, good reporting and for the interesting listings of city events. Their website is at www.amny.com/news.

Boycott the Skies

I am outraged by the news that an irate passenger was arrested and then left alone in a holding cell while she choked to death trying to get her handcuffs off. This is the worst tragedy so far but in the past year there have been all too many horror stories of various airlines mistreating their customers. People left on runways for hours and hours without food, water or a working toilet? People herded past guard dogs and held in a tiny room once they do get off the plane? Women told they can't fly because they are wearing short skirts? Baby bottles yanked out of children's hands? This is no way to treat paying customers. Since 9/11, instead of beefing up security where it counts, airlines have taken "security" as an excuse to mistreat customers who aren't perfectly docile no matter what the situation. I urge everyone who has the option to stay off planes and travel by other means. Collectively the airline industry deserves to crash and burn.

That's the end of the letter but I could say a lot more. It seems to me that the airlines have completely lost respect for their customers. They continually flunk tests of their security measures but instead they bully and browbeat paying customers and tell themselves they are being security conscious. I don't intend to fly again. When I last got on an airplane in 1998, it was a whole different world. We were treated with courtesy. An hour wait on the runway was seen as a big and inconvenient delay. Today that would probably be seen as excellent service. Yes, security was too lax, and that's why the terrorists got away with it on 9/11, but callous mistreatment of passengers isn't the way to deal with it.

The young woman who died was Betsy Gottbaum's step daughter in law. Ms. Gottbaum has asked the media to respect the family's privacy. I hope they will. But as public advocate, Betsy Gottbaum is in the perfect position to take the airline to task over this tragedy. Once the mourning period is over.. I won't say the grief because that never ends, not in a case like this where it was so senseless and someone is clearly at fault.. I hope she takes the airline responsible to court and strips them down to their last dime. It still won't bring back a daughter, wife and mother to the people who loved her.

But so far as I can see, the airlines are collectively misbehaving and acting as if they are doing the public a favor when they let us on a plane. Their attitude is all wrong and until it is corrected I don't intend to ever go near an airplane.