Salute to Pregnancy

The New York Metro published a photo of pregnant women walking the bases at Keyspan Park, home of the Brooklyn Cyclones. This was a "Salute to Pregnancy." Apparently any woman who names her baby "Brooklyn" or "Cy" will receive season tickets for free.

Gee, that seems like a wonderful reason to saddle a helpless baby with a name that will embarrass him for the rest of his life. Cy isn't too bad, but Brooklyn? I thought the 60's were over and we weren't giving our kids stupid names like "Moon Unit," "God," or "Freedom" anymore.

And maybe I'm being a curmudgeon, but why are we celebrating pregnancy at a time when money is so tight? Is this really a great time to be bringing more kids into the world, when families are already struggling to feed the mouths that are already here? I don't get it. Anyone who is pregnant right now got pregnant, at the earliest, last November when the economy was already tanking. It surely wouldn't have been my choice; I'd wait until there was a better economic picture. But, I guess I have always been too sensible.

Maybe it's just a function of more people being out of work and attending the "poor man's opera" because they are home all day anyhow. After all, 9 months after the Buffalo Blizzard of 1977, there was a bumper crop of babies and one hospital in Buffalo gave the newborns tiny tee shirts that said, "Blizzard Baby."

Or maybe I shouldn't be so critical. Maybe having a baby is a way of expressing hope, that the recession will pass and prosperity will return. I sure hope it does so all these babies (and I've seen more pregnant women this year than I have in a long time) will have the food, clothing and shelter they need to grow and thrive.

Big Bucks

Today, AM NY reported that a man who bought a pack of cigarettes received a whomping $23.1 quadrillion charge on his credit card bill.

Sure, it's ridiculous, and he doesn't have to pay, along with the others who suffered a similar glitch. But maybe it was a sign to him, that smoking cigarettes is much, much more expensive than the price of the pack. It might well cost him something worth more than quadrillions of dollars: his life.

The Bay News had a charming photo of Duke, one of the Aquarium's sea lions, giving a "sea lion kiss" to a young lady. The caption read that sea lion kisses are being sold as fundraisers for the New York Aquarium, at $200 a pop. $200? Wait a second! I happen to know that the real cost is $20. What a big blooper for the Bay News, whose proofreaders didn't catch that extra zero.

Then again, if some rich folks decide to buy $200 kisses, maybe the Bay News has done the Aquarium a big favor. It happened to me in my early days as a fundraiser: I tacked on an extra zero to a renewal request of a man who'd sent an unsolicited gift of $100 the year before. My boss chewed me out and told me to be more attentive to details, but the letter asking him to renew his gift of "$1000" had already been mailed. He sent the $1,000, and the next year he sent $10,000. So, we can only hope that this typo will turn into a windfall for the Aquarium.

Duke should only know that his kisses are 24-carat.

David's Dad

Last Thursday, the day Bruce was laid off after 23 years at National Envelope Corporation, we had a phone call we missed until early Friday morning. My childhood friend, David, called to say his father passed away.

Max was a quiet man. I remember him well but I never felt I knew him all that well. David's mother was the one involved with the children the most, so I remember her personality much more clearly.

What I do remember about Max is that he was a sheet metal worker who changed careers, becoming an elementary school teacher instead. At that time, the mid-sixties, this was just about unheard of. I knew people who had one job their whole working lives. Certainly, my Dad had the one job at Regal Emblem Company, polishing and electroplating costume jewelry and emblems. He was offered the chance to get a government job and turned it down, afraid of change.

But Max wasn't afraid. He had a dream and he followed his dream. Sometimes the kids gave him aggravation, but he must have been very happy that he made that change. In any case, his bold move stayed with me. When I changed careers, jumping out of legal publishing into fundraising, it was his example I followed. If he could do it at a time when it just wasn't done, how much easier would it be for me?

Max and Muriel raised three good human beings, and that's the highest achievement a parent can reach. So long, Max, I'll remember you.

Hot Dog!

Yesterday Bruce and I went to Coney Island to check out the Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest. I never realized that this famous July 4th tradition originated in 1916, the year my mother was born. We could hardly see the stage, but we could watch the proceedings on the ESPN screen.

Unfortunately the contest was supposed to start at noon but did not begin until about 12:50 PM and we just had other things to do. So we left before the contest started and got home while it was in progress. I got a laugh out of some of the contest rules, especially the one that said a contestant would be disqualified for "Reversal of Fortune." The contestants were called "Gurgitators," another one of those nonexistent words, sort of like "sheveled." Chucking up recycled hot dogs is a no no! One of the ESPN newscasters put hot dogs, mustard and ketchup into a blender and then took a swig of liquified frankfurter! Hilarious and yucky.

The crowd was taking sides; some rooting for Chestnut (who became a 3 time champ by scarfing down 68 hot dogs this year) while others rooted for Kobiyashi and held up signs saying "Kobiyashi eats chestnuts for breakfast!"

Directly in front of us, a group of young people were wearing bright yellow tee shirts advertising "Thatsnotcool.com," a website educating kids about the dangers of cyberbullying and how to fight back against online harassment, stalking, etc. I enjoyed speaking with them.

While I was annoyed that we didn't get to see the actual contest, at least we did get to see the build up to it. There was quite a crowd and some of them probably had been there for hours. It was amusing and finally I can say we attended a world class sports event!

Mermaid Parade, 2009

Coney Island's "denizens of the deep" came out to play again this year at the start of summer. This year's Mermaid Parade began in the rain, but that didn't matter: mermaids don't melt!

They did, however, carry umbrellas and walk a lot faster than in previous years.

Before the parade began, I headed into a bar to use the facilities. There was a long line and I got talking with a gentleman wearing his hair in two pigtails, complete with teal streaks. He also wore a skirt fashioned from a transparent plastic tablecloth adorned with flowers. This was a clever way of keeping his legs dry in the rain, which was coming down pretty hard at that time. In the bar, I spotted Jennifer Miller, the bearded woman who runs Circus Amok (another one of my favorite entertainments).

We met Ferdinand on the bus heading over to the parade, but he was so intent on finding a good spot to stand that he got too far ahead of us. So we didn't stand together this year. However we met him again at the end of the parade.

I recognized a lot of the same faces from last year's parade. We saw the Elvis impersonator, the Parrot Man, the painted ladies, and of course Marty Markowitz, the Borough President, telling us we are all "meshugah" (crazy) and that this was the most undressed parade in town. (I've seen a lot of seminudity at the Pride parades too, though). The Polar Bear Club was there, along with the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, the Brooklyn Bombshells, and so on. There was the usual contingent of pirates, men in kilts, and mermaids with seashell or sea star pasties on their breasts. The costumes were up to their usual standard of wild, wacky, imaginative and sexy.

This year, Barnum and Bailey was there, but I wasn't so thrilled about that. The ASPCA has a lawsuit against them for violating the Endangered Species Act, and the circus's job application asked whether the applicant "is or has ever been" a member of PETA, The Humane Society, the ASPCA and other animal protection organizations. It smacked of the McCarthy Era and when I brought Jason's attention to it, he decided not to apply. Therefore I wasn't so happy to see the circus in the parade, even though the clown noses so many people wore were pretty cute. (Clown mermaids?)

The rain stopped after a while so that made it easier to take photos, but we had competition from the photographers who seemed to stop right in front of me every time a parader stopped and posed. There were so many photos I could have taken if they hadn't blocked my view. Still, I managed to take 930 photos and ruthlessly (!) chopped them down to a mere 291. Onward to the parade in 2010!

Star Trek: The New Movie

This time, it really is the next generation. All of the old actors from the original show have been phased out, except that Leonard Nimoy as the elderly Spock still had a part.

I thoroughly enjoyed this romp through space and time. It was pretty easy to tell who the bad guys were: they had pointy ears, deathly pale faces, and wore ugly, sharp-edged facial tattoos. Clear signs of villainy.

It was amazing witnessing the "birth" of James T. Kirk and then seeing him briefly as an adventurous and rowdy twelve year old rocketing around in an antique car (retooled from the 20th century!). I don't know cars so I would not attempt to describe the model but it clearly dated back to the early 1960's or even before. Most of the new actors fit perfectly into their roles as "baby" Kirk, Spock, Bones, etc. Uhura seemed a little older than the rest whereas on the original show she was either the same age as the captain or younger. Chekhov bore no resemblance to the original actor, but that didn't particularly bother me.

It was a fun movie, despite the destruction of Vulcan and the loss of Amanda, Spock's mother. I wonder if they will be able to go back in time and prevent these tragedies in a future episode. If so, or whatever they decide to do next, I'm up for it.

The last moments of the movie, light playing over the "brand new" original Enterprise, with the words, "Space...the final frontier..." as a voiceover, put a chill right down my baby boomer spine. And Generation Y'er Jason loved it as well. So did Bruce. All three of us recommend it highly.

Crisis: Danger and Opportunity

I've always heard that the Chinese character for "crisis" contains the characters for "danger" and "opportunity." Well, our family is in a crisis. On the Monday before Memorial Day, Bruce arrived at work to learn that the division he has worked at for 23 years is shutting down operations, and almost everyone except for a few family members and high ranking managers is being laid off.

So, we are all looking for work. I am hoping to become more visible as a freelance writer, even as I am seeking part time and full time employment. Bruce is looking for work in inventory control and purchasing, and Jason has many options either in animal care, clerical, or bookkeeping work.

Still, it's a scary proposition because so many well-qualified people have already lost their jobs. I hear unemployment has been extended out to 72 weeks now, but unemployment would not pay all our bills. So, we'd have to deplete savings until someone is back at work and able to support the family.

There's been a psychological toll, of course. We've all had interrupted sleep, and I managed to come down with some sort of bad cold or garden variety flu (not swine, thank goodness). The only up side to this is that I have not left my house since Monday, and therefore haven't spent any money.

This is going to be the real test of whether we can be frugal enough to get through a period of unemployment without sacrificing some fun and games.

What a week!

This has been an exciting week for me. The grant proposal I was writing for The Hetrick-Martin Institute has finally gone out and the initial feedback is good.

I've finally overcome a mild case of writer 's block, and wrote a piece yesterday on the Buffalo Blizzard of 1977, which I experienced as a 22 year-old law student. Do the math, and I've just given away my age! I'm saving that for December as a friend in Franklinville assures me that the Blizzard of '77 is still memorialized each January in the Buffalo newspapers. Maybe they'll be interested in my personal experiences as an out-of-towner who had never experienced anything quite so devastating as a blizzard that shut down a city for two weeks.

Yesterday I submitted two stories to various magazines, and I submitted a third on Monday.

Also yesterday, while I indulged in lunch at Burger King, I received a call from Youth at Risk, inviting me to work for them on a short term prospect research project next week. This is not the first time I've been offered contract work as a result of sending out a resume for a part time job, and it proves that organizations do in fact keep promising resumes on file.

So I am revved and optimistic about what's to come. The weekend should be fun; we are planning to visit the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition's "Color of Hope" art show in Red Hook on Saturday afternoon, and I have the Brooklyn Humanist Community Book Club on Sunday. I wish all my readers a wonderful weekend and week to come.

"The Mermaid Chair"

After reading The Secret Life of Bees I got Sue Monk Kidd's The Mermaid Chair and read that also. I enjoyed this book just as much.

It had elements of The Bridges of Madison County. Jessie's been married for twenty years and has a grown daughter in college. She's facing a mid-life crisis with her marriage gone stale, and is seeking something she's not sure of. At the same time, her mother, who has been steeped in excessive religiosity since Jessie's father died, has erupted into madness, cutting off her own finger.

Jessie goes to her mother without her husband Hugh, a psychiatrist and a bit of a know it all. The island she grew up on, Egret Island off the coast of South Carolina, has a peculiar custom. There's a monastery there to a St. Senara. Legend has it that this saint was a mermaid who converted to Catholicism, and became a saint. There's a carved "mermaid chair" kept at the church that is carried to the docks and used to bless the fleet on St. Senara's Day.

While she's trying to help her mother and to unravel the puzzle of her mother's self-destructive act, Jessie falls in love with one of the Benedictine monks, Brother Thomas, who has not yet taken his final vows. Jessie and Brother Thomas (Whit) find they have tragedy in common. Jessie's father died at sea when she was nine years old, supposedly blown to bits by a spark from the pipe she gave him. Jessie has lived with a terrible sense of guilt for all these years. Brother Thomas, a former attorney, has joined the monastery to escape from the pain of losing his wife and unborn daughter in a car crash.

The story is permeated by mermaid and siren symbolism and imagery, just as bees permeate the story of The Secret Life of Bees. Jessie, away from her husband and having instigated a separation, begins to find herself, to expand and be the artist she has always longed to be. She realizes that she has pushed herself into too small a space, always putting Hugh and their daughter first and her own amibitions and desires second. She's very similar to Francesca in Bridges in this respect.

The lovers are both "saved and damned" by their connection. Their brief affair forces them both to look at what they really want in life and what they have been hiding from. The mystery of Jessie's father's death is revealed, too, and brings a healing both to her and her mother.

I'm quickly becoming an avid Sue Monk Kidd fan, and I look forward to her future novels.

Bronx Zoo Photos

On April 26th we braved the 92 degree record-breaking temperature and visited the Bronx Zoo. While it was "too darn hot" to see all the attractions, we did manage to see a number of fascinating animals. Here are a few of them.

The Secret Life of Bees

In May our Book Club will discuss Sue Monk Kidd's "The Secret Life of Bees." This was a book that surprised me. Some of the works we have read have been way too depressing. This book is a book of hope.

It begins in the summer of 1964, at a critical juncture in the Civil Rights movement. Lily, fourteen years old, has bees living in the walls of her room. Her father, T. Ray, is neglectful and contemptuous of her. Lily's mother is dead, and her death is a source of Lily's shame and guilt, because she remembers just enough to believe she is the one who accidentally shot her mother to death at the age of four.

Their maid, Rosaleen, decides she is going to go and register to vote. That's controversialin the south where they live, and Lily foresees danger. She accompanies Rosaleen and it goes badly. Rosaleen is accosted by three very bigoted men and she retaliates by pouring snuff juice on their shoes. For this insult both she and Lily are hauled off to jail, and T. Ray bails Lily out but punishes her by making her kneel on raw grits. He calls them the "white Marthas" and I don't know what the origin of that expression might be, unless it's a contrast with the black Mary we meet later on in the story.

Lily has two mementos of her mother, a photograph and a portrait of a black Madonna. On the back is written, "Tiburon, SC." Coincidentally (not), her mother's name was Deborah, which means "bee."

Lily helps Rosaleen escape from the hospital where she is recovering from a savage beating by the three men who accosted her. They head to Tiburon just because Lily believes her mother must have once been there. In a grocery store, Lily sees a jar of honey with the same black Madonna on the label, and realizes the connection. She's led by this synchronicity to the home of the Calendar sisters, May, June and August.

August is the beekeeper who manufactures the Black Madonna honey. When Lily and Rosaleen arrive August welcomes them and allows them to stay with the family. She teaches Lily how to help with harvesting the honey and making the beeswax candles August sells to retailers across the country.

June, however, is not so welcoming. Her attitude to Lily is harsh at first. She makes Lily feel like an outsider in a black home when Lily is the one white person. Later, though, her attitude softens.

May, on the other hand, is so sensitive as to be dysfunctional. Anything that upsets her starts her singing,"Oh, Susanna," and running out to her "wall," a homemade "Wailing Wall" where she writes her sorrows and prayers, and puts them between the stones she has piled up there. There was a twin to May, named April, but April could not stand the restrictions and humiliations of racism, and she committed suicide as a teenager.

In this home, Lily begins to flourish as a young woman should. She learns beekeeping and she takes part in religious ceremonies where the sisters and their friends worship the black Mary, a ship's masthead that has become their holy icon. It's a blend of Catholicism and their own, woman-identified worship, that gives them all a feeling of strength and solidarity. One or two men take part in these ceremonies as well.

Lily meets Zach, the student who has been helping August since he started high school, and a tenuous, forbidden love starts to grow between them. In that era, in the deep south, there is no "place or time" for a black boy and a white girl. Yet they do have a few stolen moments, apparently condoned by the other women. Zach is determined to become a lawyer and fight for civil rights, a determination that is only strengthened when he is jailed unfairly for supposedly throwing a bottle or rock at the police.

The bees, their honey, and their secret lives, as they work for and tend the queen,become a metaphor for the family that Lily has discovered. She has found her hive, with the sweetness of love. The black Mary has become her loving mother, the one she has yearned for, the one whose love she has missed out on all her life.

The symbolism of honey, bees, and the black Mary permeate the book. Synchronicities abound, and Lily discovers that her mother did indeed stay at the sisters' home when she ran away from T. Ray. Even Lily's name has a symbolic meaning.

T. Ray tracks her down and tries to force her to come back to the peach farm with him. Legally he has that right, but it turns out that August and the other women are able to convince him to let Lily stay. She's lived through May's suicide, June's marriage, and she's learned the full story about her mother. She's found her hive and her queen bee, and she's ready to become a woman.

I enjoyed this book immensely with its spiritual overtones, with the majesty of the downtrodden, "like royalty among us," as Lily says. Even with Zach, there is a bit of hope because they walk together in the halls of the white high school where he has boldly enrolled, and ignore the taunts and crumpled paper students throw at them.

Honey is a healing agent: that's recently been "discovered" though people closer to the earth have probably known it for centuries. Synchronicity and following her heart leads Lily to Tiburon where she finds her heart's desire.

Read this book!It's not brand new, and I missed it when it was, but if you missed it the first time around now is the time to read and savor it. This seems to be a book designed to be read during the summer heat, set as it is in the sweltering Carolina summertime.

Yopp!

In Dr. Seuss's classic, "Horton Hears a Who," every one of the tiny people on a speck of dust had to shout as loudly as they could in order to be heard by the other animals, who were intent on boiling the flower and locking Horton away in a cage. The infinitesimal Mayor of Whoville raced through the town to make sure everyone was doing his or her part.

It seems that way at first. People are shouting and singing, brass bands playing, drums thumping. But it's not enough. Finally in the very last building the Mayor discovers the smallest of all the Who's, a little child standing alone, doing nothing but playing with a yo-yo.

The Mayor grabs him and delivers a passionate speech. "This is your town's darkest hour!" he tells the little one. Convinced that destruction is near, the child at last opens his mouth and shouts out an amazingly loud, "YOPP!"

That one "yopp" puts it over and the other animals are able to hear that there are in fact sentient beings down there on that tiny dust speck. They are saved and Horton is a hero, instead of being caged as a lunatic.

That was one of my favorite stories as a little girl. Maybe that's why I keep answering the petitions that come to me in emails, why I keep sending my tiny donations and speaking out when I sense injustice.

I'm only one person shouting "Yopp!" but a whole lot of us little Who's got our voices heard last November, and now we at least have an administration that has its ear to the ground, listening for our "Yopps!"

And so I will continue to shout.

Dreams From My Father

I've just finished Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father, a memoir of his childhood, youth and young adulthood. His struggles to come to terms with an absent father, his interracial and international background, and his entry into community organizing, are all here. Obama is an eloquent writer and it's a pleasure to read his descriptions of people, landscapes, and inner thoughts.

What this brings across to me is that President Obama has a handle on life in other nations and other cultures, that most Americans simply can't imagine. He's lived abroad and visited the country of his roots. How many of us have done that? I know when I toured other countries I felt removed from the people there, on the outside looking in at their daily lives. Tourists see museums and national monuments, not the living rooms of the inhabitants. Obama's experiences go so much deeper than that.

He has thought long and hard about his background and his image of his father, mostly compiled of stories told by his other relatives. He's thought long and hard about his racial status and about how to elevate the African American's status in our society.

It's refreshing and encouraging to have a President who can think, examine his own emotions, and write. I'd certainly recommend Dreams From My Father to anyone who would like a greater understanding of our new President.

Rat in a handbag

That sounds scary, but it isn't. I took a walk on Avenue U today, doing various errands. At about East 22nd Street I spotted a woman who looked awfully familiar. I wasn't quite sure though, because she was wearing sunglasses and her hair was shorter than I remembered. She was looking at me also.

She took off her glasses and sure enough, we recognized each other. The woman was Rosemarie, the person in charge of the Animal Laboratory at Lincoln HS. We stood and talked for a number of minutes, catching up on our families and other news. Rosemarie said she was just coming from the veterinarian, that she'd had to take one of the animals from the lab to the doctor.

She pointed to her handbag and said the rat was inside. I asked to see, and she lifted out little Snoopy, an adorable black and white female rat. It seems Snoopy had mites, and had to see the vet. Rosemarie was on her way back to Lincoln where she was going to scrub out Snoopy's cage and herself too, to make sure there were no more mites.

She's so comfortable and loving with those animals. I loved the way she had Snoopy walking up her arm as we were talking. What a surprise and what a treat! I hope we'll get together soon (maybe with Snoopy, too).

"Waiting"

Last night Bruce, Jason and I attended a fundraiser for The Hetrick-Martin Institute, at the Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village. The young people in their after-school POP Arts program put on a musical play called "Waiting," and used it as a fundraiser. They got an excellent turnout and brought in about $2,000 for the agency.

The play was about waiting for HIV results, waiting for pregnancy results, for love, etc. The kids wrote the scenes and the music. We were sitting a little too far back so some of the lines got by me, and I couldn't always see. But it is clear this is a talented group of kids!

It was great to see the staff and exchange greetings. A few people came over and I introduced Bruce and Jason to them. After spending the day helping with grants there, it's great to see the kids who benefit from the work!

Another "Dollar Stretcher" Publication

My latest publication in the online and print magazine, "The Dollar Stretcher," has appeared online. Here's a link to the article, "Out of Work? Volunteer!" The article describes the benefits of volunteering while unemployed, and gives suggestions for people looking for a simpatico organization to volunteer for.

Take the Money Back!

We have money invested with AIG and if they go under, we'll lose it. But I'm willing to lose that money in order to rescue taxpayer money from these greedy pigs.

They create a financial mess and the company is in danger of going under. Instead of getting canned and standing on the unemployment lines with all the innocent people their greed and incompetence put out of work, they're getting bonuses. No, better yet, we're paying for these bonuses. And they're saying they can't break these contracts or AIG will get sued.

Well, hey, so let them get sued! The government needs to scoop back the money that was given to them as a bailout, in an attempt to stop the economy from going under. Instead they used it to line their own pockets. Let's take back the money. AIG will be judgment proof, so who cares if some disgruntled executives...some of whom were responsible for this mess in the first place...get ticked off and sue?

You can't get blood from a stone.

These despicable characters should lose their jobs and they should be held accountable. Maybe we should bring back tarring and feathering, and ride them out of the country on a rail.

Getting those bonuses is the last thing that should happen, whatever it takes to force them to give back the money.

Nothing to be Frightened Of

Nothing to be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes is a major departure from most of the memoirs I have read recently. It's got to do with his own family life but not in the usual way. He speaks of his parents' personalities and their attitudes towards death, as part of his own musings on the fear of death, and the influence of his own atheism (and more recently in his life, agnosticism) on his fear or lack thereof.

He brings in the stories and thoughts of many other famous writers: Flaubert, Renard, etc. What distinguishes this memoir is that it is not the usual litany of sorrows, the typical dysfunctional family or terrible disease that generally crops up in these books. It's about ideas first and the circumstances of his life second.

I've gotten so tired of the typical "my life was dreadful but I have triumphed" story line. That doesn't mean I am boycotting memoirs but I'd like to see more variety in them. Nothing to be Frightened Of isn't a light book, in fact it is so dense that I am reading it much more slowly than usual. Yet Barnes has a sense of humor about it all and manages to say something funny on almost every page. He's also talking about a subject that haunts us all but almost no one ever speaks about. I appreciate that.

Good News

This past week, the New York Times carried two stories I was happy to read. In "Study Documents the Stress of Waiting for Biopsy Results," a Harvard study reported that women who had to wait more than five days for results of a breast biopsy had stress hormone levels in their blood just as high as if they'd been told they had cancer. Why is this good news? It's good news because, finally, someone is paying attention to the dangers of waiting ridiculously long periods for test results.

The high stress levels could actually impact on a woman's ability to fight off the disease. So being forced to wait is more than just mental torture, it's actually harmful and can affect the outcome. Maybe now that this study has been published, medical labs will be pressured to produce results considerably faster.

Each time I had another test, I had to wait, usually at least a week. Those weeks are spent in a hellish way station. Without the answer, it is impossible to visualize the future. Will life go on as before? Or will it be permanently, perhaps fatally altered? There are times when we can take our minds off the test, but it comes back, again and again. Then comes the moment of the fateful phone call, with the receiver slippery in the sweating palm.

Speeding up the process and getting an answer is much better than prolonged waiting. I hope that this study will provide the incentive that's needed to respect our psyches and our health by getting the results out quickly.

The other good news was in an article about schoolroom furniture. Schoolroom furniture? That's right. The story, "Students Stand When Called Upon, and When Not" describes an experiment in Minnesota classrooms. Children who are wiggly and find it difficult to sit still throughout the school day now have the option of standing up during class. Special desks and stools that adjust to allow for sitting or standing have been placed in classrooms. There are also footrests so the students can stand and swing their feet while they do their lessons.

If only this furniture had been developed 13 years earlier and implemented in New York City classrooms, Jason's first grade might have been a bit easier. His first grade teacher might as well have flown to class on a broomstick. Rumor had it that she'd taught in Catholic school and was used to imposing harsh discipline on little children. Once, a little girl came to school without her bottle of Elmer's glue, because her mother had forgotten to buy it. Jason's teacher made this child stand up for the entire day as punishment.

No one was allowed to sharpen a pencil in her class. So what did you do if it broke? One day another little girl was discovered with pencil shavings on the floor under her desk. Horrors! She was accused, and when she pleaded not guilty, the teacher branded her a liar in front of the class.

She tore up Jason's coloring because he colored outside the lines (and she knew he was receiving physical therapy). After that, Jason lost interest in any arts and crafts. Our friend Richard, on hearing this, said she ought to be horsewhipped. I would have watched that with pleasure.

One of her complaints about Jason, when we met with her for open school night, was that he stood up while working. Such a terrible sin had to be squelched. I can only imagine how she must have badgered him.

I should have gone to the principal but I was afraid if I did she would take it out on Jason. I suppose I should have waited until he was done with first grade and then complained. But I was afraid, also, that she might be assigned to teach a higher grade, and he could end up in her class again. So I never said anything, except directly to her.

Anyway, now, too late for Jason but not too late for the next generation, there's finally some recognition that kids don't have to be sitting down with their little hands neatly folded in order to learn. Some of them learn by moving. Jason wasn't even aware that he was getting out of his seat. Tomorrow's children can just adjust the desk, and sit or stand at their pleasure.

I bet they will learn just fine, and I bet they will be happier and more eager to go to school than the past generations of kids who were forced into a cookie cutter.

That's the good news that was fit to print.

A Demagogue's Task

Today as I walked uptown to the Mid-Manhattan Library I passed the CUNY Graduate Center. A sign in the doorway read, in huge white-on-red lettering, "A demagogue's task is to become as stupid as her audience, so that they will believe they are as clever as she is."

I don't know the origin of this quote but it was reproduced in such size that it struck me as well worth repeating here.