Ben and Millie drink coffee in perhaps the world's perfect room: with five windows looking over the confluence of Soda and Gun Creeks. Kelly showed me what it is like to sit with a hot mug and meditate on the day, spider plants making generations of ladies in silent company. So I've got this concept of coffee being this drink of solitude, a drink of morning calm and quiet comfort. Making espresso on the HMS Weed Warrior last summer was the logical extreme of that idea, and was, for those Steely Dan fans out there, "the best."
But today I am wearing black and white, with my silver-and-black laptop matching my silver-and-black phone and silver-and-black travel mug, and I'm on Bogart Street at "Archive," an espresso-slanging video rental cafe with exposed vent ducts, a clientele wearing nothing but black coats, and a projector screen playing this:
...in a pulsating stream of absolutely addicting Beastie Boys' jams. A video hasn't gotten me like this one since "It's Gonna be Me." Forget Gun Creek, Bennie. Let the spider plants wilt, Kel. Leydies and Hipstermen, welcome to paradise!
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Extra! Extra! Nickelbee does something great!!
I'd like to begin this second installment about N.C.L.B (apparently called "Nickelbee" by insiders) with some corrections. This act was indeed submitted by G.W. Bush, but it was authored and supported by a bipartisan group including George Miller and Ted Kennedy. It follows in a long line of standards-based education reform bills, but there are some nuances to this one. Schools that receive "Title 1" funding, meaning they get extra money from the Fed because half the kids come from "low income" families, have to improve their test scores each year in order to receive that extra cash. If they don't improve each year compared to the last, they are labeled "failing" and three things happen:
1) The Title 1 funding is cut
2) Parents have the option of moving their kids to a different school
3) The school must offer special tutoring for the students
This seems like an awful situation. The school's funding is cut, it must allocate its dwindling funds to additional programing, and students with more resources or more active parents will flee the school, leaving a more apathetic student body and a general feeling of failure.
HOWEVER, specifically because of this whole rigmarole, I have the awesome opportunity to go to East New York five days a week and hang out with kids. In a 1-on-1 context, I work with five kids on their homework, or work through math or English worksheets that I bring, or we Google things and look at maps. Earlier in the fall, we did some nature activities outside, and of course I often end up talking about ecology or earth systems.
Miguel told his mom that "le encanta el tutor." (that means me!)
Antonio cried the first day of class, but now he gives me sweet high-fives.
Liz is a brilliant kindergartner, and when I leave on Tuesday she waves saying, "Hasta el Friday!"
I'm involved in a powerful thing. I'm a white kid going every day into a world that is seldom seen by white eyes. And it's not only racial. These are immigrant families, now undeniably American, who find themselves in the Babelian Library of Brooklyn, an endless honeycomb of hexagonal parlors and tight corridors. These schools fail to meet standards and probably don't prepare many kids for college. But perhaps I get to touch a few kids, and make an impact. Maybe I can get them to think about college, and beyond.
They have certainly touched me, impacted me, and helped me to see another reality of mi patria. There must be a way to bring a community like East New York together with Steamboat and Minneapolis and Vernal. And Avellaneda and Shanghai and Lyon, for that matter.
1) The Title 1 funding is cut
2) Parents have the option of moving their kids to a different school
3) The school must offer special tutoring for the students
This seems like an awful situation. The school's funding is cut, it must allocate its dwindling funds to additional programing, and students with more resources or more active parents will flee the school, leaving a more apathetic student body and a general feeling of failure.
HOWEVER, specifically because of this whole rigmarole, I have the awesome opportunity to go to East New York five days a week and hang out with kids. In a 1-on-1 context, I work with five kids on their homework, or work through math or English worksheets that I bring, or we Google things and look at maps. Earlier in the fall, we did some nature activities outside, and of course I often end up talking about ecology or earth systems.
Miguel told his mom that "le encanta el tutor." (that means me!)
Antonio cried the first day of class, but now he gives me sweet high-fives.
Liz is a brilliant kindergartner, and when I leave on Tuesday she waves saying, "Hasta el Friday!"
I'm involved in a powerful thing. I'm a white kid going every day into a world that is seldom seen by white eyes. And it's not only racial. These are immigrant families, now undeniably American, who find themselves in the Babelian Library of Brooklyn, an endless honeycomb of hexagonal parlors and tight corridors. These schools fail to meet standards and probably don't prepare many kids for college. But perhaps I get to touch a few kids, and make an impact. Maybe I can get them to think about college, and beyond.
They have certainly touched me, impacted me, and helped me to see another reality of mi patria. There must be a way to bring a community like East New York together with Steamboat and Minneapolis and Vernal. And Avellaneda and Shanghai and Lyon, for that matter.
The Need Foray Solution
“No Child Left Behind” was a Bush brainchild which was passed by a Republican congress in 2002. It created a new system for grading schools based on standardized tests, for rewarding good and improving schools, and for addressing the inadequacies of failing schools.
Steamboat has really great schools. We had passionate teachers, a supportive community, and with a half-cent sales tax and several bond issues supported by voters, top-notch facilities. In 10th grade we did a Leadership exchange with Manual High School in Denver, and I was 100% culture-shocked by the run-down urban brick school with its black and Spanish student body. It seemed so loud and chaotic, and it seemed like the students weren’t trying to learn, and the teachers no longer were trying to teach. The moment that impacted me most was in the showers after gym class, when my “buddy” handed me a bottle of Herbal Essences conditioner to wash with. “I can’t wash with this,” I said, “this is conditioner!” He looked a bit amused and said, “Maaan, soap is soap!”
A few months later, it was such a crazy sight to see the Manual leadership class walking like silent ghosts through SSHS. Perhaps the only group of black kids that have ever been in that building, they huddled together and gasped wide-eyed at our gym and weight room, which looked so bright and shiny around their cluster of baggy jeans, hoodies, and jerseys.
The first I heard of actual implementation of “No Child Left Behind” policies was the next year, when Manual was deemed failing for a third straight year, and federal consultants intervened, dividing the school into several separate schools, each operating independently on different floors. Based on my day there, I concurred that Manual had not been functioning well, so I welcomed the concept of experimenting with administrative changes. When things are going poorly, changing things up is a better option than continuing with the same failing policies.
Over the years, however, I have joined the ranks of N.C.L.B. critics, as I have thought more about the mechanics and practice of teaching. Standardized tests, with their hollow passages and banal questions, don’t teach anything. They aren’t fun or interesting. So they end up feeling like a broken record asking incessantly, “Are you awake? Are you awake? Are you awake? Are you awake?...” until you inevitably fall asleep.
At Steamboat, the CSAP tests wasted two days of our lives, and caused a fair amount of bitching, but that was the end of it. The school consistently scored well, and therefore didn’t have to worry too much about preparing the students. We were able to focus on Tension and Cleaving forces, the invasion of 1066, and what happens when limit goes to 0.
For schools that score poorly, however, the tests have become an obsession. The curriculum has become hollow passages and banal questions, so that the students can be “good” at getting these questions right. The school’s scores are tied to its funding and its administrative independence. And these kids, who so desperately need education to improve their lives and get out of the deadening rut of their socioeconomic conditions, are dropped into another deadening rut: a curriculum based on little circles with A, B, C, and D.
“Would you like fries with that?”
Steamboat has really great schools. We had passionate teachers, a supportive community, and with a half-cent sales tax and several bond issues supported by voters, top-notch facilities. In 10th grade we did a Leadership exchange with Manual High School in Denver, and I was 100% culture-shocked by the run-down urban brick school with its black and Spanish student body. It seemed so loud and chaotic, and it seemed like the students weren’t trying to learn, and the teachers no longer were trying to teach. The moment that impacted me most was in the showers after gym class, when my “buddy” handed me a bottle of Herbal Essences conditioner to wash with. “I can’t wash with this,” I said, “this is conditioner!” He looked a bit amused and said, “Maaan, soap is soap!”
A few months later, it was such a crazy sight to see the Manual leadership class walking like silent ghosts through SSHS. Perhaps the only group of black kids that have ever been in that building, they huddled together and gasped wide-eyed at our gym and weight room, which looked so bright and shiny around their cluster of baggy jeans, hoodies, and jerseys.
The first I heard of actual implementation of “No Child Left Behind” policies was the next year, when Manual was deemed failing for a third straight year, and federal consultants intervened, dividing the school into several separate schools, each operating independently on different floors. Based on my day there, I concurred that Manual had not been functioning well, so I welcomed the concept of experimenting with administrative changes. When things are going poorly, changing things up is a better option than continuing with the same failing policies.
Over the years, however, I have joined the ranks of N.C.L.B. critics, as I have thought more about the mechanics and practice of teaching. Standardized tests, with their hollow passages and banal questions, don’t teach anything. They aren’t fun or interesting. So they end up feeling like a broken record asking incessantly, “Are you awake? Are you awake? Are you awake? Are you awake?...” until you inevitably fall asleep.
At Steamboat, the CSAP tests wasted two days of our lives, and caused a fair amount of bitching, but that was the end of it. The school consistently scored well, and therefore didn’t have to worry too much about preparing the students. We were able to focus on Tension and Cleaving forces, the invasion of 1066, and what happens when limit goes to 0.
For schools that score poorly, however, the tests have become an obsession. The curriculum has become hollow passages and banal questions, so that the students can be “good” at getting these questions right. The school’s scores are tied to its funding and its administrative independence. And these kids, who so desperately need education to improve their lives and get out of the deadening rut of their socioeconomic conditions, are dropped into another deadening rut: a curriculum based on little circles with A, B, C, and D.
“Would you like fries with that?”
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Show me all the Rules, Girl!
She was pacing on the platform, tap tap tapping, swishing a long coat, boots trimmed in fur. She kept pulling her hair down between two scissoring fingers, like she probably had ironed her hair at home and was worried the humidity would bring the kinks back. She couldn't believe the L wasn't running properly, that there was no train between 8th Ave and Union Square, and now some other announcement was being made. She worriedly asked the MTA official about getting to the Morgan stop, saying that she never took the train and therefore didn't know anything about the train system, and the MTA official gave an answer like, "Tonight there's a shuttle to Bedford, where a true L will be Canarsie-bound," which makes perfect sense to anyone familiar with the L, but of course did not help this girl at all.
I've seen that kind of interaction many times, usually in the context of a language barrier. A person with limited knowledge of the language asks a native speaker a question, and the native answers with contractions and slang and a few "you know"s thrown in, and absolutely baffles the foreigner. It's like some sort of autism, where you are unable to empathize with a person enough to see from their point of view. ...unable to break things down into digestible parts...
I was sitting against the wall, on my Sector 9, wearing my new sweatsuit, reading the cover of Charlotte's Web, thinking about contact improv, bar mitzvahs, NOLS courses, and the nature of jealously. I wonder if The Temptations really made a good Christmas album. I wonder if Julia is really happy in Seattle. I wish I wouldn't have said that he smoked crack. I wonder if she could like me, even though I look nothing like Gael Garcia Bernal, or really anybody else.
I've seen that kind of interaction many times, usually in the context of a language barrier. A person with limited knowledge of the language asks a native speaker a question, and the native answers with contractions and slang and a few "you know"s thrown in, and absolutely baffles the foreigner. It's like some sort of autism, where you are unable to empathize with a person enough to see from their point of view. ...unable to break things down into digestible parts...
I was sitting against the wall, on my Sector 9, wearing my new sweatsuit, reading the cover of Charlotte's Web, thinking about contact improv, bar mitzvahs, NOLS courses, and the nature of jealously. I wonder if The Temptations really made a good Christmas album. I wonder if Julia is really happy in Seattle. I wish I wouldn't have said that he smoked crack. I wonder if she could like me, even though I look nothing like Gael Garcia Bernal, or really anybody else.
The Samaipata Effect
Totora, Bolivia used to be a nice, quaint colonial village. It is tucked in a high valley, up in the dry mountains, and if you plunge directly downhill you can arrive in the lush, humid tropical lowlands in a day or so. It's down in those lowlands that crops can be grown (fruits, veggies, and coca for chewing) but the bugs are bad down there and it rains all the time. So in the late 1800's the big landowning terratenientes built their wrought-iron balcony/ stone patio townhouses in Totora, and it was there that they sipped Cappuccino and read the Times.
But seasons have turned cien veces, and a hundred presidents have fled to Spain with the Bolivian Treasury in a suitcase, and the Times are no longer printed in Totora. In fact, few people there are interested in reading. It's dusty, the roads are often impassibly eroded, and there is barbed-wire fencing in the Plaza. Even for Ben Beall IV, the consummate optimist, Totora is "tough."
If you strike out on the well-worn cobblestone highway heading eastward out of Totora, you contour around treeless peaks, then drop into orange river valleys, past mud brick houses and goats. There are potatoes growing over there. That river obviously floods really big sometimes. Where is that person possibly walking to?
And then you cross an incredible expanse of cactus-country. It looks like Grandma moved to a retirement community in Arizona and went TOTALLY overboard with the Southwestern decor. There are dozens of varieties of cactuses, and dry arroyos, and layers of reds and tans and oranges. And after another day of driving, you smell water, palpable in your sinuses, and of a sudden you crest a hill and base-jump into a cloud forest with booming trees, spreading ferns, draped in bromeliads and orchids. Waterfalls stream down Yosemite-like cliffs. Here, the Inca had a spa carved into the granite. There you can see bespectacled bears and resplendent quetzales.
There, in Samaipata, something happens to your heart. It lifts; it opens. There is a sense that you have just begun to breathe, just hoped for the first time. That now, if you sleep, you will dream of endless possibilities.
The Samaipata Effect is something that has stayed with me ever since that day. It's quite simple, and perhaps boringly obvious: we have a very real relationship with the environment in which we live. A beautiful place can inspire us, lift us up, make us strive for more. And similarly, we can feel stifled or oppressed by our context. It can bind your feet, limiting your dreams. Someone might find Echo Park absolutely inspiring. Someone else might feel that lift in Midtown of Manhattan, or at the Louvre, or maybe at Vasey's Paradise, or looking out into the waves rolling into Ho'okipa.
The relationship is real, and it's effect on us is real. I live on a futon in Bushsick, Brooklyn, across the street from the Boarshead Meat packing facility. I'm inspired to paint the room black.
But seasons have turned cien veces, and a hundred presidents have fled to Spain with the Bolivian Treasury in a suitcase, and the Times are no longer printed in Totora. In fact, few people there are interested in reading. It's dusty, the roads are often impassibly eroded, and there is barbed-wire fencing in the Plaza. Even for Ben Beall IV, the consummate optimist, Totora is "tough."
If you strike out on the well-worn cobblestone highway heading eastward out of Totora, you contour around treeless peaks, then drop into orange river valleys, past mud brick houses and goats. There are potatoes growing over there. That river obviously floods really big sometimes. Where is that person possibly walking to?
And then you cross an incredible expanse of cactus-country. It looks like Grandma moved to a retirement community in Arizona and went TOTALLY overboard with the Southwestern decor. There are dozens of varieties of cactuses, and dry arroyos, and layers of reds and tans and oranges. And after another day of driving, you smell water, palpable in your sinuses, and of a sudden you crest a hill and base-jump into a cloud forest with booming trees, spreading ferns, draped in bromeliads and orchids. Waterfalls stream down Yosemite-like cliffs. Here, the Inca had a spa carved into the granite. There you can see bespectacled bears and resplendent quetzales.
There, in Samaipata, something happens to your heart. It lifts; it opens. There is a sense that you have just begun to breathe, just hoped for the first time. That now, if you sleep, you will dream of endless possibilities.
The Samaipata Effect is something that has stayed with me ever since that day. It's quite simple, and perhaps boringly obvious: we have a very real relationship with the environment in which we live. A beautiful place can inspire us, lift us up, make us strive for more. And similarly, we can feel stifled or oppressed by our context. It can bind your feet, limiting your dreams. Someone might find Echo Park absolutely inspiring. Someone else might feel that lift in Midtown of Manhattan, or at the Louvre, or maybe at Vasey's Paradise, or looking out into the waves rolling into Ho'okipa.
The relationship is real, and it's effect on us is real. I live on a futon in Bushsick, Brooklyn, across the street from the Boarshead Meat packing facility. I'm inspired to paint the room black.
"Boulder" goes "Platinum"
So basically I'm from Brooklyn, New York, and basically I know how the world works a lot and I know that New York is per-person the greenest city in America and I know where the best cold cuts in Chelsea are and I know that Meet the Johnsons has $2 PBR's and that is the coolest beer ever.
And I saw the shoe commercials that Will posted and I bought some pastel-colored Reebok high-tops and I've been long boarding (street surfing) ever since. And Kanye WAS the voice of our generation until he just SOLD OUT recently, but whatever.
And my friend Molly sent me this video which is way too long:
And since I've traveled extensively all over, including Latin America and West Africa, and because I've lived on an organic farm/music and performing arts camp in Colorado, I have this to say:
Whoa, whoa, whoa Everybody...
Slow down with this excitement, didn't anyone ever tell you NOT to believe what you see on TV?
This video is obviously a fake, I mean, there is NO possible way that there is a city so clean and colorful as this "Boulder" place looks... Ryan Van Duzer makes videos, and he could tell you that this one was made in a Hollywood theater. I mean, the obvious giveaway is that all the actors and extras that they hired were white... and all those little smiling white kids with Colgate-commercial dentition.... obviously a lack of Equal Opportunity hiring at THAT Hollywood studio...
And all those people talking with eyebrow-raising passion about "Boulder"...obviously actors... no one could possibly be so excited and articulate about biking and bike paths! Pssh! And that "Cris Jones" character at 2min 30sec... what an overactor!!
Not to mention those huge impossibly vertical rock backdrops... SOMEBODY didn't pay attention in Physics 1001!
Peace and love "Boulder"ites... or "Martians"...
And I saw the shoe commercials that Will posted and I bought some pastel-colored Reebok high-tops and I've been long boarding (street surfing) ever since. And Kanye WAS the voice of our generation until he just SOLD OUT recently, but whatever.
And my friend Molly sent me this video which is way too long:
And since I've traveled extensively all over, including Latin America and West Africa, and because I've lived on an organic farm/music and performing arts camp in Colorado, I have this to say:
Whoa, whoa, whoa Everybody...
Slow down with this excitement, didn't anyone ever tell you NOT to believe what you see on TV?
This video is obviously a fake, I mean, there is NO possible way that there is a city so clean and colorful as this "Boulder" place looks... Ryan Van Duzer makes videos, and he could tell you that this one was made in a Hollywood theater. I mean, the obvious giveaway is that all the actors and extras that they hired were white... and all those little smiling white kids with Colgate-commercial dentition.... obviously a lack of Equal Opportunity hiring at THAT Hollywood studio...
And all those people talking with eyebrow-raising passion about "Boulder"...obviously actors... no one could possibly be so excited and articulate about biking and bike paths! Pssh! And that "Cris Jones" character at 2min 30sec... what an overactor!!
Not to mention those huge impossibly vertical rock backdrops... SOMEBODY didn't pay attention in Physics 1001!
Peace and love "Boulder"ites... or "Martians"...
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