Story #40: Forgive *This*

I am not ashamed to tell you that I owe a lot of money. Horrified, yes, but ashamed, no. You see, I--like many people--went to college, and the summer before my senior year my parents' employment situation changed, and so to finance my fourth and final undergrad year of out-of-state tuition I took out a loan. Then, two years later, I went to graduate school. I was an in-state student that time, but still I was working as a teacher and going to night school, and teaching salaries in the state of Iowa at that time were $100 a day. So, I took out another loan and added it to the first.

Fast forward four years. By now I had moved to California and gotten a handful of years in the classroom under my belt, and so I went back to grad school for good this time. Not the dabbling, inquiry-based approach I took the first time but a rigorous, three-year, full-time, thesis-requiring, dual-credential-awarding program. Again, on a teacher's salary and by this time I was also paying dot-com-era rent on a studio in San Francisco. So I filed another FAFSA and took out my third loan and when I saw the numbers on the page, knew I could not even conceive of ever being able to pay off that much money but also knew that saving up for graduate school tuition would never happen either. So signed my promissory note and dove in.

Seven years have now passed since I walked across the stage that foggy, chilly May day at San Francisco State and received my Masters degree. I have very diligently paid my student loan every month since then. The balance goes down but the hole in my budget where the monthly payment comes from remains. So, as part of my Spring Break to-do list I decided to contact my lender and ask about loan forgiveness programs for teachers.

You hear about them all the time in our line of work: teach in an urban public school system and your loans can be forgiven, work with high-risk populations and your debts will melt away before you know it. So I called today and spoke with Michelle, my representative, only to be told that my loans do not qualify. You see, only loans taken out since October, 1998, are eligible for the federal loan forgiveness program. But, she suggested helpfully, maybe my state offers programs like this for teachers?

I hung up, discouraged. My state's budget is such a mess that there isn't even enough money for me to have a job next year at this point. Pay back my student loans for me? Please. And, further Internet research shows that not even the lion's share of my loan, taken out since the eligibility date, qualifies for forgiveness because I consolidated my loans in 2004 and now it is just one big amount that I will never pay off.

Much is reported in the media about teachers leaving the profession. In California, the attrition rate for new teachers is greater than 50% in the first five years. But, I am not the teacher who spends a few years in the classroom and then goes to work in retail or sales or marketing or or or. Education is the only professional practice I have ever had and will ever have. Both my parents were teachers, my brother is a teacher, and I am a teacher too. I do not plan to leave teaching for a higher-paying position, even though--as I posted last year in the blog I wrote during my sabbatical--I was offered a job last spring as the night desk clerk of a super-sketchy motor lodge out by Ocean Beach for $10,000 more a year than I make now as a veteran teacher with a Masters degree, seven credentials, and more than a dozen years experience. I am tired of always having a second and third job, of not being able to go anywhere on the Spring Break I worked so hard to earn, of budgeting constantly and never being able to, as Kelly so wisely said so long ago when we were all living at The House of Flowers, buy avocados. Is it too much to ask Uncle Sam to free me from the tens of thousands of dollars in loans that I spent learning how to do my job well, especially when it is a job no on else seems to want?

Forgive me for complaining. It looks like the only thing I qualify to be forgiven for at this point, so I am going to take full advantage.

Story #39: Stories

Yesterday morning I went for a walk to Lake Merritt for Birkat HaChamah (post with that story=coming soon). Afterward I went to--where else?--Trader Joe's and on the way home stopped at Arizmendi on Lakeshore. Sitting at the metal cafe table, enjoying my brioche knot and glad I was bundled up against the damp chilly breeze, my mind wandered back in time to another Pesach morning, another day before not the first but the second night of Passover, at another Arizmendi.

Spring Break, 2007, and we were sitting outside the co-op bakery's home in the Inner Sunset. Unlike yesterday in Oakland it was hot and sunny that day in San Francisco and we sat not in North Face down jackets and wool socks but in tank tops and flip flops, the sweet smell of shea butter sunblock mixing with the delicious aromas pouring through the shop's open windows. That morning we'd woken up and decided to, you know, host a seder (the marathon-style multi-hour dinner and community observation of Passover): the way you do at 10 a.m. on the morning of second night. We found ourselves with post-its and pens and highlighters and scissors and tape and scratch paper and about half a dozen different haggadot (books used as guides for participating in the seder), me doubtful we'd get it done but her convinced that in eight hours we could prepare a text, cook a meal, pull together two dozen people, set a table, provide art materials, and facilitate the individual and group experiences and reflections on liberation that are hallmarks of the holiday. Really?!

In the end we completely pulled it off: highlights included pulling huge chunks of mortar-bound brick out of the sea at Baker Beach, driving them home, dripping, in the back of the Subaru, then soaking them in bleach water and actually using them for the seder plate...boiling a half-dozen huge beets in the world's largest pot and then laughing as the blood-colored water poured out into the kibbutz-style kitchen and made everyone shriek...buying paper and clay and oil pastels at the art-supply store on Van Ness, then encouraging everyone to draw sculpt sketch share their insights as the meal went on...bundling up in borrowed button-fly jeans and cozy wool socks as the sun went down over the East Bay hills and we closed the big picture windows against the nighttime Marina fog, keeping everyone warm as we stayed until late in the night talking and singing.

The text we created, cut and pasted old school-style with scissors and glue stick, came from many sources but primarily from a book called A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices. On my way to Arizmendi yesterday I had tucked it into my bag, just to flip through while enjoying one last pre-Passover pastry, and among the post-its and matzah ball soup stains I found again one of my favorite quotes, not just in this book but about the holiday:

When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told or books weren't written, humans would live like the beasts, only for the day.

Reb Zebulun said, "Today we live, but by tomorrow today will be a story. The whole world, all human life, is one long story." Children are as puzzled by passing time as grownups. What happens to a day once it is gone? Where are all our yesterdays with their joys and sorrows? Literature helps us remember the past, with its many moods. To the storyteller yesterday is still here as are the years and the decades gone by.

In stories time does not vanish. Neither do people and animals. For the writer and his readers, all creatures go on living forever. What happened long ago is still present.

--Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel laureate, from Zlateh the Goat

I have found no better explanation than this one of why I tell stories. We used to ask each other impossible questions, like "What job would you have had if you lived a hundred years ago?" Had I been born one century earlier, I know I would still have been a teacher just like I am in the modern day. But as our rhetorical meanderings continued and we wondered what our lives would have been like not a century but a millenium ago, my answer changed. Teaching and learning looked different then, but community looked the same and so did shared experience, so did collective wisdom. A thousand years ago I would have been the one people came to with secrets and stories, the one with the agonizingly accurate memory, the one who shares the lessons from generation to generation.

Singer was right--time does not vanish. It is the telling of stories that allows time travel, that creates the possibility of living on forever. As you tell your stories, of Passover or Easter or the equinox or last year's Spring Break or whatever it may be, I wish for you the chance to feel yourself as part of not just the stories told before you but the stories your loved ones will continue to tell as time goes on.

Chag Sameach--a wonderful holiday to you :)

Story #38: How Much Would You Pay?

There's a game we used to play called "How Much Would You Pay?" I am not really sure how it got started or who played it first but it is now a part of the vocabulary. How Much Would You Pay? is ironic in that it is an inherently fake game, played to try and put a price on impossible things. Perhaps the most telling example of How Much Would You Pay? took place on my first trip to Israel in the summer of 2004, with Rebecca. She had been to Israel, many times, and had lived there for the year not long before but I had never been there and did not know quite what to expect. Some things were exactly as I'd imagined, and some things were completely different.

One thing that there had been no way to predict is the fact that in Israel, there is no Mexican food. None. Not like, kind of here and there but it's hard to find and definitely not kosher....not like, you have to take the bus to Tel Aviv and get it there on Sheinkin Street where the hipsterim hang out. None, like, yeah. None at all.

Living as I was in San Francisco, where the burrito is an inexpensive and readily-available staple food, I was floored. I do love Mexican food, but suddenly my love had turned to obsession. Eating a burrito was all I could possibly think about. I am an adventurous traveler, and that includes trying new foods as well, but in moments of 115-degree-Fahrenheit weakness when we had been on the bus all day and the drama of my trans-Atlantic personal life became too much to bear I was not in the mood to try yet another Middle Eastern combination of dates, lentils, skinny cucumbers, and fermented cheese. I wanted the rice-and-beans predictability of the goodness that comes wrapped, bolster-shaped, in foil with chips on the side for $6.49.

So we began to play. At the beginning of the three-week trip I declared I'd pay, you know, the standard price: seven bucks, or whatever, for a vegetarian burrito. By the time we were queued up to board the El Al flight back to JFK my price had gone up to 450 shekels (US$75) and Rebecca was SICK of hearing about it. You can easily guess what I had for my first dinner back in the States upon my arrival at SFO 24 hours later. El Balazo, aw yeah...

What does any of this have to do with the present day? Perhaps you recall my post from a few days ago about things I refuse to wear over vacation. I have stuck by the promise I made myself not to wear my watch, and mostly it is very good for me. It is not the logistical matter of elapsed time that I seek to avoid, because clocks of course are everywhere. Rather, it is the sense of being physically cuffed with a constant reminder of the truth that time is passing and the related response that I personally experience, which is an overwhelming sense of never being able to get everything finished. So yes, can I walk into the other room to view the clock on the wall or can I look on my cell phone and see the time? Yes, but that is not important. Being free of constantly checking my watch in an attempt to faux-determine how behind I've fallen is my goal.

Unfortunately this has had the negative side effect of making it a bit unusual to be around me, since my discomfort about not knowing what time it is definitely affects others. Example: last night we were waiting for the performance to start, and as cool as I'd been playing it I suddenly lost my marbles, consumed with an urgent and undeniable need to know what time it was. I leaned over and murmured into her ear: "I'll pay you five dollars if you tell me what time it is..." And just like that, How Much Would You Pay? was on. I hadn't planned to play it, but that impossible need to acquire something just beyond reach had struck without much warning and I reverted to the game I haven't played in years now.

Do you think she told me? Nope. "Seven?" I offered hopefully. "Do you really want to know?" she asked. I stopped to consider. "Not for seven dollars, I guess," I replied, sinking back into my own seat. Come on, you could buy a burrito with those seven bucks. A girl's got to be thrifty, these days.

Story #37: Small

note: That is not me when I was small. It is someone else in my family. Can you tell who it is? There is a hint in the photo, and a lot of you have seen it before and already know the answer. If you do, don't say. If you don't, it might be fun to guess. Look how small that person is! They are not small any more :)

Recently we were out at Zeitgeist (another Story for another time) and the person sitting next to me on the bench in the backyard ended up squeezed kind of close to me, as can happen when you try to fit 36 people at one picnic table. "Hey," she said as she measured my thigh with her hand, "You're pretty small."

It's true in one way, I suppose, in that I am not the biggest adult. Actually for being an adult I am on the shrimpier end of the spectrum. On a tall day I stand 5'4" and am only slightly more than half the title of one of the best albums of all time: Sixteen Stone, by Bush. So really compared to many grown-ups I suppose that's not so big.

(sidepoint: Do you like the way I avoided telling you how much I weigh? Aren't girls weird? Isn't body image stuff messed up? What if some people thought that was too much? What if some people thought it was too little? Perhaps those of you who've been blog followers for awhile remember the OLD post about the social confusion I encountered around having my pants size outed? Yeah. Looking to avoid that kind of awkwardness again...)

But, it is hard to reconcile this objective information with what feels true to me about my size. I do not consider myself small in the least. Actually the opposite, I worry I am too big a lot of the time: big mouth, big ideas, big plans, big passions, big mistakes, the list goes on and on. And comparatively I am large in relationship to others in my life, considering that I spend six hours a day with hundreds of people mostly under the age of 12. So at school I am TALLLL. And wide. And big.

In the end it's all relative, I guess.

Story #36: Scheduling my Spring Break

On Saturday night when I was leaving their house after an evening of Indian food and the Final Four, Emily said to me "Hey, Happy Spring Break tomorrow!" Oh--I got all kinds of upset. "Tomorrow is just Sunday, just the weekend," I insisted, "NOT Spring Break! Spring Break doesn't start until Monday." I turned to Sage, knowing that as a fellow teacher she would understand. "Tell her!" I insisted.

Every teacher knows that the weekends around a holiday do not count as part of the actual holiday itself. Right? Let's take Spring Break, for example. The first weekend is just the weekend you earned by working all week. THEN it is vacation for five days (sidepoint: I am currently in the first half of day two and so far have been camped out on what I was recently told is my uncomfortable couch reading, writing, and chilling out--should shower soon? Nah...overrated). THEN it is a bonus weekend! Then it is school once again.

Yesterday I finally had to sit down and make a schedule for Spring Break. I knew if I didn't that I would just wander around all week (one of my favorite things to do) and that suddenly it would be bonus weekend and I would not have done anything: not anything fun, not anything productive, not anything.

Not that not doing anything is bad. It is just not my natural disposition and would likely have made me, you know, anxious.

So now my schedule and to-do list are complete. Some things are still up in the air, like going to Chicago (kind of permanently up in the air right now, and expensive) and my newfound search for summer plans. But some things are scheduled and that is nice.

Yesterday I went on a hike in Joaquin Miller State Park up in the Oakland hills by Chabot (scheduled), did laundry and cleaned my house (scheduled), and had an outstanding evening full of picnic-ing and world-premiere theater and ice cream (scheduled, with a slight delay at the beginning but fine in the end). Today's list includes making boring but necessary doctor's appointments, calling my insurance agent, figuring out what to do this summer, reflecting deeply on Passover which starts tomorrow, paying bills online, and, oh--daydreaming, napping, pizza, and maybe last week's episode of Lie to Me on hulu.com.

Because you know...it is Spring Break, after all.

Story #35: Things I Insist on Wearing Over Spring Break

1. flip flops
2. my favorite jeans
3. lots of sunblock while I'm playing outside
4. my swimsuit in the pool at Mills
5. my hair down since there's no fear of lice
6. all my springtime playclothes
7. of course: my red shoes :)

Story #34: Things I Refuse to Wear Over Spring Break

1. my watch
2. itchy mascara
3. overly helpful undergarments
4. sweat-producing tights
5. pinchy shoes
6. school clothes

Story #33: Harvest of the Month

Unfortunately this posting from the WAD does not include any instructional materials to help teach students about why, after eating asparagus, your pee smells so weird. Hmm. Guess I'll have to develop some kind of curriculum for that part of the conversation.

WHO: All Staff at Elementary, Middle and High Schools

WHAT: April’s Harvest Of The Month! – Asparagus!

Did You Know?

* White Asparagus is grown from the same crown as the green asparagus.
* Asparagus, per one-half cup serving, has the highest content of folate of any vegetable. Folate (folic acid) is helpful in replicating DNA and RNA, and researchers believe folic acid may be helpful in reducing the risk for certain cancers.

HOW:
• Distribute Harvest of the Month materials:
- Copy Educator’s Newsletter for every classroom teacher
- Copy Family Newsletter, send home in weekly envelope
• Make tasty recipes found in both newsletters
• Prepare and offer Marinated Salad with Asparagus Guacamole, from the newsletters, at your next staff meeting
• Teach a lesson from the Educator’s Newsletter

WHY:
The goal of Harvest of the Month is to increase fruit and vegetable awareness and to motivate children, families, and school staff to make healthier choices.

WHEN: April 2009

For more information about the Nutrition Education Project,
visit www.healthiersf.org and click on the icon

Story #32: The Sex in the City Moment

I have a friend who just started dating again not long ago. So did I, for that matter, but that is not the story being told in this post. Because of this somewhat unusual coincidence, I want to make it overwhelmingly clear that when I say "I have a friend..." I mean exactly that: this story is about a real friend of mine. I am not using the phrase in the ABC Afterschool Special kind of way, like "I have a friend whose parents are getting divorced," or "I have a friend who makes herself throw up when she eats." No. This is a real story, about a real friend. Okay.

My friend called me the other day to share news of her recent adventures. All of them have been very safe, and very responsible, and very flirty, and very fun. Some of them have ended early and chastely, and others have ended differently from that. One was particularly remarkable:

"So," she confided over the phone, "I had a sleepover. BUT NOT that kind of sleepover! Nothing happened. So much of nothing happened that I didn't even get undressed. It was like something from Sex in the City."

Sigh. This is yet another situation in which not having had television since 1999 really hampers my ability to have social conversations. "What do you mean, like something from Sex in the City?" I asked.

"Well," she said, "I hadn't planned to sleep over and I didn't want to take my clothes off so I slept in my dress."

THAT'S awesome, I think. I am so proud of my friend for going out an having fun...even if she her adventures only get told in blogland and not on cable TV.

Story #31: Overheard at Dinner

Last night at dinner we were taking a break between the meal and the chocolate cake when conversation turned to Trader Joe's. There was much excitement about a new addition to the Trader Joe's line-up: kosher brisket, in the freezer section. "Is it called Trader Shlomo's?" I wanted to know.

"I think that's kind of weird, when Trader Joe's turns their name into a different name on the labels of some of their foods," the fifth-grader seated next to me at the table mused.

"Like what?" I asked.

"Oh, you know," he explained, "something like Trader Jose's salsa or Trader Giotto's noodles."

"Got it," I said. "I remember I saw Trader Ming's Sweet and Sour Chicken one time."

"Exactly," he affirmed.

"What do you think about that?" I asked him. "Do you think Trader Joe's is doing it to try and be respectful of other people's cultures, or do you think it's like teasing?"

My conversation partner and seatmate pondered a moment. "Well," he replied, "I guess I'm not sure, I can't really say because I am not any of those cultures so I don't know what it feels like for them. I'm Irish. Now, let's say they had Trader O'Malley's something--THEN I'd have a point of view. I guess for now I just think it's interesting."

Now, there's a kid raised in Berkeley by two liberal educators for you. Yeah.

Story #30: Blogging From School

I always feel like I am getting away with something when I blog from school. It is the grown-up equivalent of writing notes in class :) Not all computers at school have access to blogger, but mine does, so it feels double super extra mischievious of me.

Today generated many stories--as do most days at school--but the one story I want to tell right now is that there are only two! more! days! until Spring Break. Tomorrow, and Friday.

PHEW.....

(more later, including perhaps stories from today involving mice, teeth, Ebonics, burritos, and the overwhelming urge to make a break for it...to be continued)

Story #29: The Grand Express

http://www.yelp.com/biz/grand-express-oakland

From August, 1999, to June, 2007 I lived in San Francisco. Then from June, 2007 to October, 2008, I kind of lived everywhere and also nowhere which is a much longer series of stories for another time (extra, extra, read all about it here). And six months ago when I got my own apartment again I moved to Oakland.

Choosing to live in the East Bay was a complicated decision and one that was exactly right for me at the time. It is warm and sunny and cheaper here, there are wide open spaces and big old trees and a lake at the end of my block and hills to ride my bike through. There is a stellar taco truck by Fruitvale BART and, when need be, there is IKEA. That does not mean I don't miss living in San Francisco every single day. Not long ago someone asked me the million-dollar question: "So, when are you moving back to the city?" I startled myself with my instant response: "Next year," I replied.

Those plans are up in the air because my work situation is so ridiculously uncertain. Maybe I will move back, and maybe I won't. For now I have a rockstar apartment next to Lake Merritt. It is big and old and funky and clean and safe and has three (yes! count them) closets. It has a huge kitchen which is perfect because there is little else I love to do more in this world than play with my food in the form of cooking. It has hardwood floors and a two-tone paint job and a retro telephone you use to buzz people up from the front door.

And...it has the Grand Express. Located directly across the street from my apartment, the Grand Express is the corner store to end all corner stores. It is open from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. and it attracts ALL manner of patrons. Unlike corner stores in the city, the Grand Express has a parking lot which means that it is frequently the staging area for anything from 100-person bicycle protests headed down Grand towards Broadway to late-night dance parties with half a dozen low-riders circled up, stereos pumping Kanye West in unison.

The most notable feature of the Grand Express is its large, well-illuminated sign. Clearly visible from every room in my house, including the bathroom, the blazing letters in yellow, blue, and red advertising LIQUOR & GROCERIES is a hideous, ridiculous eyesore but is indeed an excellent landmark. Just last weekend I gave directions to a person who'd never been to my house before, and of course mentioned the sign as an indicator that she'd reached her destination. She found my house, no problem. So, it's good for something after all.

Story #28: A Bad Sleeper

(This is one of my all-time favorite photos of myself because it is such a random, ironic commentary on the fact that I just can't get my act together to go to sleep in my actual bed. Here you see that I am asleep on a trampoline right in the middle of the living room floor at my friend Melissa's 28th birthday party. ZzzZZzz...)

My nephew Samuel is what Nathan calls "a bad sleeper". What this means is that Samuel wakes up a lot during the night, can't stay asleep for long periods of time, falls asleep in weird places outside of his bed and then wakes up all fussy and disoriented, and is generally not well-rested.

Some would say that babies, as they try to orient their schedules to the overall schedule of the world, are not great sleepers in general. I would say poor kid, he's a Kotleba. He's cursed. You see, we Kotlebas are not good sleepers. I remember growing up, and even now when I visit my parents, that my dad would consistently fall asleep in his chair watching the news. Attempts to wake him were met with resistance, to the point that we would all just get ready for bed and leave him there where he would remain, upright but unconscious, until a few hours later when he would get up and spend time cleaning the kitchen, locking up the house, taking a shower, and getting ready for bed. He sleeps in shifts, my father, and now so does Samuel. And, so do I.

My fractured nights have gotten worse since January when I actually got a couch, because now after dinner I sit in the living room and read or write or study or work until the time when I suddenly and seemingly with no warning fall asleep: fully dressed, lights blazing, for hours. I usually wake up on my own around midnight but then, Dad-style, have to do the dishes, get in the tub, iron my clothes for the morning...the whole nine yards. By the time I actually get into my bed about an hour has passed and I have somewhere between three and four hours before my alarm goes off in the morning. Let me tell you: seven hours slept in shifts is waaay less restful than slept one after the other.

Story #27: Lice

Not long ago I was walking down the hallway at school with student I'm tutoring. He just arrived from Russia and is a complete newcomer, logistically speaking, so we are doing things like practicing number words by playing Bingo and sorting the foods in the kitchen pantry to learn the names of fruits and vegetables. This particular morning we were walking around the school introducing ourselves to people so we can practice greetings and conversation starters like "Good morning!" and "How are you?"

We had just finished up our lesson for the day, a game where we practiced color words and spatial orientation vocabulary by jumping in and out of a rainbow's worth of hula hoops, and were walking back to class when the assistant principal came racing by us down the hall. Her long blonde curls were pinned up haphazardly on her head and her hands, rubber-gloved, were held aloft. "LICE!" was her stage-whispered response to the quizzical look I gave her.

After dropping my student back off in class I returned to the office to find a full-scale infestation in effect. Kindergarteners were piled up everywhere waiting for someone to flip through their hair with the long thin wooden sticks that look eerily like the stirrers from Starbucks. In all I think we sent something like 18 kids home. Gaah.

Getting lice is every teacher's nightmare. As soon as the last student got picked up and sent home with the trilingual information packet about how to do their family's laundry (less pertinent for families who live in transitional housing and don't have ready access to a washer and dryer, but still) I sat myself down in a chair in the principal's office and made the student advisor check MY hair. Her verdict? "Mmm..." she said, rubber gloves rustling as she used the stick to section my hair and scratch at my scalp. "Very smooth, what conditioner do you use?" she wanted to know. All I wanted to know was whether or not I had lice. In fourteen years as a teacher I have had many cases of pinkeye but never this. Fortunately with a snap of the gloves coming off the student advisor pronounced me lice-free this time too. Sigh. All in a day's work.

Story #26: Samuel

This is my nephew Samuel. He was born on February 28, and he lives in Burlington, Iowa, with his parents and his older brother Henry. Samuel's dad is my brother Nathan. I haven't met Samuel yet but Henry and I are pals, so I can imagine that Samuel and I will be buds too. I was really lucky when Henry was born, because I got to meet him when he was four days old. Unfortunately I haven't met Samuel yet but hopefully I'll get to meet him soon.

My brother and his wife, my sister-in-teeth (yes) Kelli, are those kind of parents who take their kids EVERYwhere. This makes for very adaptable children, they have found. So at the ripe old age of 14 days, Samuel went to a Mary Kay convention last weekend. There were of course many jokes about various products that can make your (face elbows hands feet insert body part here) smooth like a baby's....well. I think you know what I mean.

Story #25: Long Time, No Write

I have not written any stories here in a long time. What have I been doing? Working, looking for work, remembering lessons from last year's sabbatical, reflecting on what they have to do with life here at home, making decisions, and following through on them. Oh--and most of all, collecting other stories. Time to get caught up! Here we go...sit down please, keep your hands to yourself, and listen :)

Story #24: You Should Always Try, or--Chag Purim Sameach!

On the way home, I was feeling badly for myself. Not even the normal, natural, "I kinda had a crummy day" feeling badly but real, full-on, "Whoa, if I don't show some serious self-control I'm about 30 seconds away from being That Girl who cries on BART" feeling badly.

It was a combination of lots of things: finding myself for the first time in eight years without a Purim costume and away from a raucous Jewish day school holiday carnival celebrating the triumph of Queen Esther, worrying about when my pink slip will come in the mail, second-guessing a relationship decision I made over the weekend, spending all day in chilly itchy school clothes when all I wanted was a pair of big jeans and my cozy Stanford sweatshirt, and...maybe more than anything else, in that moment at least, not having any hamentaschen.

Now this might not sound serious, and if that is the case all it means is that you have not had the privilege of experiencing this magnificent delicacy. To save space I will not wax educational about hamentaschen and their praises here, but do I invite you to learn about them on wikipedia.

Purim kind of snuck up on me this year and without having 20 families' worth of Jewish moms generously showering me with plastic bags full of homemade hat-shaped goodness in all flavors of the spectrum (note to anyone paying attention: I like apricot the best) I just didn't know how to get my fix. I realized about lunchtime that my cookie craving was not abating but rather growing stronger and so I called the Grand Bakery in Oakland.

"How late are you open?" I wanted to know.

"Six o'clock and not a minute later, I've got some business to conduct with my bottle of etrog vodka from last Sukkot," the man who answered the phone informed me.

"I'll be there in plenty of time," I promised earnestly. "How's the inventory holding up?" I was worried demand would outstrip supply.

"HA! Just wait 'til you see when you get here--we'll have, don't worry," the baker said in no uncertain terms before hanging up the phone.

But, it all went downhill from there. My 3:00-4:00 meeting after school went until 4:30. Afterward I hustled to Civic Center BART only to race down the stairs and see the Richmond train pulling away from the platform. I finally got on the Pittsburg train 12 minutes later and there was a switching problem between West Oakland and 12th Street which left us in a weird, precariously roller-coaster style position waiting on the tracks above Peralta in Oakland with nothing visible below in the form of tracks or a platform, only laundry flapping in the cold wind.

I raced up the escalator and out to the bus stop on Broadway across from the Paramount Theatre, just to see the #12 bus pulling away and the last warm square of sunlight fading from the sidewalk. Standing chilly and crabby against the Kaiser Permanente building there on the corner of 20th, I was faux-reading my book and trying to understand how I came to feel so upset about all of this when a man walked up to me, RIGHT up and wrapped his arms around me pulling me into a surprising hug-kiss combo. At first I thought my day was getting worse because I was being attacked, albeit with affection, right there in broad-yet-shrinking daylight but actually it was my friend Jordan headed to the Y a few blocks away. "Kotleba!" he said with a smile. "I thought that was you standing here!"

He doesn't know it but Jordan and I met at a very complicated time, about a year ago, when I was trying everything I could to pull off the second half of my sabbatical. We became acquainted through the professional Jewish community and he was part of a process I went through to try and make it possible to spend three months building a school in a refugee camp in Ghana. His organization was really my last ditch effort, he was my Obi Wan Kenobi but I just couldn't make it come together and after having tried what seemed to be everything I did not go to Africa after all. I stayed home, I began to make a new home for myself and that is perhaps how I learned what ended up being some of the most revolutionary lessons that came from those sixteen months.

It was a 45-second conversation today, between Jordan and I, and it might seem silly to ascribe so much power to that one chance meeting, but it reminded me of something I had forgotten on this chilly itchy worrisome day: I have way more power than I remember, a lot of the time. And if I just try, even if it seems like it's not working out in the moment, my powers will always come through for me.

Buoyed as I was by this reminder, I decided that I was going to turn my day around and make it to the Grand Bakery by 6 o'clock after all. I boarded the #12 bus at 5:45, got off at my house six minutes later, ran around the corner and jumped into the car I've found myself wondering lately if it's really worth having, and tore up Grand Avenue towards the movie theater. I drove past the bakery and took a big risk by not turning into that little tease of a municipal parking lot that always seems like it will have a spot but never does, and immediately past the crosswalk there was a spot on the street. I pulled in and jumped out, wallet in hand, racing up the street first the wrong direction in my haste and then the right one. I saw with the delight that the stacking plastic chairs, identical to the ones found at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, were still out on the sidewalk and I ran completely unapologetically into the bakery.

"You...have...no...idea...how...glad...I...am...you're...still...open..." I panted, leaning on the counter and unwinding my damp scarf from my sweaty neck.

"Oh, hey, did you call earlier? You said you'd be here by six, right? Nice work," the baker smiled, seated by the cash register, the earlier holiday rush long since over. "What can I get you?"

I ordered my long-awaited hamentaschen, half a dozen apricot and half a dozen cherry, which he pulled boxed and ready to go from the promised massive cookie trove in the window. They were $1.10 each or $12 for a dozen. How could I resist? I ordered one lone prune-flavored cookie, loose in a white wax paper bakery bag, to round out the assortment and as the young woman was ringing me up the baker made me an end-of-the day offer.

"Free cookie if you can name the artist and song," he said, jabbing his thumb at the radio perched above the door to the kitchen.

"Oh, I'm not much one for music," I replied, embarrassed since I could tell the singer was well-known and that I should be able to identify him. "I'm really just happy that I made it here in time, you have no idea how hard I tried to get here--I came from the city and rode the #12 bus from BART and then jumped in my car along the way because I was worried I wouldn't make it in time."

"Whoa, that's pretty impressive!" the baker nodded as the woman counted out my change. "You deserve some kind of special treat for that much effort. Come on--smaller free cookie if you can just tell me who the singer is."

I thought of my brother because I know Nathan does an imitation of this guy and his drowsy, wheezy tone but let's face it--I'd had quite an afternoon and now standing in the Grand Bakery at 6:02 p.m. on Purim, cookies finally in hand, was just not up for playing games. "I'm really sorry, I can tell he's famous but I just don't know his name."

The baker laughed. "His name is Bob Dylan," he said by way of explanation. "He only has the single most-imitated style in Western music."

As the woman who won the Oscar-predicting poll at Sage and Emily's last month but then couldn't identify Robert DeNiro when he came on stage, I had to laugh at myself. "Oh well," I said as I walked out the door, calling back over my shoulder to the baker. "Purim Sameach--I hope you had a happy holiday!" Walking back to the car, balancing my plastic bakery boxes, I smiled to myself with the realization that as confusing as the past days and weeks might have been it seems I still have my power to always pull something off after all.

And now here I sit on my couch, having had all kinds of plans for a dinner of soup and kale and baked potatoes. Instead it is almost one in the morning and I realize that as soon as I came home, put on my longed-for comfy clothes and ate my after-school snack of three types of hamentaschen I must have fallen asleep right in this very spot. I think at the end of a day like this one that might have been exactly what I needed.

Story #23: Hallelujah, It's Raining...

(03-10) 17:55 PDT SAN FRANCISCO - -- With 362 pink slips for San Francisco teachers in the mail, Mayor Gavin Newsom vowed today to give schools $23 million from the city's Rainy Day fund, doubling the amount he previously promised.

The district sent the layoff notices Monday by certified mail. School officials said the money would help save nearly 300 jobs, if not more.

The Board of Supervisors is expected to also support the allocation.

Once the district gets that in writing, it can rescind most if not all those pink slips, said school Superintendent Carlos Garcia. "We're really concerned about the impact it has on morale."

The amount of the Rainy Day funds coming to city schools has been a source of contention since the end of February.

Proposition G, passed by voters in 2003, created a pot of money filled in good economic times to be drawn down when times are tough. The measure said the school district can qualify for up to 25 percent of the fund's total - which stands at $92 million.

The mayor, however, said the district might only qualify for 25 percent of what's left after the city takes its share - leaving only $11.5 million for the schools.

The mayor and controller said Tuesday the schools qualify for the full 25 percent - $23 million.

"Those tough times are here and I want to prevent teacher layoffs by using our rainy day fund to aid the school district," Newsom said in a statement.

Story #22: Harvest of the Month

It's an interesting balance: because our school supports a primarily underserved student population, we end up having a lot of resources available. One of them is the Harvest of the Month program through the USDA. Each month a different produce item is featured as part of the program, and the SNC (School Nutrition Coordinator but we call her the SNACK--my officemate, Maria) teaches lessons, prepares recipes, does in-class tastings, and talks about this particular fruit or vegetable. In February the Harvest of the Month was cabbage and now in March it is peas. At the beginning of every new month we get a message in the WAD (which stands for Weekly Administrative Directive, a digest of news sent from the district office but I just like to say the acronym: WAD!) announcing the featured item and describing all kinds of information about it. Read on and learn more about this important vegetable. Maybe you'll even try some peas on your own this month. If you do, write a comment and let us all know!

WHO: All Staff at Elementary, Middle and High Schools

WHAT: March’s Harvest Of The Month! – Peas!

Did You Know?

*Green Peas are among the top ten most commonly eaten vegetables (fresh, frozen, or canned) by California children.
* The sugar snap pea is actually a hybrid of green and snow peas. It was developed in 1979 to make an edible-pod variety with sweeter, full-sized peas.

For more information about peas, click on the links below:
• Educator’s newsletter – Peas_Educator_Newsletter.pdf

• Family Newsletter (English) - Peas_Family_Newsletter_English.pdf

• Family Newsletter (Spanish) - Peas_Family_Newsletter_Spanish.pdf

• Family Newsletter (Chinese) - Peas_Family_Newsletter_Chinese.pdf

HOW:
• Distribute Harvest of the Month materials:
- Copy Educator’s Newsletter for every classroom teacher
- Copy Family Newsletter, send home in weekly envelope

• Make tasty recipes found in both newsletters

• Prepare and offer Pea Salad with Fresh Herbs or Mexican Rice, from the newsletters, at your next staff meeting

• Teach a lesson from the Educator’s Newsletter

WHY:
The goal of Harvest of the Month is to increase fruit and vegetable awareness and to motivate children, families, and school staff to make healthier choices.

WHEN: March 2009

Story #21: My Boys

This story is the follow-up to Hanging With My Boys. It's been lingering in draft form, as has much of my life it feels like, and is now being published about two weeks later. So no, I did not just get over having strep. That was awhile ago. But this story is still worth sharing. Read on...




When I finally got back to school after being out most of the week, marooned on my couch with strep throat and hulu.com, I went right away at lunch to find my boys. They were...playing four-square.

Huh?

"Hey guys, I missed you!" I said, coming up to them on the yard. The four-square ball bounced away, forgotten, as all six of them (or is it eight? There's so many and they kind of swarm so it's hard to tell) ran over to hug me at once.

"Teacher!" one of them said accusingly, "Where you been? Why you not been at school? You know what you always tell us--we gots to come EVERY day if we want to learn! That means you too, Teacher. What up?"

"Oh," I said, "I know, you're right. It IS important to come to school every day so that you can learn. And I should come to school every day too, but I was really sick. I had an infection in my throat and a fever and I had to stay home for two whole days. It was really boring. What's been happening while I was gone? I see you're playing four-square today."

The boys all started squirming and looking at the ground. One of them started poking their unofficial spokesperson. "YOU tell her," the poke-er whispered.

"Okay, well, um, so, you see, it's like this," the spokesperson said, jamming his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and avoiding my gaze. "We were doing Kung-Fu fighting without you and, well, we got in trouble."

My heart sank. "You got in TROUBLE?" I asked, incredulously. "From who?" I felt awful that they would have gotten reprimanded for something I specifically arranged with them.

"From (insert name of an administrator here), she told us fake fighting is like real fighting and she made us sit on the bench for an entire recess and said we can't do it no more so now we play four-square and we ain't been in any trouble since then," he explained.

This is such bad news, I thought. I can't believe they got in trouble for something I not only told them they could do, but something for which I helped them create a set of guidelines. Oh, no.

"Well, did you tell her that I told you you could and I helped you make up rules to keep it safe?" I asked.

"NO, oh no," the spokesperson responded as they all shook their heads adamantly. "We would never do that to you, Teacher, cuz you would've got in trouble too for telling us we could. We would never get you in trouble because we know you care about us and because you look out for us."

Stunned into silence and totally humbled, I hugged them goodbye and sent them back to play four-square. So this is the street mentality, I realized--protect the one who protects you, always. They could have been spared losing their recess, they would not have had to spend an entire day on the bench if they just would have told the administrator who got them into trouble that this had all been my idea. She would have come talked to me, and I would have confessed that it was a stupid idea and that I should not have done it in the first place--encouraged a group of Fifth Grade boys to do Kung-Fu fighting at recess!--and everyone would have been fine and we would have moved on. But my boys stayed silent to keep me out of trouble and now they are playing four-square.

I really need to think about this.