Happy New Year

Just wanted to be the first to tell you.

Coming home tomorrow.

On our Block

We're around the corner from the supposedly famous rue Cler market and close to the Eiffel Tower and the Gold Dome church where Napoleon's coffin is, so it's pretty busy, though there isn't anything on this street itself. What there is is a Chinese restaurant, and every day at lunch and dinner times there are several buses double-parked across the street dropping Chinese tour groups.

Good street entertainment on rue Cler today. Three women- one playing the accordion and the other two singing. I bought a large bag or carrots, because the carrots here are terrific and some shelling peas from Morocco. My last shopping expedition. Kind of sad. I could definitely live like this.

Tres cher

They tell you Paris is a really expensive place. Here's a couple of examples:

Tonight we didn't want to go out so we just got take-out things- a rotisserie chicken and potatoes and a mushroom pizza. The chicken was $9, not that bad, half pound of potatoes, about $5, and the mushroom pizza, medium US size, $27.

Earlier, we went for ice cream, at supposedly the best ice cream place in the city. Four of us each had 2 scoops, which combined would be one Ben and Jerry's scoop, of excellent ice cream, and to drink we had 3 coffees and a bottle of water. What do you think? $55.

It's very hard to have lunch for 4 without spending $75 and it's easier to spend $100. And dinner? I'll leave it to your imagination. It's a lot better, of course, if you buy things at a supermarket and prepare it yourself, and the bread is very cheap (a baguette is about a buck), and it's all really good food, so it's hard to get too upset, but you really can't do anything cheaply here.

The Louvre

I've been to the Louvre before. It's a big honkin' museum in the middle of Paris and you can't miss it. It used to be a palace, and if you came in one end and wanted to see something on the other end, you had to walk about a mile all the way around. Then some architect built a big pyramid in the middle of the palace and connected the 3 buildings and they all lived happily ever after. Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa, and a bunch of pictures of Jesus and Mary, all under the same roof.

So the other times I was here we had time to linger and spend time with the paintings we liked and search the incomprehensible guide for what we couldn't find. This time it find the greatest hits and get out. After all the buildup, everyone was ready to be disappointed by the Mona Lisa and it really wasn't that small, or that dirty or that impossible to see. There were, however, a ton of Japanese tourists ignoring the signs saying don't take pictures, with flash yet.

Venus de Milo I'd never seen before and it was very beautiful, though I'm not sure exactly what the big deal is, as compared to all the other amazing statues we saw. I'll have to do some research. I must note that the Greeks didn't have a goddess named Venus, she was called Aphrodite.

It was kind of strange seeing this amazing art with someone who was more concerned that the Sephora in the concourse might close before we left. It never occurred to me that one could spend 11 days in Paris and not experience it at all, but I can attest that it's possible. It's sad though.

Long Walk

I got up a bit early today and went for a long walk in a big circle. I probably went 4-5 miles in all. It's very nice out today, clear and not too cold. I find that I can walk almost endlessly without getting tired. Standing in one place isn't as good, but walking is fine.

I never had the chance to do the whole romantic Paris thing, because the only time I was here with a girl we had no money and fought most of the time. But I certainly buy into the whole beautiful Paris thing. It's impossible to walk for a block without seeing something worth looking at. Yesterday we went to see the department store windows for Galleries Lafayette and Au Printemps, the big department stores. It was an absolute mob scene. It's amazing I still have my wallet, and it was practically impossible to move around, but the windows at Au Printemps were really cool. We never got to Galleries because it was just too crowded, but the even there, once you got across the street, the lights were amazing. If you look in the other direction, you see the Opera house.

Everything's not that spectacular, but everything has at least some small pleasure.

More Paris

This and that

Or ceci and cela for all you Frankophiles. I don't think it's really spelled that way.

We ate at a large restaurant the other night and the waiter brought us the wrong appetizer, and when we complained the maitre d' walked over quickly and pulled a red card out of his pocket and called out "carte rouge!" like he was ejecting someone from a soccer game. He said he keeps it around for whenever a waiter makes a mistake.

All the pharmacies in town have condom vending machines outside.

I've been aware of what I call the inflation of superlatives. Once, "great" would do as a superlative, but it was eventually eclipsed by "amazing," "incredible," "awesome," and more recently "sick." Now what I'm hearing is "insane," as in "there's an insane number of calories in this dessert." I don't know where this trend is heading but I'm fairly sure it's nowhere good. It was bad enough taking the credibility out of incredible and the awe out of awesome, but now we're taking the insanity out of insane.

Finally, in the realm of all conversation leading to obscure music references, earlier today during one of out "Friends" mini-marathons (the apartment owners generously left seasons 5 and 6 on DVD here) we had a small technical problem and the dramatic child called out "Why?" and Ronnie and I both replied, "Why, because we like you." Many people would not know that reference but I won't spoil it for those who can enjoy it in peace.

Didn't do much today, but minimal drama. It's late. I'll put some more photos up tomorrow, especially since I'll be touring a famous cemetery in the morning while the girls are asleep. And then we'll be doing the Louvre.

More Profundities

One of Jerry Seinfeld's best known (and unfortunately most repeated) lines if "There's no such thing as fun for the whole family." Everyone laughs because if they've ever traveled as a family they know it's true. In general, traveling with one or more companions is very much more difficult and stressful than alone, and it really doesn't matter how close you are to the people you're traveling with. I've traveled extensively with all of my best friends at one time or another, and if the trip goes long enough you are absolutely guaranteed conflict. The key is what you do with the conflict.

Between my Junior and senior years of college, I went on a 7 week cross-country road trip with two good friends from college. I'll spare the details, but one of the guys is still my best friend, and I pretty much haven't spoken to the other one since.

Here, because it's intrafamily stuff, it's even more magnified. Every little thing takes on huge meaning somehow, even if it isn't really meaningful. So do you work through it or does it escalate or do you keep banging your head against the wall and nothing changes? Or perhaps all of the above. Sorry, no dirty laundry tonight, but let's hypothetically say that one family member, acting on a previous agreement, wakes everyone at 10:30. When is everyone ready to leave? Let's just hypothetically say it's at 1:45 PM. And then, hypothetically, after the family goes downstairs, the member who initially woke everyone remembers that they need to run back to the apartment to get something, which takes about 90 seconds. So who's the object of scorn here for delaying the outing? I'll never tell.

Profound Observation

Girls take a long time to get ready. Longer than guys.

A day of two days

We got up early this morning to catch a train to Reims, capital of the Champagne district. It's about 200 km from Paris, so by TGV it's a 45 minute very fast ride. These puppies really fly.

The city of Reims is pretty nice. It's old, and has a spectacular cathedral with a gorgeous rose window and a chapel with Marc Chagall stained glass windows. Funny, Chagall painted the ceiling at the opera too. Busy guy.

Before seeing the cathedral, we went to the Taittinger champagne cellars (caves, actually) for a tour. Apparently, when the Romans were in the area they had great need to the gypsum that's abundant under the surface there. They dug hundreds of holes, starting with a small square hole until they found what they wanted, then widening out in a square pyramid shape until they were about 50 feet below the ground. Centuries later, after the Romans had returned to Rome, the monks at the monestery above discovered the caves and built connecting tunnels and used them to store their primordial champagne. The caves are deep enough to keep a constant temperature, and the chalky walls (you can carve your name in them with a fingernail) absorb moisture and let air seep down from the surface. Very cool looking. Then of course we tasted the champagne. I like champagne.

After lunch we walked back to town, toured the cathedral, which as been there since the 13th century (and parts of it sure look it) and where every king from the 13th century to the Revolution was coronated. It's a very beautiful building. Then to Mumm's for a more modern kind of champagne tour and tasting :)

By that time, we needed to go to the train, and the second day of today began with an outbreak of let's say "drama." By the time we got back to Paris we were in no mood to go out to dinner and so I availed myself of all the treats the the Rue Cler market around the corner has to offer, including pate', rotisserie chicken and potatoes, cheese, baguette and fresh veggies. Tough life, I know.

Here's some pictures from the past few days:

More Paris and Reims

Opera

Yes, opera. last time Ronnie and I were in Paris, we had Opera tickets, but we misread the time and showed up half an hour late. The theater was completely locked up and we were really upset. We found out the next day that the musicians were on strike and the performance was canceled. This time, we got our tickets and got in a taxi 45 minutes before the 7:30 curtain. Mind you, had the ladies not been wearing high heels, we could have walked in about 25 minutes, and the Metro would have taken 15 or 20 minutes, but a taxi it was, and a disaster it was. The driver got in a traffic jam and would not turn out of it. Finally I summoned up enough French to start saying, un autre route. Fine for a block, then into another jam. Finally at 7:30, he suggested that we get out because the Opera was around the corner. We ran, as best as could be accomplished under the circumstances, and got into the theater to a classic French chorus of disapproval, with each ticket checker rolling their eyes and reminding us that it started at 7:30. I'm not kidding, the usher actually rolled her eyes. She didn't even try to get us to our seats, but folded out 4 jump seats in the aisle (guess they're not too strict about the fire laws here), sat us down and the lights dimmed and the show began.

We didn't stay for the whole thing. In our defense, let me note that the performance was 4 hours total and I should also mention that it wasn't my idea, and that the plot was, even in the liberal context of opera plots, incomprehensible. I read the synopsis 3 times and still couldn't follow it. Here's a piece of it:

ACT I

Scene 1. A deserted spot surrounded by hills

Bradamante, disguised as her brother Ricciardo, and her tutor Melisso have been ship-wrecked and cast ashore while searching for her lover Ruggiero. They meet Morgana, Alcina's sister, who falls in love with the disguised Bradamante and promises to take them to Alcina. With a clap of thunder the hills part and Alcina is revealed, surrounded by her court, including Ruggiero and a young boy called Oberto. She receives the travellers graciously and tells Ruggiero to show them the sights of the island.

Bradamante confronts Ruggiero, who recognises her as Ricciardo but denies any interest in Ricciardo's sister - he is the faithful lover of Alcina.

He runs off to find her and Oberto asks the travellers if they have seen his father Astolfo. They too had been cast ashore by a storm, but his father, after a welcome from Alcina, had disappeared. Bradamante suspects that Astolfo has been changed into a wild beast, like Alcina's other victims.

Oronte, Alcina's commander-in-chief, rightly suspecting the constancy of Morgana, whom he loves, charges Bradamante with having stolen Morgana's love. Morgana defends Bradamante and insults Oronte. Bradamante tries to calm their mutual recriminations.

Got it? And the action flows naturally from there. This is just the first SCENE. And there were naked guys onstage for that scene too, though it was impossible to glean their purpose. To add to the confusion, back in Handel's time, the "female" characters were played by castratos (I checked and it's not castratoes). Thankfully, there were not available for this staging, so they used women to play women pretending to play men. And let's not get into the enchanted wild beasts part of the plot, which doesn't happen until act 2. I think it has a happy ending though, except that Alcina herself is somewhat dissatisfied, but not enough to call it a tragedy.

So we went for desert across the street and took the Metro home. Off to Reims tomorrow to visit Champagne producers and ride the 200 mph train.

I'll post some photos tomorrow.

Notre Dame on Christmas Day

We missed Christmas Eve at Notre Dame because it was just too cold, but we did go there today. I've been there before, but that doesn't diminish what an amazing place it is. We stood on a 100+ yard long line to get in, and more and more and more people kept pouring in, but it still managed to hold them all. It was crowded, but not uncomfortably so. There was an organ concert going on, which was cool. A lot of the sound felt like it was coming from a couple of hundred feet up, which I guess was the case. One oddity- the creche had a projection screen behind it that showed a beach scene and the ground was very definitely sand, and I don't remember that Bethlehem is on the beach. And I've been on a lot of beaches and forgetting about the whole Jesus thing, don't remember seeing cows, or goats, or for that matter wise men there.

Oddities aside, it's incredibly beautiful and awe-inspiring in a good-scary kind of way. I like seeing the old churches more than the others in our little party. Afterwards we had crepes on the street, which was fun to watch the guy make and very nice to eat on a cold day.

What we do in Europe

We're pretty secular at home, but when we're in Europe we always want to go to the Jewish area, maybe because the Holocaust seems so much closer here than at home. Unlike in some of the other cities we visited, parts of the Marais are still Jewish, though much of it is gay and trendy. I had a French bagel and we had great falafel (sign outside, "Lenny Kravitz loves it.").

There were plaques memorializing people who had lived in the houses and had been taken to concentration camps. It was very sad to think about, no matter how many delis and bakeries and mens' boutiques there were, and there was a Starbucks around the corner too.

Earlier in the day we went on a huge ferris wheel right at the end of the Champs Elysees. That was a cool view. Paris is just a series of great views from anywhere. You can always catch a glimpse of something great.

It's Christmas Day here. We shopped some last evening. I always find it kind of cute and pathetic when I see people scurrying around buying presents on Christmas Eve (though not as pathetic as the guy running out of Acme with a bunch of flowers at 2PM on Mothers Day). Here it seems just cute. Everyone is relaxed, kind of mellow and happy. This is a very Christian place and a very commercial place, but the way they treat the holiday is very low key. I also like the way they say to each other "bon fete." Good festival, or good feast literally. We did have a good dinner last night, and though we continue to work through the drama, it's a good holiday.

Where we are

We really didn't want to stay in a hotel in Paris, so after a bunch of research on the internet I found a two bedroom apartment on the Left Bank, near the Eiffel Tower. It looked very nice from the pictures and the location was great, so we took the plunge.

It's not as nice as the photos (though some things in Paris are nicer than the photos), but it's a pleasant, small, well-equipped apartment with 2 very small bedrooms,a kitchen, a decent size, bright living room with a TV and modem, a little dining nook, 2 bath (actually shower) rooms and a single toilet. So far, it works pretty well. It's nice and warm, which isn't something you can count on and which is very much appreciated after walking around in the cold, and very convenient to the Metro, the Eiffel Tower, and a very nice neighborhood. All in all it's a good thing. I think it's just nice having a room that's not the room you sleep in, and I like having a kitchen.

Traveling

Let me put this as delicately as I can. Traveling with a bunch of females is an experience. The fact that two of the females are in their teens only serves to improve the level of drama.

I am (or at least I think I am) a pretty easy traveler with a couple of exceptions. I get very caught up in the logistics- getting to the airport, seats on the plane, getting to the hotel, being satisfied with the hotel (or apartment in this case)- that stuff, and can get irritable quickly if that doesn't go well. But once I arrive anywhere I'm happy happy happy. I can just walk around a new place aimlessly and endlessly and find something or nothing to do and look at and be completely entertained and content.

I'm sure there are women who are easy travelers, I think my mother was one, but the women in my life are not among them. And I'm not trying to pick on anyone. Women are more complicated creatures than men, and complicated doesn't do easy. Lots of things that don't matter at all to men matter a lot to women, and I'm not just talking about physical appearance. Everything from getting up in the morning to eating to a day's activities to going to bed is more complicated for women. One of the annoying/endearing qualities of traveling with teenage girls is that all of the internal turmoil that all women live with but adults generally keep to themselves is right there on the surface. I am now quite familiar with what a girl who's concerned about her weight goes through every time she sits down to eat, and though I don't enjoy living through it, it's enlightening.

Fear of heights

We went to the Eiffel Tower today. A very impressive piece of business. Tall, made of metal, that kind of thing. The lines were long but not ridiculous. I'd been there before but only walked up the stairs to the first level. The view from the top was amazing, and it wasn't nearly as scary as one might expect. I'm not really afraid of heights, but I'm not overly fond of them either, and the view looking up from the middle level, while beautiful, was shiver-inducing.

When I see things like this (not that I can really think of anything else like this) I always wonder about what people thought when they first built it, in this case in 1889. What would be just as amazing now? And could you go to the bathroom up there like you can now? I know that Eiffel was a genius, but did he really have indoor plumbing in mind when he built this?

By the time we got down and had a late lunch (we're still kind of on US time, 6 hours earlier) the tower was sparkling with strobe lights. Great stuff. This city really knows how to do it up for the holidays. The Champs Elysees was also lit beautifully, with all the trees either sparkling of having a kind of falling start effect, and many of the streets have their own special decorations.

Paris first two days

Things I've Learned (or remembered) So Far

If you're trying to push a door open and everyone keeps calling out "Tirez! Tirez! then tirez must mean pull.

There's no mention of anything called "cafe donc" in any guidebook, and it's just coffee and hot water soaking in a little copper pitcher, but it's delicious.

Cheddar cheese is suitable only for putting on hamburgers.

They sell little hot packs shaped like teddy bears. They're cute, but the idea of heating a teddy bear in the microwave just doesn't sit right with me.

More to come...

To Paris

In all the trips I've taken recently there's been one constant, the airlines suck and a large percentage of the people who work for them should never be allowed to interact with customers. Let me just say that everything ended up fine and we are safely inhabiting out little apartment neat the Eiffel Tower.

The night before the trip, US Airways (Formerly known as US Air or more frequently US Scare) sent an e-mail suggesting that I check in in advance. I started to do so and was given the option of upgrading to first class for a modest fee. I was concerned because there were 4 of us and I wanted to sit at least in pairs so I called the reservation line. The very nice woman there said there were 4 seats and that although she couldn't guarantee the exact seats, that there'd be no problem with us sitting together. Needless to say, the next evening at the airport the ticket agent, known only as William R (they are smart to not put their last names on their tags) could not have been nastier, more sarcastic, or less sympathetic as he sat us in 3 separate places.

I come from what you'd call a client service background, the basis of which is having a true understanding of your customer and being able to translate that into whatever action will bring them satisfaction. If it simply isn't possible, you do the best you can to sympathize with and assuage their feelings of disappointment and frustration and perhaps suggest ways they can improve their situation beyond what you personally can do. Let's just say that William R lacked the necessities to do this. Again, it turned out fine, we got other passengers to switch so we could sit together. Then we got to Paris airport.

Have you ever gone down an escalator when there's a big crowd at the bottom and you get a little scared that you're going to get squashed into them by all the people behind you? Well, that's what we go as we made out way to Passport Control. I'm sympathetic to the airport people. After all, who could have anticipated that several large airplanes would arrive at the world's 6th busiest airport during the busiest travel week of the year? Two, count 'em, two agents at a window in a very small area with a moving walkway disgorging a constant stream of people. Disaster was averted only because people started crawling under barriers and because the intrepid passport control agents ceased to actually exercise control. Stamp 'em and move 'em through.

Anyway, here we are. We had a nice walk down the Champs Elysees and a pleasant dinner and now it's time for bed. Not many pictures yet but I'll try to upload some tomorrow.

A Long Week

It feels like forever since I last posted. After everything last week I was exhausted, and then we had our annual neighborhood Chanukah party, which involves a lot of housekeeping and shopping. that was Monday and the rest of the week was a blur.

Here's a quick roundup of what's been going through my head:

Regarding the steroids in baseball happening, I really could care less. If anybody was serious abut trying to clean up, all the sports, professional and "amateur," would band together and pool money and come up with a system that at the very least would make it expensive and difficult to cheat. It's like anything else, you can't make your car impossible to steal, but you do whatever you can to make it require specific skills and/or equipment so that any old idiot can't do it. If it cost a lot, most people couldn't afford to do it. The current patchwork system is just stupid.

Saw a terrific movie on DVD. It's called The Lookout and it's one of the best things I've seen in a while. Good story, excellent acting.

Getting ready for vacation. Of course the main thing that one mostly does to get ready for vacation is work, because that's what makes you need the vacation in the first place. The craziest thing about making a packing list thses days is the number of chargers you need. I made a list off the top of my head and had about a half dozen things, but it keeps getting added onto. We have 4 cameras and a video camera (ugh, ugh, ugh!) and every single one of them needs its own stupid battery charger. Plus cell phones (rented because Verizon phones don't work where we're going), computers, ipods, maybe a portable video player or two. Then of course the whole thing has to be adapted to foreign electricity. And I'm sure there's something I'm not thinking about.

Had parent conferences at school this week. I like parent conferences, though that may not be the majority view. I think the main complaint is that we have to do a full workday and then do anywhere from 10-20 meetings in the evening, but since I usually try hard to understand all of my students, meeting the parents is a helpful step.

Strange Days

If you're interested in the details, this is how everything unfolded.

Wednesday afternoon I wasn't feeling well, so I went to sleep until around 6:30 with the phone turned off. I didn't notice that the voice mail light was flashing when I got up, but I don't always check it even if it is. I don't like talking on the telephone.

Thursday morning I'm in the middle of a class when I'm suddenly told that there's an emergency and I need to take a phone call. My wife says that there were 2 voice mail messages from Wednesday around 6PM, one from my sister and another from a family friend, saying my mother had had a heart attack and was in critical condition. I called my sister and she said that she'd called my cell phone twice and left voice mails. The voice mails were there, but my phone hadn't rung all day (thanks, Verizon). She said things looked grave.

I got the next train to Connecticut and as I was arriving in Stamford, my sister called to say that, much to everyone's surprise, my mother was conscious and seemed to be doing better. I got to the hospital a few minutes later and she was in distress again, which continued for a couple of hours until the doctors got things under control and she fell asleep comfortably.

After that I hung around and had several hours of small talk with my father and sister and brother. By midday today things seemed stable and there wasn't a compelling reason to stay and I wanted to sleep in my own bed. So here I am. I'm exhausted, but it's the weekend. This was my second trip to the hospital in 5 days, so who knows what will come next. It's just wait and see.

Ambiguity

Well, it looks like my mom is going to pull through again. This is the second time in a week that we've had major incidents that made us feel like this might be it. My mom has had ALS for 9 years. There's no cure and the effects are irreversible. The average prognosis from onset is around 5 years.

In a case like this, one can be excused feeling a bit torn. I don't really feel like expounding on the meaning of life at the moment, but I can't help thinking about it a bit. On one hand, life is precious and even the shadow of my mother that remains is a big part of my father's life. On the other hand, she was such a vibrant, active person that I can't imagine that she'd want to continue in this state indefinitely. Life versus death is about as clear a distinction as can be made. However, a person reasonably take the view that life should be extended as long as possible and just as reasonably take the view that it would be a blessing to everyone if it was just over. I don't find the existence of two diametrically opposed views so interesting. What's interesting is that I can feel them both simultaneously.

What's Going On With Me

My mom is stable and they're preparing to move her out of the Coronary Care Unit to the Intensive Care Unit, which is just down the hall, pending approval of the attending doctor. All the signs are at least not negative. If things stay stable I'll come home, because this could go on indefinitely. My father's been living with this kind of roller coaster for quite a while now, but I want to sleep in my own bed.

I'll expand on the whole experience when I'm not so tired. I really appreciate all the kind messages I've gotten.

Facebook

Because of user pressure, Facebook now allows you to turn off Beacon. I strongly urge you to do so.

Beacon

If you follow news about the Internet, or if you use Facebook, you may have heard of Beacon, their new advertising system. Thanks to this system, Facebook is watching you even when you’re not looking at Facebook. If you buy something from Overstock.com or movie tickets on Fandango or shop at a few dozen other sites, Facebook will notify your friends as part of your news feed. You can say no, but as of this moment you have to say no every time you shop at these places.

All I can say to you is, if you’re going to keep using Facebook, and after a stunt like this I’m not sure it’s advisable, you need to be aware that your every move is being tracked and analyzed as a way to extract money from your bank account. Facebook is no longer something fun and cute. It is now a huge corporate enterprise that’s under constant pressure to raise profits and you are the ones they’re going to be making those profits from. Also, if you’re buying presents for people, be aware that they may be getting news about what you’re buying.

Just remember that Internet privacy is oxymoronic.

Train Blogging

It’s Saturday morning and I’m on the train. I’m going to Connecticut to see my mom, who’s in the hospital again. She has advanced ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and can neither move nor communicate. She got terribly sick a couple of days ago and spent a couple of days in a kind of coma, but she’s out of it now and though I’m already tired and this is an exhausting experience, I’m going to say hi and give her a kiss and hold her hand and tell her what I’m up to.

At the train station this morning, in addition to learning that this is National Elevator and Escalator Safety Week (who decides these things anyway? Is anybody checking to see if this is really the case or could I just say that next week is National Duct Tape Appreciation Week put up signs in hardware stores and everybody would just say, “Yeah, okay, duct tape is pretty cool, I guess” and move on unquestioningly?) I was in one of the 7 places in the station where you could buy coffee and a bagel and the loudest alarm I’ve ever heard went off in the store. It was coming from the fire alarm, and though I neither saw nor smelled a fire, I quickly exited in case the sprinklers suddenly came on. Amazingly, nobody else in the store even moved. They kitchen workers glanced around, but kept at their routines. The customers sat at their tables. Mind you, aside from the fact that an alarm is intended to induce, well, alarm, there was a 110 decibel (a logarithmic scale, by the way) high pitched shriek that was even loud on the other side of the concourse. Maybe we need a National Alarm Alarmedness Week.

The train, as it heads north out of New York, provides a spectacular view of Manhattan. It parallels the Triboro Bridge and crosses Randalls Island. I see the fields where I used to play softball and the place where we’d huddle under the bridge if it was raining. The island also has a mental hospital on it, and something called Icahn Stadium, named after the corporate raider, Carl Icahn, presumably by himself. But I see nothing resembling a stadium. Just a football field with lights and metal bleachers.

There’s no internet on the train, but if you leave the network sniffer on, you see networks appear and disappear as you pass through neighborhoods.

I’m reading an article about a famous avant-garde stage piece called Einstein on the Beach, by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, which I saw back in 1984. It’s an extraordinary piece of business, over 5 hours long without an intermission, and things happen so slowly and repetitively that even if you take a ten minute break at any point, you’re unlikely to miss anything. There’s no story and no consistent musical theme, just a bunch of tableaux. The one I remember best is The Train, where a woman stands on a platform on the back of a train and a man stands off to the side. It’s possible that they are singing to each other. What they’re singing is a series of tightly timed and subtly changing numerical phrases. To get the flavor of it, try singing the numbers 1 to 3 to yourself, very quickly an rhythmically and then after about five minutes, adding 4 for about 3 minutes, then just 1 and 2. Occasionally change from 3/4 to 6/8 time. All the while the train is moving very very very slowly toward the back of the stage. At least you think it is, but it’s so slow you can’t be sure. This goes on for about 20 minutes and then stops for no apparent reason. It also has dance pieces that are equally long and repetitive. The dancers do get to go offstage for a minute here and there. I remember one piece where they were doing some kind of circular pattern, then one of the dancers disappeared and returned 5 minutes later with a ace bandage wrapped around her knee, then disappeared again, not to return.

I’m writing this as I travel, but I can’t post it mid-trip. I’m now on my way home. I just need to mention a little bit of rental car haggling that took place when I got to Stamford. I only needed to go a short way to the hospital, but the taxis in Stamford…Not so bad during the winter, but during the summer my seminal taxi experience was walking up to the lead cab and the guy is in the driver’s seat, shoes off, clipping his toenails into the street. All of the cabbies there are Haitian, and while there may be many fine people in Haiti, those who emigrated to Stamford, CT are not. Plus it’s hellishly expensive. So it costs basically the same to rent a car.

So I go into Avis having reserved a subcompact, and the guy asks me if I want to upgrade to a midsize for only $6 extra. I say no thanks, I’m only going a few miles. He says, how about a small SUV? I say, I’ll take a bigger car but I’m not paying any extra. He says okay, I’ve got a subcompact for you. He fills in the contract and gives me a key and says it’s a G6 in space 9 and I know instantly that he’s been trying to scam me. The G6 is a midsize. They don’t have any subcompacts there, and he’s just trying to squeeze the extra 6 bucks out of me. When I return the car it’s a different guy and I tell him what happened and he just smiled and said yeah, we’re supposed to do that.

The Stamford Transportation Center, as it’s called, is a train station. They seem to think that because there’s a bus stop across the street on one side and a parking lot on the other side and I-95 next to it that it’s some sort of multimodal hub, but it’s just a monstrously ugly train station, sitting over the tracks on some concrete pillars. I’ve taken the train from Stamford to Philadelphia more than 50 times. When you get there, the board always says it’s on time and it never, repeat, never is. Three minutes late is the best I’ve seen, but more normally it’s between 10 and 30. This is comforting if you’re late, but annoying if you’re not.

These have been two completely uneventful train rides, easy and timely. Very unusual, I must say. My mom is doing pretty well, but they still don't know what caused this episode.

An autumn day

Literally. That's what we had. An Autumn day. On Wednesday, all the leaves were on the trees and seemingly mostly green, on Thursday it was beautiful and colorful, and on Friday the wind blew everything down and now there are no leaves on any of the trees on my block.

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.

Special Black Friday Preview

I couldn't find my reading glasses when I was eating lunch, so instead of reading I went through the circulars that came with today's paper to survey the early bird sale times. Here are my results:

9:00 1
8:00 1
7:00 5
6:00 1
5:30 2
5:00 10 (Best Buy starts giving out numbers at 3 AM)
4:30 1 (Some place called Ink Stop)
4:00 2
No time specified or normal hours: 10

My daughter and I decided that 4AM, the opening time for Kohls and JC Penney, was simply to early to be early. 4AM is still night it's not morning.

Thanksgiving

I went for a walk this morning, which was nice. I'm thankful that I get to work with people (adults and kids) that I'm fond of, but I'm not someone who really craves company. In fact, by nature I'm pretty content to be alone. One of my weaknesses in business is that I don't like being bothered, and so by logical extension I don't like bothering anybody else. Well, part of an account manager's job is to bother people and make sure they're doing your work, (I'll expand on how ad agencies operate at another time) and I just wasn't very good at that part. Anyway, it was nice to take a nice walk alone.

We seldom do a traditional Thanksgiving dinner here. We go to grandma's house one night, the night this year being Friday. Last year on the Thursday we went out to eat, but since I'm the only one in my family who actually likes turkey, it wasn't very successful I didn't want to do some kind of miniThanksgiving, so I decided we're having a Thanksgiving brunch.

Interesting to go in a supermarket on Thanksgiving. It's not your usual crowd. There's a lot of action in the baking aisle, which is usually pretty unpopulated, and there are a lot of men who seem to be husbands sent out to get a missing ingredient or two. I was buying a bunch of things for the brunch, but I was also looking for whole blanched almonds (the kind with no skin). Nuts are confusing to find in the supermarket. There's always an aisle that says "nuts," but only a small fraction of the nut varieties live there. There's a pretty good selection in the baking aisle, but most of the action is in and around the produce. I counted at least 20 different types of almonds in this supermarket, including skinless slivered, sliced and dry roasted and salted, but no whole, plain blanched almonds. Sigh. Off to Whole Foods, to fight off the hordes of vegans swarming around the Tofurkey case.

Names

The New York Times has a list where you can search for your last name from among the top 500 surnames in America. The big news is the growth of Hispanic names. Although I saw some names that I've known Jewish people to have, the highest ranking name that I think "sounds" Jewish is Jacobs, which is #233. Zimmerman and Klein are in the mid-330's. I didn't look for any more.

Here's the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17surnames.html

Righting a wrong

I am aware that one of the noticeable omissions on this blog is the lack of discussion of produce. I think we all tend to take produce for granted, unless we design supermarkets, which are nearly all consciously designed to (1) make you enter in the produce section because it's pretty and makes for good impulse shopping, and (2) make you walk through as much of the store as possible to get to the milk.

Anyway, I just wanted to remark that Honeycrisp apples, purchased in the produce department, are the best food ever. I've never had anything edible in the house that disappears as quickly. As a family we eat between 25 and 30 of them a week.

Friday

I went to New York Friday. My parents sponsor a concert by this amazing organization called Young Concert Artists. Conservatory students audition to be in YCA, which helps them get bookings and teaches them how to live as a professional musician. Impressive stuff, and an impressive list of alumni as well, including Emanuel Ax and Pinchas Zuckerman. Today it was a Russian cellist. He was great and the accompanist was maybe the best I've ever seen. Turns out she won a prestigious award as a "collaborative musician." I didn't know there was such a designation. Fascinating.

After the concert, we had an hour before our train, and the daughter wanted to go to the big Macy's and get sprayed with lots of kinds of perfumes. I decided not to partake and went to the Starbucks on the balcony. It reminded me of a favorite holiday ritual of mine, where I'd go to down to Herald Square on Christmas Eve, park myself in the Macy's balcony, and watch the goyim scramble for their last minute presents. Now I could do that and have a latte at the same time. And who says progress isn't good?

In Macy's we stumbled onto the ball that drops from the top of One Times Square this New Year's Eve. I tried to insert a picture but Blogger is malfunctioning, so you'll have to take my word for it. It was big and bright and pretty and it changes colors every few seconds. I want one.

Car Conversation

M: "My vocabulary sucks, but I guess I can just study words for the SAT"
F: "I think the flash cards will ameliorate the problem."
M: "What's ameliorate?"
F: "An SAT word"
M: "Daaad!"
S: "At least it's not like my dad. He uses these big words and then asks me what the Greek and Latin roots of them are."
F: "Cool, now I can do that too and you can't say 'none of my friends' parents make them do that.' "
M: "Daaad!"

Boomer Generation

I'm sure there have been other generations that have felt this way, but I can't help thinking about the explosion of consumer goods in my lifetime. I was thinking about this because I just spent $2.29 to buy a package of gum. My daughter says this is her favorite gum and I'm thinking, sure it is, 'cause I'm paying for it. I then remarked that $2.29 for gum was the stupidest thing I've ever seen. So I was thinking about candy and the like, and I remember when Sweetarts appeared. They were the first "intense" candy, though they seem pretty tame now.

So it got me thinking about other stuff that's arrived within the bounds of my memory. In music playback, for instance, I've seen the introduction of the cassette tape (I had a portable reel-to-reel deck when I was a kid- fun, but messy if you dropped the tape), the portable cassette player, the compact disk and its portable player, and now MP3 and the related digital technologies. I got my first computer in 1986 and I was the first person I knew who had one (same for the pocket calculator in 1972).

Writers' Strike

Seems like sort of an ironic title, don't you think? We had an interesting discussion in class yesterday about the Hollywood writers strike and the Broadway stagehands strike as well. I'm firmly on the side of the union here, at least in the writers strike. It seems like there's plenty of money to go around here, but residual payments are what level the income streams of people in a fickle business, and I'm not inclined to believe anything the studio heads say.

My feeling about unions were shaped by my cable TV years, when I was on the negotiating team for several contracts. Some of them were easy, some were nasty (sabotaging equipment and that kind of stuff, no violence). But my strongest memory was the negotiation in Portsmouth, Ohio. I was working with a regional manager named Walter, who lives in Johnstown, Pennsylvania by choice. Portsmouth is a small city, about 20,000 people, on the Ohio River, not too far from the appropriately named Ashland, Kentucky.

To get to Portsmouth you fly into Huntington, West Virginia, about 50 miles down the river. Huntington is in coal mining country and is very, very hilly. Since there's no flat ground, they chopped the top off one of the larger hills and created an area large enough to land jets. It was always a little frightening flying in there, because the hill ended right after the runway did, kind of like landing on an aircraft carrier, except with wooded hillsides instead of water. Portsmouth itself is known (not when I was there) for having one of the worst pigeon problems in the country. There were so many pigeons in the downtown area that the mayor had speakers installed over which they blasted the noises that hawks and eagles make when they're swooping down to nab a tasty squab for dinner. I never found out if that worked or not.

During the negotiation, I got to see the union rep ask good old Walter if we could improve our wage offer to the lowest paid workers by 10 cents an hour, I think it was from $5.50 to $5.60. Walter would look down at his papers, then look the guy in the eye and say, no, we can't afford it. And here I am thinking, these guys work to keep the business running and they live in this crappy town and we can't budge a lousy 10 cents an hour for the dozen lowest paid employees? I knew then that I wasn't cut out to be a management negotiator. So I'm an MBA who doesn't trust big business. What can I say?

Trying to do this more regularly

I'm aware that it's not really important that I blog every day, but if I don't it goes against my self image as someone who has at least one interesting thought every day.

I just bought a few graphic novels. I read V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore, which was horrifying and wonderful, so I got another one of Moore's books, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Steve Cloves' Ghost World, which was made into a pretty good movie that happened to be Scarlett Johansson's debut. I liked the movie and I heard the book was better. Since I was at least a medium level comic book fan as a kid, the transition to this for is pretty easy.

Parent conferences coming up. They're a lot of work, but usually very useful for all involved, and I like getting to know parents. It's also end of the marking period, which is generally pretty stressful for everyone.

Speaking of which, I've got some papers to mark. I'll try to be back soon.

Bike Riding

I hadn't been out on my bike for a couple of weeks, but I used my recovered hour this morning to go out for a ride. The first few pedals felt terrific; the power of my legs going to the wheels and propelling me forward. That was great, but I realized as I continued that there was more to my enjoyment than that.

The great thing about bike riding is that it's full of sensation. The feeling of the fast air on my skin, the smell of an autumn morning, the sounds of everything from birds and squirrels to cars and lawnmowers, and sights of the length and contour of the road and everything it passes through make it a rich experience. I realized as I rode along, that all the comforts of home mean the absence of those senses. Don't get me wrong, I think that homes have many good points, facilitating survival being perhaps the handiest. But if you're in a properly heated, quiet, relatively odorless place, it maybe dulls your senses just a bit (thank goodness I don't have to work in such a place). You don't really notice it until you get a jolt like I did this morning. I also noticed that somebody's running for Sheriff of Narberth. Does he get to wear a silver star?

The one thing that always bothered me about living and working in the suburbs is that it's possible to get through your entire day almost completely isolated from your environment. This is why I couldn't wait to move out of LA, which was much worse because everything there is designed not only so that you don't have to step out into anything, but so that you can avoid all but the most necessary human contact as well. Where I live, at least I can and do walk to the supermarket or the drug store, or ride a bike to almost anything important. But you have to make the effort. There's nothing about suburban life that naturally tends toward that. When I lived in Manhattan, I walked 2 miles to and from work, and it was never boring. Even when I lived on Old City I could walk to my office in Liberty Place and that wasn't boring either.

Whenever we travel, I always like to get out and find the supermarket and the post office and all the regular life stuff. It helps me feel that I am where I am, and not just floating through. It puts everything in context. I find that comforting.

Life

I don't know if this is instructive in any way, and there certainly isn't any reason why it has to be, but here's an incomplete list of some stuff I did by the time I was 25, just as a way of demonstrating that you can do an awful lot without actually "accomplishing" anything.

• Lived for 2 years in Zimbabwe (my parents' doing, not mine, and I remember nothing of it, though I have an interesting scar as a souvenir)
• Two years as fraternity president, the most interesting moment being when one of the house members came out of the closet, and the ensuing debate as to whether he should continue to live in the house
• Saw the final game of 2 World Series, the Mets 1969 win and the Yankees 1978 Reggie Jackson 3HR game (I slept outside Yankee Stadium for those tickets, so it was particularly sweet) and 2 NBA finals, including the famous Willis Reed game
• Had an Orthodox Bar Mitzvah in a Boro Park shul made up almost entirely of WW I veterans, average age about 70
• Drove across the US 5 times, passing through all 48 states. Had a head-on collision near Mt. Ranier in Washington. Drove the car all the way back with a steering column that was so bent that if you turned the wheel all the way left it would just stay there and you'd drive in circles.
  
• Ran a floating craps game in high school made up of all the honors math kids. I guess we were hooked on probability. After we got caught I taught them all to play bridge.
• Won my college bridge championship twice and played in a national tournament at U Penn (my phirst time in Philly)
  
• Walked across the Brooklyn Bridge about 50 times (something everyone ought to do), including once in a peace march
• Worked as a copy boy in a newsroom the day Richard Nixon became president
• MC'd a weekly trivia show, and had my own college radio show from 2AM to 4AM.
• Ran over my own dog (maybe the worst thing ever). Wasn't my fault, she ran under the rear wheel after I'd driven by
• Won a bicycle on a TV show. This is actually a good story. My whole Cub Scout pack went to a TV kids game show. The minimum age was 10, but a bunch of us (myself included) were only 9. When we asked the Scout Leader what to do, he told us to LIE and say we were 10. Don't think that's part of the scout pledge. Anyway, I won the biggest prize on the show. The bike got stolen from me at knife point 2 years later.

Off to a Bat Mitzvah. More to come...

End of the week venting

First of all, how about that Verizon Wireless? When does Daylight Savings time end guys? From wha I read in the news, what Verizon is best at at the moment is eavesdropping on their customers without a warrant, but that's another story.

All I have to say specifically about today is that it's part of the basic functionality of a school to have classes flow one into the next smoothly. Bells? Don't really need them. What you need is an agreed on way to mark the end of one period and the beginning of the next. If bells are they way you do that, fine, but then make sure it happens. No bells? Fine, clocks work too.

Regarding my recent post about postage, I heard that about 20 college recommendations got returned for insufficient postage, so I guess I wasn't the only one (I guess this is my post-postage post). I don't envy the kids and how much work it is doing the applications. I applied to 19 colleges, which was unheard of and probably still is (it wasn't nearly as expensive back then, even in constant dollars), and it was just a ridiculous amount of work, especially since there were no word processors or printers or common applications or anything. My Mom and I typed everything. Of course, I ended up hating the college I picked, but that was a well-intentioned mistake and I don't fault myself for making it, though I wish in retrospect that I'd transferred once I knew I hated it. But then, of course, I wouldn't have ended up here. Unless I did. It's like Yogi Berra says, if you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Not much posting...

because I've been putting my writing energies into college recommendations. I will say now that I appreciate envelopes that do not require being licked, and I do check to make sure I have correct postage. I've gotten a surprising number of envelopes with 39 cent stamps on them. No worries. I've still got lots of 2's left over from Bat Mitzvah time (we missed the deadline for 39 cents by 48 hours).

Things should be back to normal by next week.

Pay attention and do what you're doing

Let me start by admitting that there is nothing inherently interesting about a math class. Some people will find it interesting, some people won't, no matter how fascinating the teacher finds it. So why pay attention? You can always ask your friends later or meet with the teacher or figure it out yourself as you study for tests.

There's a simple reason. You should pay attention in math class because that's what you're doing right then. Just like you should pay attention to whatever you're doing. One of my biggest worries for kids growing up these days is that they're in a near-constant state of distraction. It's now almost impossible for kids to do just one thing at a time, and I think that's bad for them. I think I speak knowledgeably about this, because when I was just out of college I would come home from work and do the following:

• Put music on the stereo
• Turn on the TV with the sound off
• Read the newspaper
• Eat dinner

All at the same time.

Do you think I was getting maximum enjoyment out of any of those things? Of course not. No matter how skilled a multitasker you are, the brain cannot devote full attention to more than one thing at a time. Now just because it sounds funny doesn't necessarily make it bad, but I truly believe that my life became much richer when I learned to do only one thing at a time.

The current term for this is "being in the moment." You hear it mostly from self-help types and oddly enough, professional athletes, who know that to perform at peak level they have to be concentrating on what they're doing and nothing else. "Being in the moment" sounds kind of new ageish, so I prefer "Do the thing you're doing." Aside from allowing you to be better at whatever you're engaged in, you'll find that it actually feels good. It's calming.

So I don't think that the kind of paying attention you need to do in math class is any more important than any other kind. In fact, I'd say it's much more important to truly pay attention and listen to your friends and loved ones.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has tried this or is interested in trying it now.

Very strange

I actually have quite a bit to say today, but I just saw this ad in the newspaper that was so odd I had to point it out.

I wonder if they told that woman what she would actually be standing next to (assuming, of course that this is a photoshopped image, which I can't know for sure).

If you can't see the image, click to the left of the text and it'll show up.

The Midweek Fog

Ever had a day where you took a nap and then never felt quite wide awake again? That's today for me. Just got back from Party Land, which is absolutely the best place to go when you're in a daze. I managed to resist the temptation to buy all the Hannah Montana birthday party paraphernalia.

After having one short week after another, it's hard to get accustomed to a real school schedule. It is kind of fun to listen to kids plead not to have homework and then give them homework anyway, but sadistic pleasures aside it's a lot of work for everyone. My older daughter said she wants to go to a really good college but is afraid it'll be too hard and too much work, and I assured her that, compared to high school, college is a walk in the park, at least as far as day-today workload. Plus it has the obvious advantage that you don't have to worry at that point about getting into college because you're already there!

It's fun to write when you're in a haze.

I have a new word. I heard someone on the radio say that their sports team needs to act with some arrogancy. I like it. I also got to hear a whole series of calls where people said they were tired about hearing about the Yankees and the Red Sox. These calls are inherently boring, so I'm going to call to say that I'm tired of hearing about how tired people are of the3se other calls. Maybe if a few of my friends join me, people will start to call and say they're tired of us calling about how tired we are of people saying they're tired of something. Whew!

I must quote the best line I've seen about the baseball series. A lot of the discussion today was about how Manny Ramirez of the Red Sox did a little celebration after he hit a home run that brought his team to only 4 runs behind. Here's a quote from a column on ESPN.com:

Mark from Philly offers an inspiring defense for Manny's home run preening: "When Manny went deep, my first thought was, 'Quit posing, Manny, we're still down 7-3.' Then it dawned on me that Manny probably had no idea what the score was. In fact, he probably isn't aware that baseball games are determined by which team scores more runs. Manny's only point of differentiation comes when, after hitting a home run, he sees his teammates waiting for him at home plate -- it's at that point he knows it's time to party.

Making Decisions

What do you do when you can't make up your mind? Today my daughter had a soccer game in the morning and her school had an open house where she was supposed to be a tour guide in the early afternoon. We could get there, but late. She had in her possession two letters from the person running the program. One said that it was essential to be on time and the other said that if you could come after your game it would be great because we need you. She wasn't sure which to do, so I had her use my favorite decision-making tool- assume you're going to screw up and decide which mistake you'd rather make. Would you rather show up and have them not need you or not show up and have them need you? It made it an easy decision to decide she should go.

I actually learned this in business school, though there are plenty of people (those born with what they call "common sense") who figure it out for themselves. Which mistake would you regret less?

For what it's worth, I always found this a powerful argument against the death penalty.

Freaky Friday

Today was certainly an unusual school day. I guess the power went off around 10:15. I was teaching in the Art Room, with the lights off as usual. And of course there's no clock in there either. Since the bells have been totally unreliable, it was no surprise that that there wasn't a sound at 10:15, but then we heard all the yelling out in the hallway. We had no idea what was going on, so we looked into the lunch room and saw all the lights were out. I have no idea when they go power back on. I hope it was soon, because I left a tuna sandwich in the refrigerator.

So I wanted to write more about music. I've been known in the past to show some disdain for what the kids call music these days. It's not that it's bad. It's boring. Who's really good out there? Beyonce? All her songs have exactly the same beat, the same beat almost every song has now. And she's probably the best of the lot. All the rest of the top 20 songs have one of the following messages:

1. You are good-looking
2. I want to have sex with you
3. You know you would enjoy having sex with me
4. I'm good at sex
5. You look like you would be fun to have sex with

It's possible I'm missing one or two, but probably not. Of course, there's nothing wrong with consenting adults having sex, and I'm not saying that sex itself is boring, but it just doesn't make for a very interesting topic. The fact that a majority of the top songs are all about this admirable but ultimately boring subject, not only makes everything repetitive, but it lowers the bar for anything that sounds even remotely different. That's why a dreary, repetitive song like "How to Save a Life" sounds so good- because it's actually about something interesting. And of course, there's the "Beautiful Girls" phenomenon, which could be good it people actually go and listen to "Stand By Me" and "Under The Boardwalk" to hear the original songs that Sean Kingston is ripping off.

The flip side of this is that there's a tremendous surge of great indy music out there, because it's become so easy to make and distribute a CD. Do yourself a favor and listen to bands like The Hair the TV the Baby and the Band, The New Pornographers (my personal favorite), Rilo Kelly, TV on the Radio, Tegan and Sara, Fountains of Wayne, or The Go! Team. Or, if you have the bucks, drop a couple of thousand for the Hannah Montana show. Floor seats are on StubHub starting at $507 and topping out at $3334. For 12th row! Row 21 in Atlantic City is $3570. I wonder what a first row seat would be worth? Your best bet is to fly to Kansas City, where you can score two 9th row tickets for $650 per.

Allow me to wax nostalgic for a moment. When I lived in New York in the early 80's, all the concerts were promoted by a guy named Ron Delsener. He had a club where you paid a couple of hundred dollars a year in exchange for the right to reserve the absolute best tickets to every concert he had, which was every important show in NYC and Long Island. You'd go to his office on East 67th street and pick up the tickets from Ron's sister Harriet. The worst seats I ever got from there was 11th row floor.

But my favorite were his concerts on the Hudson River Pier, just south of where the Intrepid was (is it back yet?). These were general admission, and they'd have a riot if they let the club members go in the main gate before the long line, so they had an ingenious solution. For crowd control purposes, you entered on the street side of the pier (obviously), walked down through a fenced in area for about 100 yards to the end of the pier, then turned a corner and came back toward the street end, where the stage was. Club member had a special gate where we didn't have to walk through that area. We just entered right next to the stage. So we could stroll in, take our seats wherever we pleased, then sit and watch the others run, push and scramble (this was New York, after all) all the way down the pier and all the way back again. It was really fun, sort of like going through the E-Z Pass when there's a long line to pay the toll, except that at the end you saw a concert instead of driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Funny Commercial

http://veryfunnyads.com/ads/25189.html

Watching baseball now, so no time to post.

TeeVee

My daughter is watching Gossip Girls in the den. The Gossip Girl books marked a key point in our family saga because they were the first books that we wouldn't buy for our kids. They're really pretty disgusting, as is the TV show, but keep in mind that we did not forbid her to read them. We just wouldn't buy them for her, as we had bought every book she'd wanted since "Pat The Bunny." (Was that book about a bunny called Pat or about patting something in the book? My mind is going). So she bought them herself or went to the library or borrowed from friends. She soon went through The A list and TTYL and all that stuff, and we never have to buy books for her anymore, because she only willing reads trash. I used to think about how much she's missing out on, but then I remember that I never read anything I didn't have to from ages 15-21, and somehow my brain didn't turn to mush, just like I never put my eye out or plunged to my death because all my friends were jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge.

I don't read as much as I'd like to. I read a lot of political commentary on various blogs, and I read the newspapers, but I didn't finish the last book I started, called London Fields by Martin Amis, even though it's good and I've read two of his books before and really liked them. Aside from stuff about China, I haven't read a book since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. That's a shame, I think. Reading can transport you in a way nothing else can, and you can look at a funny line and laugh over it over and over again, or savor the construction of a sentence or paragraph at your own pace, rather than the paced forced on you by a movie or a even a song. And I think that makes it more memorable and close to my heart.

Just to give you an idea of the kind of thing I'm talking about, here's the first two sentences of a short story by T.C. Boyle, author of the marvelous "The Road to Wellville," about a man whose wife is so intent on buying stuff of all sorts that it overwhelms their life. It's called "Filthy With Things."

He dreams, amidst the clutter, of sparseness, purity, the wheeling dark star-haunted reaches where distances are measured in light years and even the galaxies fall away to nothing. But dreams get you nowhere, and Marsha's latest purchase, the figured mahogany highboy with carved likenesses of Jefferson, Washington and Adams in place of pulls, will not fit in the garage.

It's not really apropos of anything, beyond the usual stuff about Americans having too much stuff, but there's no other storytelling medium that can give you such richness in so little space and time.

American Culture

Since I wasn't feeling quite cultured enough after King Lear, I decided to take in the "So You Think You Can Dance" live show tonight. There weren't very many adults there, and it was one of those nights when the Wachovia Center turns half the Men's Rooms in Ladies Rooms. And it's a good thing I don't have the upper range of my hearing any more, because the amount of high-pitched shrieking was something to behold. There was a pair of 10 year-olds to my right who were fond of a girl named Jamie and several thousand who were fond of a blonde guy named Neil. They made noises that I could not conceive of making. It wasn't quite as loud as the Justin Timberlake concert, but it was close.

Compared to a real dance company, of which I've seen many, the dancing really isn't very good and the choreography by "Emmy winning choreographer whoever" is pretty simple and obvious, but there was a championship ballroom pair who were superb and a few other peices were fun to watch. The dancers really give their all and seem to be having a good time, which is good because dancing's a pretty tough career and this may be the best gig some of them ever have.

All in all, it was good clean fun, just with $35 t-shirts.

P.S. Did anyone watch that buggy Yankees-Indians baseball game? How weird was that? My favorite moment, though, was Bobby Abreu walking up for his first at bat, tapping his bat on home plate and having it shatter, leaving him with about a 6 inch stump in his hand. He gives the umpire a "did you see that?" look and then cracks up.

Brain Dump

Going back to last weekend, King Lear was unforgettable. I find myself wondering how anybody could write such a thing. There are so many brilliant lines (including Fi fie fo fum, I smell the blood of an English man from Jack and the Beanstalk) flying by that it's difficult to keep track, and the intersection of love and cruelty and faithfulness and treachery is almost unimaginable. I saw Lear when I was around 15, with Lee J. Cobb as Lear. What I remember most was that the character Gloucester has his name inexplicably pronounced Gloster, and that said Gloucester gets his eyes torn out. Again, how does someone think of having a character yell "Out vile jelly!" and then tear someone's eye out? This isn't based on a historical event, it's pure fiction. Of course, the version I saw didn't have Lear strip naked. This version did, much to the surprise of my daughters.I was also surprised by how funny it is in parts, though it doesn't sound funny in the retelling.

As for the Phillies, it's hard to say anything beyond "Well, that's sports!" As bad as getting swept by Colorado was, I wouldn't have given up the moment they clinched the NL East for anything. I've seen the final game of 4 World Series in New York, 3 wins and one loss (ask me about the 1977 Series). The wins are, of course, more fun. But as my daughter said on Thursday, "They're cheering for a groundout!" You just can't get that kind of thing any other time of year. Baseball is a game of failure and suffering and waiting and exhilaration. That's probably why the Jews like it so much.

Finally, I got a letter from a woman I know in Oakland who is the sister of one of my best friends from college, who died of a brain tumor 5 years ago (though it doesn't feel nearly so long). She found a letter that I'd sent him in 1979, after a cross-country train trip. A couple of things really caught my eye. First, I was very surprised how much I sound like me. I mean, I've grown up and changed a lot since 1979, at least I hope I have. Here's a passage: Right now I'm in Westchester County Courthouse, attempting to disqualify myself from jury duty, since I no longer live in Westchester. It could be fun, actually, but I've gotta look for a job now, and I can't afford 2 weeks worrying about the proper administration of justice and all that crap.

Second, there's a P.S. saying I'd gotten accepted to Wharton. So my life took a big change in course after May 4, 1979.

I really miss my friend Richard. He was a world-class procrastinator and never really did "accomplish" much in his life, but he was as true a friend as one could hope to have to me and a number of others, and one of the most decent people I've ever met. He also introduced me to Bruce Springsteen back in 1974 and he was my companion for my first (of 5) cross-country camping trips. He was also a big Phillies fan, and I sure would have liked to have seen that Sunday game with him.

You've gotta love baseball

Padres and Rockies have identical records for 162 games over 6 months. Now they play one game to break the tie and they're still tied after 8 innings. I guess they're pretty evenly matched. I'm rooting for the Padres only because I think they are a less formidable foe for the Phils, but I think a Rockies-Phillies series would be great fun.

Once in a lifetime weekend

On Saturday I saw King Lear with Ian McKellan in Brooklyn. I don't even know where to begin. They play is very sad and violent and lurches from moments of humor and hopefulness to despair and madness and disintegration. McKellan is amazing, and the whole cast was very good. We took my mother-in-law, who teaches AP English and is British, so she likes Shakespeare a lot.

We drove back to Philly Saturday night, and this morning did the MS bike ride for 30 miles with my younger daughter. Great weather, very exciting, a long way to ride. I'd done the 75 mile route the last couple of years, but in ways it was more satisfying doing a shorter distance with my kid. From there, I got dropped off at the Phillies game, which was so much fun it was almost unreal. An incredible crowd cheering a really likable team. Then straight from there to a neighborhood Sukkot party.

So what have your last 30 hours been like?

Baseball

I haven't written much about baseball, but it promises to dominate this weekend. I love the fact that the Phillies could finish anywhere from 3rd in the Wild Card race to having the best record in the National League. I've never seen anything like it.

Here's a quote from an article on mlb.com

The National League West leaders -- by the slimmest of margins -- emerged as the big winners on Flip Friday, as Major League Baseball conducted a series of coin flips by telephone conference to determine sites for potential one-game playoffs to resolve ties at the end of regular-season play.

A total of 28 coin flips were required to account for all possible two-team ties -- for either division titles or the leagues' respective Wild Card races. Easily the most volatile league is the National, which thus hogged 25 of the 28 flips.

I'm Riding in the MS150 Bike Tour This Weekend

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Back To School Night

Why is it called that? It's not just this school, lots of schools call it the same thing. I'm presuming it isn't called that because the teachers have to come back to school after the actual school day. At least in my house, back to school night is the night before school starts for the kids. So I guess the idea is that it's like parents coming back to school after all these years out in the real world. That's sort of sweet, so I guess that's the thing to call it.

This reminds me of a passage from one of the Winnie the Pooh books, where Pooh is asking Owl how to write a letter. Owl says, "Well, Pooh, the customary procedure in this case is as follows." Pooh replies, "What does Crustamoney Proseedcake mean?" Owl explains, "It means the Thing To Do." and Pooh says humbly, "As long as it means that, I don't mind."

Parents Night, as I'm wont to call it, is fun for me. It's a nice chance to meet people and reconnect, sometimes in unexpected ways, like finding out that one of my students went to preschool with my younger daughter and I served on the school's board with his mother for 2 years.

Another Short School Week

I don't know about anybody else, but I'm totally disoriented by this schedule. I never have any idea what day of the week it is or what I'm supposed to be doing tomorrow. I can understand the attraction of the Jewish rituals, which I've never really done. It provides a rhythm and structure that I can imagine would be comforting.

To add to my general haziness, I gave tests in all of my classes today. This means that by the end of the day I'm both exhausted by the general stress of testing and bored to tears by not doing anything. Every time I try to start something during a test, something interrupts me. I think in the nearly 3 hours I was sitting there I completed one page of a lesson plan for one class, and graded 5 tests. Not what I'd consider a stellar output, but it's not like I can talk on the phone or curl up with a good book or nap or anything. I miss the give and take of class.

Review

I'm giving tests in all of my classes on Tuesday, so Monday is review day. A review is a time to ask yourself, what is it exactly that we're doing? I find this a useful question to ask ones self as often as possible. It certainly was my guiding principle when I was managing a business project. Whenever things started to get crazy (and in advertising, things ALWAYS have the potential to get crazy) I always saw my job as boss being to stop everyone and say, "What is it that we're trying to accomplish?" This question has the almost magical effect of getting everybody thinking in the same direction. Or at least makes turf wars and nitpicking seem irrelevant.

So it seems sort of dangerous to ask that question in a math class, where the second most-asked question after, "Can I go to the bathroom?" is "What am I ever going to use this for?" But that's what makes asking it so necessary. If you can't gain a sense of perspective and meaning along with definitions and skills, why bother? I know that's asking a lot of a kid, but I feel obliged to at least ask. I'm not expecting an epiphany, but maybe a glimmer of insight.

So why learn the math? Because math is simpler than life, and math can be used to simulate all kinds of things that happen in life, except with answers. All we're doing now is creating a toolbox that can help us, well, sometime, for something. I can't really say what, because life is more complicated than math, and not only aren't there a lot of definite answers, it's also hard to know what questions to ask. The more tools you know how to use, the better the shot you have at asking and answering important questions, just like searching for meaning in a passage in history or English or Tanach can teach something about how to ask your own questions.

Well, that got heavy all of a sudden. I guess Yom Kippur will do that for a guy.

Screen Gems

I've been thinking about movies today for a couple of reasons. First of all, I'm working my way through the original Star Wars Trilogy, which is now called episodes 4, 5 and 6. If you didn't realize, these are the originals of the series and much much much better than episodes 1-3. The next couple of paragraphs might be enjoyable only to those who know these movies.

I actually saw the first Star Wars movie in 1977 in Salt Lake City. I was driving across the country with a couple of my college friends and it had just come out. You can't imagine what a huge deal it was. Everything gets so hyped these days that it's hard to separate the spectacular from the merely noisy, but this was the first big, special effects sci-fi movie of the digital age. Most of the stuff you see now was invented for that movie or is a direct descendant. The movie was just called Star Wars back then.

I'm in the middle of The Empire Strikes Back, considered by most to be the "best" of the 3. It's pretty dark, but it has lots of witty banter between Han Solo and Princess Leia, and Luke Skywalker's Jedi training with Yoda. One of the things that I always liked about this series was the concept of "The Force," which is the cumulative power of all the living things in the universe. I've never been a believer in the "old man in the sky" version of God, and the Force is the thing that comes closest to what I do believe. That said, the pseudo-religious claptrap in some of the scenes is almost laughably awful in a campy kind of way. For example, after Yoda levitates the space ship up out of the swamp after Luke can't do it, Luke stairs slack-jawed and says, "I don't believe it." and Yoda says, "That is why you fail."

The other movie thing is that I had part of a line from a movie stuck in my head today, kind of the way you get a few lines from a song stuck in your head. The problem was that I couldn't place it. The line was "You've got an overdeveloped sense of (don't remember). It's going to get you in trouble some day." It took quite a bit of discussion before we remembered it was from The Princess Bride. The six-fingered man says it to Inigo Montoya right before the sword fight scene. The actual line is "You've got an overdeveloped sense of vengeance. It's going to get you into trouble some day." This is funny because you already think Inigo is dying, which of course isn't funny at all.

Holiday Weekend

Didn't get around to writing much this weekend, but I did want to note a couple of things.

I don't know if any of you were at Beth Am, but on the morning of the first day the hagbah guy almost dropped the Torah, twice. Never seen that before. You really have to be right-handed to do that job on Rosh Hashana.

I'm riding in the MS 150 bike tour again this year, this time with my daughter Celia, who is now training up to 17 miles (we're doing 30 together).

While training by myself on Wednesday, I started along the Schuylkill bike path and as I passed Conshohocken, I saw a sign for the "Mid-County Trail." That sounded nice, so I detoured onto it and took a lovely ride through the woods for a half mile or so, with a nice stream alongside the path. Then the woods cleared on one side and the stream ran through a field. Finally, I saw some bright and festive colors through the trees. I came around the bend and saw...the Ikea parking lot. The trail continued past Ikea and the Metroplex, before ending, not at Barnes and Noble/Starbucks like it ought to, but at an underpass where the entire trail is suddenly surrounded by a 10 foot tall cyclone fence. I was a bit confused, but then I saw to one side a small yellow sign that said, "Trail Ends." This is what biking in the suburbs is all about.

Happy New Year

I'll not go into the appropriateness of blogging on Rosh Hashanah now, but I grew up reform and it'll always be a one day holiday to me, even though I often go to shul on the 2nd day. Just one of those little contradictions that make life special.

Just in case someone's stumbled onto this blog hoping for advice, I'll dispense some from time to time. This will include an ongoing series on "How to harmlessly irritate your parents with almost no effort." Today's entry comes courtesy of one of my daughters.

When you come home from camp, put all of your batteries into one big zipper lock plastic bag. When your parents ask you "Are these used or new?" answer, "I don't know."

Hot and sticky

No, I don't have any joke to go with that. It was pretty exciting, though, not knowing if the room you were walking into was 72 degrees and frigid or 91 degrees with air so thick you barely see through it. There's a kind of very large worm that lives at the bottom of the ocean, feeding off of the nutrients in the water flowing out of the vents that shoot hot water out from the center of the earth. The head of the worm lives at 160 degree water and its tail, which is a few feet away from the vents, is in 40 degree water. I'm not making this up, by the way. People (well, biologists anyway) marvel at its ability to thrive in such different physical states, and I marvel at our ability to get a day's work in together when the conditions are, let's say, not ideal.

I saw this today and wanted to share it. Stick with it for at least 2 minutes. I guess it's the same band that did "Technologic," a house favorite here.




Okay, gotta go read "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Poe so I can try to help my daughter do her English homework. I've read of few stories in this Poe unit, and I now don't hate Poe as much as I did when I read him in high school.

First couple of school days

School started for teachers on Tuesday, but the students returned on Thursday. It's always a little overwhelming at the beginning, remembering how to stand in front of a bunch of kids and talk about math for 40 minutes and get them to listen. It's fun once you get into it, but it always takes a bit to get in a rhythm, especially when there are only 10 school days in September (not that I'm complaining).

I'm teaching Algebra 3/Trigonometry, Honors Elementary Functions, and two sections of Algebra 1, Part 2. It's a nice, well-rounded schedule and I have one day when I'm finished at lunch time.

Before my wedding, somebody gave Ronnie and I a great piece of advice. They said, the whole experience is too overwhelming to retain, so try to pick a few special moments to focus on and remember. The start of school isn't quite that extreme, but here are a few things that stick with me.

• A group of 6th grade girls standing by the stairs, one of them says "And they're always saying 'You're so cute!' " and the others all laughing.
• Finding out that one of my former students posted a picture of me standing next to a yak in Tibet on his Facebook- my first time appearing on Facebook I believe. And yes it's a real picture and no, I don't really want to see the comments. I should say though that once I realized I was going to look like a tourist no matter what I did, I decided to go whole hog. I even bought a Beijing Olympics baseball cap.
  
• Could it be any hotter in Room 20? Room 21 was chilly by comparison.
  
• Students coming for homework help on the first day.
• Seeing the seniors, nearly all of whom I've taught and some of whom I'm working with for the 3rd time.
• Walking up Old Lancaster towards Montgomery I see them putting up a sign point the direction to the train station and the fire house. I think, who cares where the fire house is? I only care if the firemen know where it is. When you have a fire, do you start looking for a nearby firehouse? What they need is a sign that says Hymies to the left, Murrays and Starbucks to the right.
  
• Noticing how small and, well, cute the 6th graders are.

Hope everyone has some special memories. See you all on Monday.

It's Time To Start

It's Monday evening of Labor Day weekend and we teachers toddle on back to school tomorrow. It's kind of cool how I'm so looking forward to the end of the school year and then find myself looking forward to the beginning as well. This is going to be an interesting year at HAFKA (the Hebrew Academy Formerly Known as Akiba). I like the sound of this. It even sounds Jewish. Of course, it's patently disrespectful and I'm sure that at some point someone will make me stop calling it that, but for the moment that's my name for the school.

I'll be blogging on general topics and some things specific to individual classes as the year goes on. I'll label the entries so you can search for whatever topics you're interested in. If you want to hear about my trip to China, feel free to scroll down and/or look in the archives. I just re-read it and it's actually pretty good (I think).

I welcome comments. This blog has a moderated comment section, so don't worry about inappropriate content.

Welcome back everyone!

Real Life and Movies

It's nice to be home, though I do enjoy traveling. We go up to Lake Placid in a couple of weeks, which is always my favorite part of the summer, if not the entire year.

Our daughter Celia was sleeping over with a friend last night, so we went to the movies. We saw Joshua, which had gotten an excellent review in the Inquirer and sounded intense and interesting. Ugh. Obvious, and so manipulative (you name it, baby in jeopardy, Hitchcock-style music, camera angles designed to spook you, angelic-looking weird kid) that even the twists were letdowns. We were both disappointed, so we decided to see something else. We tried Black Sheep. Don't know if any of you saw The Toxic Avenger, or any of the Troma Pictures stuff from the 80's, but this had grossness to rival even that. The premise, genetically engineered ferocious sheep, is great, the acting was pretty good and there were some very funny scenes, but you had to get by the carnage and, well, lots of wet, stretchy things. Funny, but not for everyone.

We're home

At 10 PM, 26 hours after we left our hotel in Japan, we arrived home. Aside from the length of the trip, nothing remarkable happened. We spent many hours in airport lounges, which was quieter than sitting at the gate, but with fewer shopping opportunities.

Two things about Minneapolis Airport. First, there can't be a better place to clean customs anywhere in the US. We were through no more than 20 minutes after the plane landed (too bad we had a 4 hour layover). Second, they have very high-end vending machines, including an i-Pod machine where you can swipe your credit card and get a Nano and a protective case.

I must also add that the Northwest international service was excellent, but the plane from Minneapolis to Philly was dirty (inside I mean), no pillows of blankets even in first class, awful food, and the shabbiest, noisiest baggage claim wheel I've seen anywhere. I couldn't believe it continued to work for long enough to get the baggage out.

So we're home. Time to dig through the mail, get Celia, re-enter our lives here.

Back in the USA

Sitting in the Minneapolis airport trying to make sure I don't fall asleep and miss the flight out. The trans-Pacific leg was routine, though there was an earthquake while we were still in Tokyo. I think we were on a shuttle bus when it happened, because neither of us felt it, and we've both been through earthquakes before.

At this point, I just feel numb. It's 3:00 in the morning in China and I wasn't really able to sleep on the plane. The biggest shock of the day was seeing that our erstwhile luggage, originally booked on the American flight with us, was transferred to the Northwest flight and came off the belt quickly in Minneapolis.

Just One More Thing...

Not that it isn't always the time to quote Columbo, but we got to the airport to find that our flight had been cancelled because the "equipment," as they say, is unavailable. IOW, the incoming flight was cancelled, probably because of the typhoon. The good news is that we can still get on a flight that gets us in today. We need to get home today because Celia comes home from camp tomorrow. The bad news is it's on Northwest, everyone's least preferred airline, and we'll get back a bit later. Around 8 instead of 4:30, and now we have to trust American Airlines to get our baggage over to our flight. Considering the bang up job they did in Chicago on our way over, we're both brimming with confidence. Ronnie is so brimming with confidence that she's pulled two chairs together in the airline club and gone to sleep. These will be our 10th and 11th flights on this trip, and I'd have to say that it's just about enough.

Other things we've had enough of:

• Hotel lobbies, bathrooms, and exercise rooms
• Unpacking, including searching for places to put everything
• Packing
• Check-in and baggage claim
  
• Breakfast buffets and room service
• Voltage transformers
  
• Elevators and escalators
• Airplane food
• Itineraries
  
• Working hard to make ourselves understood

Think we're ready to be home? I do.