Seasonality

In general, I'm in favor of fall. It seems the appropriate way to follow up summer. It's mid-October now, which is the best of times and the worst of times. Worst, because it becomes nearly impossible to avoid pumpkin-flavored stuff. Clearly there are people who look forward to the time of year when pumpkin is ubiquitous. For that I blame Starbucks and their insidious Pumpkin Spice Lattes, but don't count me among the pumkiphiles. Best, because it's the one time of year to use my favorite superlative, spooktacular. This year, I think I will expand that seasonal usage to include spooktacles, spooktator, and, of course idle spookulation.

I teach in a Jewish school, where mention of Halloween is discouraged, but it's hard to avoid it when you're out and about. It's apparently the second biggest holiday after Christmas in terms of its economic impact. I'm sure it's a big deal for candy makers and for Chinese manufacturers of costumes and plastic buckets shaped like pumpkins. And if you think Chinese workers who make high-end athletic attire are well treated, just imagine how good things are for the costume and novelty workers.

Today is October 12, which those in my generation know as the actual day when Columbus didn't discover America, as opposed to Monday, which is the day when we celebrate his not discovering America by our not being able to go to the bank.

I'm also in the midst of my seasonal change in exercise programs, which in the past has essentially been a transition from riding my bike 5-6 times a week for over 100 miles to nothing. I am going to try hard not to let that happen this year, but haven't decided yet whether to get a lot of heavyweight riding gear (and snow tires, maybe with tire chains!) or find something to do inside. The thing is, though, that inside here in cold weather is a place to drink red wine and sit by the fire, not pretend to ride on an exercise bike. But getting out of shape? That would be unspookable.

What did I learn today?

Today I learned that, at least from the perspective of a flight attendant, my cup is not merely a cup, but a "service item." I wonder what that makes me. Am I a service item too? They're serving me, supposedly. Or is there another bit of jargon to refer to customers? I once asked my dentist if they had funny names for the dental instruments when they were in dental school, but he refused to answer. I'm guess this would be the same kind of thing.

There's been more than enough written about air travel, so I don't really want to do more than acknowledge what a truly odd experience it is. Where else can you buy a bottle of water, walk 30 feet or so, then walk back towards the place where you bought it but have to surrender it before you can return to the shop? But that's what happens if you buy it beyond security, walk outside of security and then walk back in. 'Nuff said.

What did you say?

I think I wrote recently about how happy I was with work, and it occurred to me later that part of what I loved about my job was that I had the opportunity to work with people who genuinely try to find the best in people. And they make a real effort at it. As with many other things, the key lies in listening.

I know that I've gone on about this before, but listening is the worst-taught, least appreciated of all the essential life skills. Are you a good listener? Here's a quick test. When you're having a conversation and the other person is talking, are you thinking about what you're going to say next? If you are, you're not completely listening. To see it happen in others, tell them about a vacation you took someplace you know they've been. See if they can keep from talking about when they were there.

Real listening requires momentarily clearing your mind and being focused solely on what the other person is saying. You can reinforce this by using what are known as active listening techniques. This involves playing back to another person what they said, as in, "I think I heard you say ____," followed either "am I right?" Or another question. In the psychotherapy version of this, the other person is supposed to thank you for listening.

This is a great think in a therapy session, but on the cumbersome side for more typical, "wanna go to Wawa?" kinds of conversation, so I suggest saving it for more intense topics. But the principle of listening always applies. It's amazing what you can learn about someone else when you're paying attention to them.

It comes in really handy as a teacher. I recently asked a question to a class and the kid who got called on clearly knew in some sense what the answer was, but was unable to articulate it in a coherent way. I can hazard a guess that this inability is a handicap to this student's ability to succeed. So what I really need to teach them is not how does one graph a quadratic equation, but how do they understand the process in a way that makes sense. Because again, and this is just a hunch, an inability to articulate something correlates to an inability to demonstrate mastery. 

So based on a two minute interchange where I said practically nothing, I now know where to focus my effort with this student. It doesn't mean I'll succeed, but at least I'll know what I'm trying to succeed at. For me, this is exhilarating and is another big part of why I love my job.

Third day in Miami

By our third day, we’d fallen into a very pleasant pattern. I get up 8-ish, put on a bathing suit, bring the banana I took from yesterday’s breakfast buffet downstairs to add to the cup of coffee that the very nice hostesses at the restaurant give me as a down payment on my breakfast, consume said banana and coffee, and then go for a swim.

Normally I’d be renting a bike and going for a long ride somewhere, but here I’ve decided that taking advantage of the opportunity that I have to do some distance swimming in the ocean each morning is not something to be missed. So I do a nice long swim, today something slightly less than half a mile. After that, I reserve my chair and umbrella, then go back up to the room to rouse Ronnie, after which we have breakfast and head to the beach.

The beach is not at all a Miami kind of scene. It’s very sedate, more like a Caribbean or Bermuda kind of resort than South Beach. Some couples and some families, usually with little kids (since school has started, it’s mostly a preschool set). It’s relatively small, with soft sand and gentle waves. It’s very pleasant.

We stay there until around 2-something, at which point we get out of the sun and have lunch in an alcove on the shady side of the hotel. Things vary after that. Tonight we went back to Miami Beach and saw Rush at the theater on Lincoln Rd. No, not the unbearable band Rush, the movie. The movie was fun and afterwards we paused for a bit to watch the Global Citizen concert, which one of my kids was attending, on my phone. I should just note here that Stevie Wonder is a god.

Then we went in search of dinner, which unfortunately both required a wait and sucked, but what can you do. It’s still great to be out somewhere busy at 11- many of the stores, even chain stores, were still open and the mix of families with kids of all ages, bunches of teenagers, and couples like us strolling the street was pleasing.

Even though it was after 11 on a Saturday night, the clubby area of South Beach was dead, so we abandoned plans to just be part of that scene and went back to the hotel.

Let me say a bit about Miami and the trip. First of all, although I like the international/Spanish flavor of the place, it would be nice if I could walk in someplace and talk to someone for whom English is their first language. It’s been kind of rare on this trip, and I wouldn’t care as long as people understood me, but a lot of them don’t. It’s frustrating.

Second, do not, under any circumstance, buy a Ford Taurus. We rented one of these puppies, and though the color of ours was a fetching cross between green and smoky gray, it’s one of the worst cars I can remember driving in recent memory. In particular, the right rear blind spot is immense to the point of being dangerous. It made changing lanes an exercise in terror on a regular basis. It’s also inconvenient to turn the wipers on. You need to twist the left-side wand almost halfway around to get a fast wipe, far from ideal in a rain when someone going the in the other direction floods your windshield. And the turn signal lever is inexplicable. After 4 days I still can’t get it to do what I want, and I’m really good at figuring out how to work things. The button to open the trunk is on the passenger side of the console, the gas gauge doesn’t register that you’ve put gas in the car for 10 or 15 minutes after you’ve done so, and the automatic windows make it nearly impossible to open the driver’s side window a small amount. And this particular one stunk of cigar smoke every time we got in.

Aside from those little things, and the looming disaster area that is Miami airport, it’s great.