Happy Old Year

I’ve never quite gotten the idea of New Year’s resolutions, because promising you’re going to start doing something and then keeping it up for an entire year is almost impossible under all circumstances. I suppose if nothing in your life changed over the course of 12 months, then it might be possible but does anybody or know anybody who knows someone that that’s happened to? Of course not. And even if it did, the boredom would probably kill them.

So in that spirit, here are my Old Year’s resolutions; these are things that I am resolving to do for the next seven days of this year. And then we’ll see.

I did talk about some of these school-related ones in my classes, that I’m not going to respond if somebody raises their hand to ask a question and prefaces whatever they with “I have a question” or if they say “I’m confused”. Because this is doing nobody any good and it’s wasting everybody’s time. I understand English and can recognize a question when I hear one. And I don’t think you actually are confused, because you’ve made it to math class and are taking notes. Just ask your question and I’ll help you understand. That’s my job.

I resolve to except the fact that I am getting older and fight like hell against it at the same time. I’m always doing that, but the resolution is to try to find a better balance. To accept my limitations and push as hard as I can against them at the same time. But there is no grace in getting older and I resolve to not age gracefully.

I resolve to accept no assumptions. I’m not going to play by anyone else’s ground rules, because I don’t necessarily agree to them. Ground rules imply some sort of mutual agreement of the rules of play, and if it’s not mutual I simply don’t buy it. I will also try to not assume people are who they are, that friendships are what they are, that situations are what they are or even that I am when I think I am. I want to go deeper and listen and base my conclusions on more than facile judgment.

I resolve to listen to more music and to maybe try to make some music of my own. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I want to find out, if not in the next 7 days, then soon.

I resolve to not expect movies to treat all of society’s problems fairly, realistically, or intelligently, but I resolve to expect that of myself and those who have the power the make things better.

And finally, I resolve that I will try to leave everything that I encounter better than I found it. If I can do that, hopefully all the rest of it falls into place.

Mini-rant

Why haven't they come up with a better word for moisturizer? Every once and while you see an article that says "moist" is the word that people dislike the most. And if you read or listen to ads for moisturizer, they always use other words for how the product will make your skin feel. Because who wants to go around all day being moist?

No larger point- it just struck me as odd that nobody's come up with anything better than "skin lotion," which is so generic as to be completely meaningless- lotion only meaning a liquid applied externally for medicinal or cosmetic purposes. That sounds only slightly less creepy than being moist, so I will try to carry on with my skin feeling just like my skin.

Enouigh said

I got some pushback on the whole friendsgiving thing, with people I trust saying that it is really a thing. The best way to sum up my response to this is "I don't care." Not that I have anything against having a festive dinner with friends; that's a wonderful thing. It's just that "friendsgiving" is a nonsense term. Thanksgiving is one of those occasional holiday whose name actually says what it's about. It's about giving thanks for all the blessings in your life. So instead of thanks you're giving friends? Friendsgiving is one of those overly cutesy terms we use as shorthand for. It's in the same spirit that causes the offspring of every dog breed mated with a poodle to have its name end in oodle. It's just fun to call things oodle- I get it. Now I'm done with it and don't get me started on the idea of having a single day to be thankful.

On the topic of nonsense, I sat through a fairly lengthy presentation today on how to create a safe and respectful work environment. It wasn't a perfect presentation by any means, and I'll buy certain criticism. The one thing I don't buy is "I knew a lot of that already." Well of course you did. When in the history of the presentation, which believe it or not is a thing that existed before PowerPoint, has anyone ever attended a presentation where every bit of information was new? If that happened, you wouldn't be able to understand anything that was going on, would you?

Does that mean what you think it means? (RIP William Goldman)

I was upset today by something the cashier at Whole Foods said to me. How much did that already tell you about me? White, upscale, probably suburban, earthy in the way people who can afford it are, overly emotional, and I'm sure much more. I should teach close reading...

So I'm loading my stuff up onto the belt and she's checking me out and says, without looking at me, the same as any cashier is likely to say between now and Thursday, "Are you shopping for the holiday?" And I replied, "No, we're having friends over for dinner." And she replies (note that there is no reply necessary at this point. She asked me a question and I answered it in a way that would make sense for someone buying chicken thighs, potatoes, cauliflower and parsley) "Oh yes, I've heard a lot of people are doing Friendsgiving this weekend."

This sent me into a small panic. Friendsgiving? 1. Not only don't I have any of the proper Friendsgiving home and table decorations, I can't even begin to imagine what it would be because 2. I didn't know that Friendsgiving was even a thing.

We kind of take language for granted sometimes but I'm not sure we ever should. Because I've gotten involved in the effort to eliminate sexual harassment and assault from my school, I've gotten very tuned in to the language of patriarchy and how it leads to our making assumptions without consciously doing so. I was at a talk the other day by someone who identifies as genderqueer, or genderfluid. There was no way to know by looking at them whether they were male or female because they were neither. The talk was fascinating and I said to my colleague "This guy is really good." The about 15 seconds later, I restated, "That person is really good." And my colleague said "I was thinking you were going to correct yourself."

"Guy" is a perfect example of a male word often used as a collective noun describing a group of people. "Come on guys! Let's go!" It's language that reinforces the centrality of maleness. Even in the matter-of-fact thing I said in my first paragraph self-description, once I added "overly emotional," if you didn't know who I was you'd probably assume female. The more I've read about this stuff and begun to question assumptions, the more I see, and in the long-term evolution towards gender equality, this is one of the important barriers what we'll have to breach.

That and this, September 2018 edition

Back at school. I'm getting closer and closer to prompting a chorus in my classes when the PA announcer says "Excuse the interruption" of a loud and hearty "NO!" It's really not okay to interrupt classes- it just isn't. And I always audibly say NO. And some of the students are joining me.

We had a spirited discussion today about new school rules. Kids just do not like change. Even if the change isn't really significant in the larger sense. Boundaries and limits are a source of comfort for kids, whether they admit it or not.

A couple of other things caught my eye recently. First, was the appearance of the adjectival hyphenate "soul-crushing." It's not hard to figure out what it means, but where did that come from? Does it mean anything that I've heard it used repeatedly in many contexts over the past few weeks? What's going on that we seem to need this descriptor for things that frequently?

The other thing is this- an article about the rise of what it calls "anxiety consumerism." Again, what does that say that this is a topic to be discussed.

And speaking of hot topics, I've struggled to put a finger on sexual harassment's place in society today, and to deal with my discomfort over people like Louis CK returning to the scene. This article tries to explore how men really don't get it, hard as they might try, And maybe that's what I'm uncomfortable about- my inability to really know what it feels like. I do agree with the writer's point that, while people like Louis CK deserve to be able to make a living, that we should not be feeling any pity for them if they have not done everything possible to engage in restorative justice.

I've generally steered clear of politics here, but it's become impossible at this point. Like him or not, it's important that everyone understand that what Donald Trump's actions and words mean is that he is attempting to transition this country from a democracy (of sorts) to an authoritarian dictatorship. For anyone who knows Trump's history (which I have for about 40 years- I even met him in 1980), this is completely unsurprising. I'm not disappointed or outraged by him; this is who he is, and you can't get upset at people for being who they are- it's pointless.

What I'm disappointed and outraged (but not entirely surprised) by is the Republican party's willingness, eagerness even, to embrace this antidemocratic objective. I'm not a Republican but do most Republicans feel like the pursuit of power is more important than democratic institutions? Do they so hate the Democratic Party that they've grown to hate small-d democracy as well? I didn't expect them all to just fall in line. Maybe that was naive, but this is unprecedented.

I'm not going to catalog everything that's been done and is being done, from so-called voter fraud measures designed to disenfranchise who are unlikely to vote for them on down the line. If you consume the news you know and either care or don't. But understand that this is exactly what is going on and either like it and go along with it or try to do something to change it.

Now that I think about it, I don't read this as political. I read it as existential. Does the country, the United States of America, exist as a democracy as enumerated  in the founding documents? Should it? Politics is only part of it- the part that empowers specific people to do things. Just because you have the power to do something doesn't mean you should.

That said, it makes for some great comedy, doesn't it?

Reboot part 2

Some of you know all or part of this story. The seeds of what happened this past school year were planted unintentionally by people who are peripheral to my life. First came an offhanded text (that doesn't seem technically possible, let me find a better word than offhanded), a casual text from someone I know who was experimenting with deepening her sense of Judaism. She told me she'd seen a good speaker and I asked what it was about. I don't remember the whole thing but it was relating shame and something else and teshuvah.

What interested me had nothing to do with the speaker or the person who told me about it. My thought was, if I don't ever intentionally hurt anyone or do any harm, and when I do something even by accident I apologize and try to make amends, what exactly am I atoning or repenting for? And let me just say, I'm not dealing with having evil thoughts as a sin of any sort. Having evil thoughts and not being evil is a positive, not a negative.

 The answer that was most obvious to me was things that you did and didn't even realize you'd done. Who had I harmed without realizing it? So I started thinking about this a lot, and just then, #metoo happened. I've never had any kind of incidents and the one time I gave a student a 3-minute ride to the train station I was terrified. But what might I have said or done that made someone feel uncomfortable or harassed?

In the course of my exploration, I started hearing stories of harassment at my school, as there seem to be almost everywhere. I had never really thought about sexual harassment to any depth. I'm a feminist and have thought about issues of bias and discrimination, but harassment specifically wasn't anything I'd focused on.

Long story short, as I explored harassment in general and in the school, three things happened. First, an alum offered to come to school and talk to seniors about sexual harassment in the post-high school world, there were sexual harassment incidents that sent shockwaves through the school, and I tapped into an undercurrent of frustration with the way people in the school treated each other.

What followed were many meetings of constantly growing size, assemblies and discussions among students, teachers and administrators. There was a growing realization that we as a community needed to meet this challenge head-on. And we come into this school year with the topic of how we treat each other at the top of many agendas. Now let's see what happens next.

We are sincere to service to you!

Yes, that was the title line of an email I got from a company that I bought some charging cords from. And just to emphasize their sincerity, the body of the message included:

DearFrank

We provide lifetime warranty, any question about our porduct, please feel free to contact us directly. We will serve for you wholeheartedly.

Let me just note that these cables cost a bit under $6, and I have no intention of ever asking for service on them, because I value my time such ($2/minute) that if I'm on hold or talking to their customer-to service-to-you-representative for more than 3 minutes, that amount of time is worth more than $6.

Here's the first email I got from them.

I should also note that August is Psoriasis Awareness Month. So anyone who reads this and was previously unaware of psoriasis, you are now informed.

I'm sure it's the official month for other things as well. There are only 12 months and so many things! I've had breast cancer awareness month drilled into my head so many times that the idea that awareness is any kind of issue at this point seems ludicrous. Maybe breast cancer doesn't receive the attention it deserves for some quarters, though I kind of doubt that, but I don't think awareness is the issue. It's more along the lines of "do I care?" And that's okay- many people, myself included have had their lives touched by breast cancer and do care. I'm just wondering if they should be focusing on something deeper than mere awareness.

I was about to write that awareness is easy, and it is the easiest part of marketing- the first step in the sequence of Awareness-Interest-Trial-Adoption that takes you from knowing that something exists to making it part of your life. But if recent history has taught us anything, it's shown us how fleeting attention can be. Oh, and by the way, I hereby promise to never use the phrase "if history has taught us anything" again. But i'm wondering if the current age of distraction has changed the balance here- since it's harder to get real attention, maybe the bridge from awareness to interest has become smaller. Oh, and I also promise not to use "age of distraction" again either.

Finally, I haven't yet written the next installment of my reboot story, but let's just say that I've gotten involved in an important project at school, which is a first for me. One of the results is that it is all but impossible for me to walk down a hallway without someone wanting to say something significant to me. I have no problem with this; in fact, I really like and appreciate it and have even gone so far as to attend meetings as a result. The one thing I need to keep in mind, though, is that it now takes me twice as long to get down a hallway or in and out of the building than it used to. A weird little artifact.

Rebooting, part one.

Before I start, this is funny. Natasha Aponte got her Tinder matches to meet in New York City, all thinking they’d be going on a one-on-one date. My favorite line included the phrase, "men called Jimmy."

I know I haven't written much at all for the last couple of years. There are a number of reasons for this, and I won't insult your intelligence by saying it's because I'm lazy or I have nothing to say. Neither of those things is remotely true. There's also thinking some combination of "I need to make this funny" and "I have nothing funny to say." Neither of those are true either, though those are more in the realm of false assumptions than simple untruths. What happened is far more complicated than that, so let's take a peek under the hood, shall we?

There are two thing that come immediately to mind. First is that I've changed a lot. I started writing in 2006, and what happened then was that I realized that people found my observations interesting and funny. So it was a way to connect in ways I was unable to in real life.

I've always been most at home in situations where I know that I don't fit in, because then I know where I stand. It's the same reason I try to keep classrooms cold; if I try to keep it comfortable for everyone, some people think it's too cold and some think it's too hot, which generates time-wasting discussions. If it's too cold, everyone is in agreement and there's nothing to talk about. As for my social quirks, for most of my life I felt on the outside of things (thank you Dear Evan Hansen) to the point where it was my default.

And my weird way of perceiving and processing things made writing from that perspective fun. I've always felt like I'm other. Whatever my circumstance is, I'm not of it. I may be in it but I'm not of it. It very solitary, which is great for observational writing, but not so good for relating. But over the past dozen years I've begun to feel more like I'm actually part of the things that I'm objectively part of. I made a decision a few years ago to make an effort to connect with my colleagues and my students. So I don't feel quite as much like an alien, with proper emphasis on "quite as much."

The second thing is harder to tease out. The details are personal (not sketchy or compromising, just personal and about other people- I don't share information that isn't mine to share), but some stuff happened that shook me loose from my comfort zone and put me in a completely untethered mental state. I learned a lot from this experience, which I can best describe as losing all reference points and going merely on gut feel and instinct (is that redundant? Are those two things the same?) and how it feels. but the thing that stuck out most is my inability to tune out. I can't not notice and I can't not understand and I can't not care. In the past, that's a been a mixed blessing at best and hurts like hell at worst. But it led to what transpired this past school year. Which is part 2.

What new is there to say?

What is there to say about San Francisco that hasn't already been said? It's very hilly. The summer weather is weird and the same every day. Everyone who live here is in tech and/or some kind of startup. It's very touristy.

I just spent several days there and there were a few things beyond the obvious that seem worth mentioning. I walked around a lot- according to my phone a total of 32.5 miles in the 3 full days I had there. (For those who like looking at the iPhone Health app, that's 72981 steps, and because it's San Francisco, I also climbed the equivalent of 233 flights of steps). I walked through much of the northeastern part of the city, from Mission Bay to Ocean Beach (clever name!), from Lower Pacific Heights to Pacific Heights, and most everything in between. Some of it was pretty nondescript, but much of it was interesting in some way.

One thing with the hills is that you get these weird juxtapositions between the streets and the buildings. In most places, houses are built on the ground and generally have a similar orientation. Not here.

What do you think that bottom floor looks like? Does the floor slant up so it tapers down to a little point? That would be fun, if a bit impractical unless you need to store a lot of wedges. I suppose they could dig a regular-shaped room out of it, but it sounds pretty depressing- half room and half basement.

On my second day there I rented a bike and rode to and then across the Golden Gate Bridge. This was an interesting thing. If you take the pretty route along the coast, it is very hilly, which makes it difficult on a poorly functioning rental bike. But I did it and some of it was quite dramatic and beautiful.

The bridge itself is a madhouse. The idea of riding across is one of those things that sounds kind of cool and almost romantic, but in reality it's hectic and crowded and relentlessly noisy. There's a visitor's center on the SF side, with ridiculously poor signage on how to actually get up onto the bridge (I just looked for people getting off). It's mobbed with people taking selfies. Once on the bridge, the pathway, which is maybe 8 feet wide, is divided between pedestrians and cyclists. From the entrance to the first tower, it's nearly impossible to just ride along, because pedestrians are all over the place, still taking selfies, and people are biking and videoing. But once you got around the structure it wasn't so bad.

On the Marin county side, there's another, equally busy visitors center. And I get it- the view is great with the bridge in the foreground and the cliffs and city in the background. I took a few picture (yes, including a selfie) and then headed back. By the end, the traffic noise was getting to me. It would be great there without the cars whizzing by, but I don't think that ever happens. On the way back I had the advantage of following a little maintenance truck that cleared the path a bit, so I was able to move more easily, and I took a more direct route back to the shop, once I figured out how to navigate from the bridge back to the streets, which took a bit of doing because of the useless signage. I'm glad I did it; I will not ever do it again.

The other thing I did the second day was commute. My daughter works in Redwood City, on the peninsula as they say- San Francisco itself is on the peninsula but I guess that doesn't count. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to ride the train with her in the morning, and it was. I love trains. This was a quick trip, and we enjoyed looking out the window at the office parks and auto repair places and warehouses. I walked around a bit- there is really nothing to see there and then took the train back. And at that point it was 9:30 and time to start the day.

The last day I walked to the so-called Painted Ladies, which I gather are known for being the house shown in the opening of Full House. They were fine- there are a lot of far prettier and more interesting houses around. 

 

But the park across the street was full of people taking pictures. I then walked through Japantown, which is an odd little place. I was wondering if it was built as a kind of apology to the Japanese citizens for imprisoning them during World War 2. I then headed through the Fillmore district, which has a grungy sort of trendiness about it. Then continued on to the Marina district, which I guess is a weekend party spot, and finally to Fisherman's Wharf. By this time I'd had enough walking up and down hills...

It was starting to become a blur, which was accentuated by a visit to Tonga, the Tiki Bar in my hotel, where I had a well-named drink called a Zombie (note the nutrition information at the end of the recipe). My daughter had a Mai Tai. The bar has a reflecting pool in the middle and every 30 minutes there is a simulated thunderstorm, with sound effects and rain. We had dinner at a nice family seafood place (Dungeness Crab stir fry) and then that was it. Left the next morning and home again.

That and this

Because I haven't written anything for such a long time, I'm going to just do something short to try to get unblocked.

I'm actually at a family reunion of sorts, and if there's anything that's going to block me it's that. This is 15 people who are pretty much never in the same place at the same time. It's me, my brother and sister, and all of our kids, plus 1 boyfriend and 2 girlfriends (one of which is my dad's). There's no open hostility or anything, but I'm not that sociable and I don't like big groups, and there's something weird about feeling that way about your own family. It's an uneasy feeling. Nobody's fault but my own.

A must for any family get-together

So I'm at the airport a couple of days ago picking up my wife and daughter, and as we're on the moving walkway, the announcement comes on that we're nearing the end of the walkway, so please face forward. I know this is predictable behavior on my part, but my first reaction to that is to try to picture what facing backwards would look like. I can't really conceive of how that's even possible; it seems internally contradictory.

I haven't written much because much of what's been going on in my life has felt too serious and close to my heart to write about. But I haven't lost my sense of joy, so I'm going to try to start capturing that here.

Psychology stuff

In the 1940's a psychologist named Abraham Maslow published something called "A Theory of Human Motivation," which introduced something called the Hierarch of Needs, pictured below:

I learned about this thing when I was in high school in the early 1970's, which is a terrible time to start introducing someone to the idea of psychology. Understand, I had never thought about this kind of thing before, and it set me off on a journey to understand myself.

The idea is, you can't achieve a higher level until whatever comes below it is satisfied. So to quickly go through this, "Physiological" is like, you need air. "Safety" is, you need physical and financial security. "Love/Belonging" is just what it sounds like- family, romantic, friend, whatever. "Esteem" means both respect from others and self-esteem.

Once you've got all that out of the way (easy-peasy), you can proceed to self-actualization, which means achieving your potential as a human being. You need to understand what you're capable of doing and then doing it.

I haven't thought about this particular triangle for a while, but it occurred to me today because I was trying to have some context for things that are happening in my life at the moment. And what I realized was that, for the most part, I'm pretty self-actualized, if that's a thing. I know this sounds self-congratulatory and I suppose it is, in a self-actualized kind of way. I certainly don't achieve my potential all the time, but I'm pretty good about trying at the very least. I know and understand myself pretty well and I am able to go about my life in a positive way.

The point here is not to highlight how cool I am, but rather to note that being self-actualized, or indeed, to be reasonably psychologically healthy in any way, does pretty much nothing to reduce the number of problems or "issues," as the kids say, that one faces. I think I have just as many problems as anyone else; they're just different, because my problems are less often based on not understanding and more on understanding.

What does that even mean? Well, there's a pretty clear solution to problems caused by lack of understanding. You do something to gain the necessary understanding. There's not such a clear path when you're dealing with the ramifications of understanding something. I spend a lot of time thinking, "So now what?" So yes, that's my question of the day. What do I do now?

Something, anything

Someone out there might be wondering why I haven't posted in a while. It's not something I'm happy about. I love writing this stuff. Lately, though, I've been having trouble finishing. I started writing about how I think the "Hate Has No Home Here" signs are self-congratulatory and dumb. I just never finished. They are though.

It's a little strange. I still smile and find things funny all the time, and as far as I can tell I still have the ability to say funny things and make my students and my friends laugh. But much of my life has been caught up with stuff that ranges from not particularly funny to dead serious. It's not that those things aren't worth writing about, but they're not what I normally do in this blog, so I've been hesitant to post it. For example, anyone who works with me knows that I am in the middle of an effort to eliminate sexual harassment in my school. Not much funny stuff there, unless you include making fun of clueless people, which I don't.

Also, a lot of the things that have occupied me are personal and not appropriate for sharing. I'm generally fine to share things about myself, but when they involve other people I just can't.

I think what I need to do is keep better track of the fun stuff in my day (and there's a lot of it) so that the more serious things don't push them out of my head. Most of the things I find amusing are spur of the moment interactions and they don't stick with me or I don't feel like writing "so they said, and then I said..." kinds of things.

But here's what's going on. I am on my way to San Francisco to visit one of my kids who moved there a couple of months ago. I usually find a way to write about travel, so I'm going to try to restart. Work is crazy- I spend every spare moment on the harassment stuff and don't have much "hang out" time. That needs to change. I'll write about what this process has been like sometime soon, maybe on this trip because it's entering a new phase. It's been an experience unlike anything I've ever encountered.

But for now I'm going to leave it like this, because I want to post something. Don't be surprised if you hear from me again soon though