Dewey Decimal and All That

I am not a librarian, nor do I play one on television.  

I am, however, a bonafide library geek.   This will come as no surprise to my friend Susan, who is, in fact, a librarian, and also happens to be my twin-separated-at-birth.  

Libraries produce in me a sense of luxuriance.  They transport me to a simpler time, when shelves that seemed endless with colored spines set me to reeling.  They speak of unhurried time, curling up in a chair or a corner, free of worries--a quality hard to come by these days, as well as in adulthood.

Today, I lost that for a moment.  I was jarred.  And in those moments of imbalance, I remembered.  Funny thing, space.  Space created, space filled.  Amazing.

My dad used to tell me a story about the library he went to as he was growing up.  He made a plan that he would read the whole library--I assume it was a neighborhood library in Detroit where he grew up--starting at the beginning of A, and reading right through to Z.  It was a challenge.  I don't know how far he got, I don't remember that part of the story.  But he sure tried.  And he loved recounting the effort.  So did I.

I grew up in a library, getting my first library card as soon as I was old enough to write my full name--that was the requirement.  By that time, I had spent so much time at the library that achievement of that goal was like the fulfillment of a dream.  It meant I was "big", perhaps more than any other milestone.  I knew all the librarians by name, and they all knew my name and my mother's name--it seemed like a heavenly, peaceful, all-knowing occupation.   It was quiet there. And there was always enough time.  I watched the high school pages pushing their slate-colored wheeled cars around, and wished I were older.

I remember my first library card well.  It was a small white card, about 2 1/2" x 3 1/2", typed by hand on a typewriter behind the tall blond wood librarian's counter, and it slid into a small open-ended manila envelope of the same size, with a small thumb hole at the top for easy card removal.  I had it throughout my childhood--it's probably still somewhere at my mother's house, she saves everything.

I remember the children's library.  It was the best part, with its low 50's spindle-legged wooden tables, and its endless books...the visual memory is overwhelming, begging me to leave this writing right here, right now, get out my colored pencils, and draw the library of my youth, with its walls of windows looking out on a garden in which one could read, and with....sigh...its wonderful children's librarian.  Her desk was....right there.  She was wonderful, with her colored paper bookmarks, each with a list of suggested books for different ages.  I always longed for the color beyond my level.  And so I read.  She always had a smile, a book club, an encouragement, a scavenger hunt, a dead-on book suggestion, a joyful enthusiasm for any child who loved to read.  A knowledge of children's books that so few have, sort of like the conversation about the "shoes books" in You've Got Mail (which is, of course, a remake of The Shop Around the Corner", which is a great film.).  Island of the Blue Dolphins. A  Door in the Wall.  Beverly Cleary.  Half Magic.  Maia Wojciechowska.  A Wrinkle in Time.

In fifth grade, I did what any child who had spent six years in the library does.  I volunteered to work in the school library, shelving books and checking them out.  It was the best job I've ever had.  It made such sense.

I got older.  I ventured out of the children's library into the reference section (I told you I was a library geek), where I pored over "Who's Who" in the way that we now read People Magazine.  When a letter came in the mail for my dad, inviting him to be in Who's Who, and he threw it away saying "what a piece of junk", I was appalled.  I lingered over the tall round metal rotating racks that held the only paperback books in the library at that time.  Somehow they seemed less legitimate.  I became a voracious consumer of biographies, landing me squarely in the 900's (921's, I'm thinking?), the other end of the library, as far from childhood as one could go.

Well, these days, I'm working  at home, a task made more challenging by the persistent whispers (okay, shouts) of dishes and dirty clothes.  So I decided to go work at the local library.  I would spend a luxurious five, six, hours there.  Settle in.  Look at a few books, soak in the library-ness of it all, and get some work done.  I was excited. 

When I arrived, I found that all of the parking in the area of the library, including in the small parking lot immediately adjacent, had two hour parking meters (I live in the suburbs, it's not a place you'd easily take public transportation).   

It struck me--hard--something akin to the feelings that people describe when they find that church doors are locked: confusion, outrage, disbelief.  I was flooded with questions.  How does anyone settle in in one hour and forty-five minutes?  How will children in this community ever know that feeling of staying, exploring, reading as long as they want? How many people come to the library expecting to visit, and end up leaving because they don't have quarters in their pockets?  How can it be a home to people who want to do research?  Anyone knows that you can't get much done in less than two hours.  What if I want to snuggle into one of those soft chairs and read magazines, and what if I drift off?  What if I'm working on my computer and my meter is up, and I'm being warned not to leave any personal possessions alone on the tables?

A library I went to recently made you do all but give them your first born child in order to use their computers.  Another warns you that you cannot use the bathrooms in the children's department, those are for children only--meaning that if you are with your child in that section, you would need to remove them from their play, from their books, from that which interests them, and take them with you to the adult restrooms on the far side of the building.  I have met some good children's librarians, but have met many more who appear to be bothered by the presence of children, annoyed by questions, and resentful at the expectation that they will have an inventory of expressions beyond the scowl and the heaving sigh.  A third finally got wireless internet access, but requires that you speak directly with the reference librarian to get an outlet "unlocked" if you want to plug your computer in--the outlets are otherwise covered.  The infamous rules enforcing quiet seem to have all but vanished--it's been a good 20 years since I've heard a parent say "We speak softly in libraries".

It's no wonder that these days, I often have trouble keeping track of my now fancy magnetic-stripped library card, I routinely wind up paying late fees because I somehow "can't" make it back to the library, and that many days, I simply forget it's there as a resource.

I know that libraries, like all social and/or cultural institutions, are struggling financially.  Libraries have closed, shortened their hours, expanded their offerings.  

I know that, at least among members of my generation, we bemoan the frequent disconnection of children from books.  "Kids don't read anymore!", we say.  

Are we enticing them?  Not with video games, not with "choose your book, we have to get to soccer", but with the luxury that some of us knew, with the excitement of subterfuge as they select books that they will read, as I did, under the covers with a flashlight.  These are things I can only dream of for my daughter.

You may say that I'm living in the past.  And you may be right.  

But there are a few jewels there.  

These days, I'm more of a 100's, 200's, 300's kinda gal.  My daughter is more of a 500's person.  To each her own.

Two hours in a library?  Give me a break.

The Change of Life

Flashes.

No, not hot flashes, though I mean those, too. Flashes. All sorts.

Sleeplessness.

Leaving space not only for fatigue but for increased liminal space, the space in which ideas blossom and messages slide right in like a lover surprising you by sliding into the airplane seat next to you at the last minute.

Moods.

Moods that make us hard to live with. Moods that make us inclined to ask what is so hard about living with someone who questions what “easy to live with” means, recognizing it as a smokescreen for submission, compliance, servitude. Personal power is never easy to live with, especially for those who have never felt it.

Aches. Ailments. Anxiety.

A Trilogy of A. Reminding us that we are not here forever, that much is uncertain, that the someday is now.

They don’t call it the change of life for nothing.

I will be an artist of my own making. If not now, when?

There is art in writing.
I will not apologize for writing here when I should be “working”.
I will not accept that writing is any less valid than any other effort that we do not hesitate to call work.
I will no longer flinch in defensiveness at those who read my writing and say “You have too much time on your hands.”. No. I don’t. There isn’t enough time for all the things I want to say, write, feel, do.

There is art in caring for children.
In the strategizing necessary to maintain an emotional tenor that leaves one available, caring, and open, yet not vulnerable to the deeply personal bait that children routinely dangle as they make their way through the maze.
There is art in knowing when to approach, when to stand back, when to hold on, when to let go, when to insist, when to fold.
There is art in talking to children, in answering their questions without answering too much or diminishing their curiousity.
There is skill in this. I am not ashamed of having those skills.

There is art is offering what you know to the world.
There is art in being able to translate from one world into the next.
There is art in finding the words that make someone recognize the alien as if it has lived within them their entire lives. Because it has.

There is art in traveling, in exploration.
What is art if not freedom?
There is art in respect, in visiting new places with a minimum of the egocentrism and privilege that is implanted in us with every group sing, every state of the union address, every parade, every page 72 of our history books.

There is art in argument, in curiousity, in insistence, in analysis.
We live in a country that is not shy about its disdain for intellectuals.
I will not play along, in spite of the onion skin that has never protected me from casual meanness, intentional or otherwise.

There is art in creating
children, jewelry, vessels, rituals, solutions, things never seen before, thoughts, words written on paper or screen, classes, training, tools.

I have told the story.

When I was in my mid-20’s, I wanted to move to Maui. I believed I could do anything, I could strike out, in a classically 20-something kind of way. I packed my bags, and put my belongings into storage. I got on a plane. I rented a sublet. I sought out temporary employment, doing…well, whatever. I went to the beach in Kihei and watched the whales spout. And then I went home, as nearly everyone does who leaps into the water with a foot still on the dock. It’s an uncomfortable stretch that’s bound to cause a cramp eventually. An adventure is not the same as a life.

When I was in my 30’s, I wanted to move to Hawaii. Again. I wasn’t specific this time. I thought about where the jobs were. I researched, I interviewed by phone, I traveled for final interviews. I got a job. A good job. I said my goodbyes, packed my bags, and put my belongings into a Matson shipping container on the dock in Oakland. I drove my car up a ramp to join them. I lived at the YWCA in Honolulu for a month or two, and then rented a house nestled in lush foliage on the side of a rainy valley that was fifteen minutes from the ocean. I kept a swimsuit and goggles in my trunk so that I could stop by the beach to swim on the way home if I so desired, though often I just wanted to go home after a day of work. Even in Hawaii, living is living.

One foot on the dock is no way to leap. Diving is not so good either, as we all know a story of someone who met an unfortunate end trusting the unknown depth of water. Jump. With both feet. It’s the only way. There is no such thing as careful.

When I was in my 40’s, I found myself in a place that was alien to me in nearly every possible way, and which remains so. I set myself on a path to make the best of it, because it was for my career, not for my life. I was reminded that, in a new place, you have to adapt to cultural norms in order to get along. You have to submit. I stink at that. So I continued to speak up here and there, just to remember what my voice sounded like, to remember who I was when I stood, in boots and heavy backpack, on a log bridge across a roaring river in the Sierras, defying the elements, when that same evening I played half of a recorder duet over a desolate lake on the longest day of the year, wondering at the light sky at 9 p.m. The pressure, subtle and overt, to silence that voice was phenomenal and often remains so—people can see you remembering that, and they don’t like it much, even when they don't know it. They have their own reasons, to be sure, but there’s that flaky skin to contend with once more.

I spent my 40’s in the illusion of profession, in the false promise of letters behind a name, and then with the birth of a child. Nurturing a child is as close to the core of life as you can get. I accepted my life in the space created by the intersection of a venn diagram.

Now I am in my 50’s, with the flashes, sleeplessness, moods, and A’s that grace those that are fortunate enough to make it this far. I have devised a machine, a clever Rube Goldberg inspired contraption, designed to extract (with a loud, obnoxious, sucking sound reminiscent of a combination of nursing and the last drops of a milkshake in a large metal cup drawn unselfconsciously through a straw) the power from each of them. It's going pretty well.

And I’m working on that onion skin thing, because I’m done apologizing.

I am an artist of my own making. In the last two months, I have been called “wild” and “fierce”, always by people younger than me. I am putting those on as a cloak. I may even get that purple streak in my hair.

They don’t call it the change of life for nothing.

Ilities & Anities

You know. Humility. Insanity. Adaptability. Applicability. Ability. In-breeding. Oops. Sorry. I got carried away.

I'm looking back and realizing that I've already commented on this here, at least in a manner of speaking. But much to my shock and dismay, the world hasn't changed yet, so it appears to be time to say it again. Do you have your thinking cap on? I'm wondering if maybe that was the problem. Look how hard this little girl is trying. Give it a go.

Yeah, I know. Miss Nancy let you down, and never saw you through the Magic Mirror. The same thing happened to me. It was a hard road, but I've recovered (take what you like and leave the rest). So can you. So get out your thinking cap anyway. The grudge thing may be satisfying (don't I know it), but it's unbecoming.

This time, I am inspired once again by a video, which came to me courtesy of a facebook friend. Here you go. Take a look see.



Come to think of it, that's not quite true (that it inspired me). The video is interesting, sure. But in itself, it does not compel me to write. It's the responses, the comments, the fact that this video, and others like it, have apparently been created and circulated for years now. There's a lot of "interesting" and nodding going around. But there is still a serious problem. I see a lot of knowing nods, but I don't see people demanding anything different out of our schools. And that, my friends, is what gets me fired up.

Now, I'm not a big fan of trite. But you know that thing about the definition of insanity? About doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Well, welcome to our educational system. Yes, even under Obama.

Every time something like this comes up, every time a friend posts something like this video, every time I see some "startling" (yes, that does belong in quotes) article in the news about the future job market or how right-brained folks are the future (blah blah blah, though everyone should read this book just so that we're all in the loop), it makes me want to scream.

There is no doubt that we have no clue what our children's futures will be like, what jobs will be like when they are grown, but we continue to educate them as we were educated. For a different time, for a different era, for a world that is largely long gone. As that wonderful Gibran poem and song says "...for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams". Amen.

Yes. Competition (if that's what you want to call it, though don't you think it's a bit of a misnomer in a global economy and a digitally interconnected global community? What difference does it make if we're all working together?) is fierce. One country has better math scores. Another has more honors students. We have to catch up, we have to do better, we can do better than them--these are the mantras. Our best universities are packed with foreign students! We have to find out what they're teaching, how they're teaching, which curriculum to use, how much more homework to assign, how long the school day or year needs to be, what we can do to dominate the world educationally. Why we want or need to do that, I'm not quite sure, but that's what they say, anyway. Don't shoot the messenger.

Here's the problem (ATR*). And here's where it gets sticky. Very sticky. The answers to these questions--the reasons why we do not do as well as other countries, why our children are not as prepared to compete (it makes me shake my head every time I write it) as those in some other countries--are very unpopular. And most definitely politically incorrect. They have, in my view, far more to do with homogeneity and heterogeneity, than with anything even remotely related to our public school system or methods of assessment. But we can't talk about the former. So we tinker endlessly with the latter.

It's got a whole lot in common with one of my other favorite arguments...that when children are failing in middle school, we look at how they were or were not "ready for kindergarten".

Now, don't get me wrong. You couldn't meet anyone on this planet who would advocate more vigorously for early intervention and comprehensive high quality early education than yours truly. I've devoted my whole professional life to it.

At the same time, I defer, as ever, to a comment made years ago by Ed Zigler (one of the founders of Head Start, Sterling Professor Emeritus at Yale, and Director Emeritus of the Edward Zigler Center on Child Development and Social Policy at Yale) at a meeting I attended with him at Yale. He was discussing the successes and pitfalls of early education, and mentioned just the scenario I outlined, in which early education is "blamed". He responded directly to those in elementary education, those complaining about children "falling behind". He said, and I quote, "Early education is not an inoculation. I sent them to you ahead in kindergarten. What have you done with them since then?". Double amen.

Look. I'm a parent. I've got a kid in public school (one of the best districts in Massachusetts) Maybe you have a kid in public school too. Or even private school. Same deal. While you're watching these videos, and reading these articles and books about the future need for right-brained ability, for creativity, for thinking "different", stop and think. How much of that do you see reflected in the curriculum and practices of your local school? Would you know it if you saw it? Do you see those things being measured or valued? Or do you see largely what you remember from school---worksheets, tests, facts, multiplication, division, fractions (do we really think in 20 years that ANYONE is going to do math on paper?), standard reading comprehension, mass-produced social studies texts? Do you see things like these revised lesson plans?

So how do we respond? We argue for continued "higher standards". Who could argue with that? President Obama says "The solution to low test scores is not lower standards; it's tougher, clearer standards.". Maybe, just maybe, the problem with low test scores is TESTS. It's like the person who looks for their keys far from where s/he dropped them because "the light is better over here".

To his credit, Obama acknowledges that standards must not "simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking, entrepreneurship and creativity." That's good. It's a start. But it still misses the point. Testing, "standards", rubrics, hierarchies....these things are left-brained analytical constructs. You simply can't measure real creativity and critical thinking that way. Out-of-the-box thinking can only be measured in out-of-the-box ways by out-of-the-box people. To my knowledge, our education systems are not overflowing with those folks (yeah, I'm prone to understatement).

Obama says that his plan will be "tied to results". Tough to take issue with that. Results are good.

I still have a question (I always do). It's about this "results" thing.

Better results? Or different results? They are distinct. I'm for the latter. I'm not holding my breath.

In the meantime, I'm keeping this sign up on our living room wall, where it's been since my daughter was born.

I've been told that I'm asking for trouble. I sure hope so.

*According To Robin (of course)