Leesburg Essay 15

Travel Update

We were in New Orleans for several days over spring break; the first time I’ve ever set foot in Louisiana. The trip was well worth it. We stayed at The Windsor Court Hotel, although we didn’t eat at the hotel’s very well regarded restaurant because the kids were too young. Cheryl, Hon and Annaliese were also vacationing in New Orleans, so we took a number of excursions with them, including a trip on the streetcar to look at the beautiful houses on St. Charles Street followed by a long walk in a huge park full of live oaks, a swamp tour that featured a number of alligators lazing about in the sun and a small house lifted and carried downstream by Katrina, and a nighttime horse-and-buggy tour of the French quarter. We had a number of good meals. I had red beans and rice every day; poor Alexander was on a continual search for shrimp that was not battered and fried. Our swim in our hotel’s outdoor pool may qualify as George’s favorite pool experience of all time: completely shaded, cool air temperature with pool heated. We didn’t take the kids on the Katrina tour. I can imagine how bored they’d be after a few hours on a bus following the path of devastation. We did drive by what appeared to be the Ninth Ward, and vast portions of it were still clearly abandoned and completely trashed.

This summer we have our regular trip to Tennessee (we always go as soon as school is out), and during the first week of August we will be in Lake Placid, near to where I went to Girl Scout sleepaway camp at Saranac Lake (man that water was cold!).

Homefront

The garden is always beautiful in the spring, even when I haven’t gotten out much to weed or get the plants under control. Everything’s green and has new growth, we have cute little peaches, the strawberries are coming in, and the plants aren’t yet wilting in the heat every afternoon. The snow this past winter seems to have had a stimulative effect—the geraniums by the front walk have gone absolutely nuclear. Unfortunately, I had put in some grape and blackberry bushes in the fall and they didn’t do too well—I have only one left of the blackberry bushes and maybe two of the grape bushes and so I’m perhaps going to replant. The kids like growing lots of food, and they keep adding to the list of things they want me to put in. Not only pumpkins, but watermelon and corn (last year something ate our tiny corn crop). And Alexander has real concerns about the peaches surviving to adulthood. Last year the tree dropped its baby peaches before they matured—I suspect the issue may have been that the tree was still too young to sustain them.

Would that I had more time to get work done in the garden. We have been flat out busy since the end of March, especially as both kids were in sports this spring, Alexander had CCD up until the beginning of May, and Nora had to prepare for her dance recital. During a typical week there were two separate practices and at least three games, in addition to dance class and CCD—oh yes, and don’t forget the numerous random and time-consuming events such as team and dance class pictures, sports fundraisers, and the bringing of snacks for the teams for after games (don’t get me started). That, combined with all of Alexander’s homework, my teaching jobs, George’s frequent travel, two birthday parties, and Easter, and I was counting the days until school got out.

In fourth grade, Alexander will be enrolled in a special Loudoun County program called Futura, which is meant to be more challenging than the basic curriculum. I’m sure that this will be good for him, but he has concerns because he will be removed from his normal classroom once a week and bussed to another school for instruction, leaving the question of how much he will miss and how much homework he might need to make up. To address his concerns, we told him what we had heard about how the program works and then George printed out some materials from the Loudoun County website about the instructional approach. These materials were utter gibberish, the kind of thing that bureaucracies are champions at producing. They include a cute matrix of general statements about the progression of instruction from the basic to the more complex and abstract. We were making fun of it at dinner one night and Nora decided to simplify it for us—and for the bureaucrats. She replaced the three-dimensional matrix with one concise sentence that she wrote on the back of one of the pages: “Mack the kids lrn” (i.e., “make the kids learn”). So there, then.

As third grade wrapped up for Alexander, I looked back and realized that this was the year—the tipping point—when I began to have a hard time helping him with homework. He brought home math challenge sheets every week and sometimes I was utterly mystified by the way the questions were worded, although the math itself was simple. (A separate issue is the way the questions often fell over themselves to be “inclusive.” For example, one question from his prep book for the Standards of Learning tests was worded something like this: “Mikey is reading a book on Booker T. Washington. If he finishes five pages a day, how many days will it take him to reach page 125?” The fact that the book is on the subject of Booker T. Washington is utterly irrelevant to answering the question, and quite possibly a distraction to the student. )The real trouble for me, however, was when he brought home a project in which he was supposed to design a “simple machine” using a series of parts (like a wedge and a pulley) that they’d gone over in class. I am very relieved that he has a decent understanding of mechanical things because I would have had no idea how to help him and would have had to punt to George. Good thing I never had it in mind to teach third grade.

What I did do, of course, was work for EPA for ten years. When I explained this to the kids on a car ride one day (yes, Mommy went to a job every day just like Daddy), Alexander started speculating about what I was doing at my job. Knowing only tiny, disparate facts about environmental protection, and combining this knowledge with the memory of George’s encounter with the deer last fall, he came up with things like: “You worked to save the deer.” “No, you worked to save the recycling bins.” “You worked to save the deer inside the recycling bins.” “You worked to save the deer inside the recycling bins from the cars.” On and on, you get the idea, and by this point I was laughing so hard I could by no means begin to explain what I actually did at work. I can’t even explain it to adults, never mind nine-year-olds.

Media Update

New Technology: Four Stars

Until February, George and I were utterly last century with our cell phones. We finally decided to upgrade and went all the way from the stone age to the Motorola DROID. It’s a great device that would be phenomenal if I could just answer the phone part in a timely manner.

Movies: Four Stars

Up. The question I have about this marvelous little movie is whether it’s really meant for kids. It was certainly marketed to children, but it contains some pretty adult themes that run throughout (I had the same feeling about Ratatouille). My kids did not get some of the more poignant parts. It was terrific all the same, and I just loved the pack of dogs that stopped whatever it was doing and froze whenever a—SQUIRREL!!—scampered by.

Slumdog Millionaire. I had heard so much about this movie prior to seeing it that I really wasn’t sure what to expect. Even so, it was not what I expected. George and I both thought it was a terrific story, beautifully told, with a really interesting “framing” device that provides the structure. I can understand, though, why many Indians might resent how conditions in the slums are portrayed.

Doubt. This lovely movie stars Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as two nuns and a priest who work at a Catholic school in the Bronx. Meryl Streep’s character suspects the priest of indiscretions and it is never quite clear who is telling the truth. The movie has a great look to it and the actors do a terrific job.

Movies: Two Stars

Revolutionary Road. This film, set in the 1950s and starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, purports to be about suburban boredom driving people literally nuts. I had the feeling throughout, however, that it was not so much that Kate Winslet’s character is driven to lunacy by the suburbs and lack of artistic fulfillment…she’s just crazy. I liked the atmosphere, but the plot certainly didn’t stick with me.

Elegy. Penelope Cruz is probably the best thing about this movie, which also stars Ben Kingsley as an emotionally immature professor who falls for one of his much younger students. His character is so unappealing that it was hard for George or me to feel any sympathy for him.

Rashomon. Apparently a lot of people at George’s job refer to this movie as a good encapsulation of how things sometimes work in international relations. Be that as it may, this 1950s Japanese flick is not really scintillating entertainment, more like watching performance art that extends for an hour and a half. The premise of this story is that a number of people witness a murder and they all have a completely different story to tell about it; George came to the conclusion that each witness’s story was based on the individual’s need to save face. I liked some of the visuals, but the acting was way over the top and almost bizarre. Well, at least now he’s seen it so that he knows what people are talking about.

Finale update

How to end a TV show that has captured viewer’s hearts and minds for years? When The Sopranos finished up a couple of years ago, it took one possible path: the non-ending ending that infuriated many fans. When 24 ended this May, it had a quite touching ending, but by that point we were so beyond caring that it didn’t actually touch us. Battlestar Galactica had a great ending because it actually gave you an idea of where the characters had been and were going and it had some emotional resonance. The best ending, however, may have been achieved by Lost, a show which had both enthralled and utterly exasperated us along the way. The ending didn’t answer many questions, but weirdly managed to make most of the more trivial questions irrelevant. The best thing I read about the Lost ending is from the “On Faith” column in the Washington Post.

Books

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. What can I really add to the commentary on W & P? The book is built up to such a degree in people’s minds, particularly with regard to its length, that having finished it my primary emotion is just relief (wow, it’s a real book with a real story!!). After years of hearing (and saying) things like “He thinks he’s writing W & P” or maybe something like “It’s not like it’s W & P” or simply “that’s as long as W & P,” I found that I enjoyed most of it immensely; a few parts I will single out for comment. First, I was struck by the amount of emotion that male characters would show toward one another, even kissing each other extensively and referring to each other as “dear heart.” This leaves me wondering whether this was the style among men of the time or just Tolstoy being dramatic. Second is Tolstoy’s arresting description of French troops basically dispersing into a non-army when they reach Moscow; this part in particular stuck with me. Third, I found myself extremely bored near the end of the book when Tolstoy devotes a lot of ink to analyzing how historians treat history. Finally, I was disappointed by the fact that (SPOILER ALERT) Boris and Natasha do not get together at the end; I somehow assumed partway through this book that the characters in the Bullwinkle cartoon must be homage to Boris and Natasha in W & P. Oh well.

Overall, I think I have found that most books that are considered “great” books by a vast number of people over time have been quite enjoyable or at least interesting to read, with two big exceptions: Moby Dick and Heart of Darkness (and no, I didn’t really like Apocalypse Now much either, but I digress). I found reading these, which I believe I did in high school, insufferable. I admitted that to Alexander recently, and he found this so interesting that he and George quietly rounded up a copy of Moby Dick so that Alexander could follow me around the house reading aloud to me from that “great” work. All I can think of is my English teacher at the time droning away about the “seven levels of meaning”…Good lord, what a bunch of nonsense.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I read the author’s first novel The Bean Trees some twenty years ago. It seemed like a perfect book for the early ‘90s, probably read with a soundtrack of the Indigo Girls playing on CD in the background in my first or second Arlington apartment. I haven’t read one of her books since, but my mother passed The Poisonwood Bible on to me and I really enjoyed it. It follows the story of a missionary family in the Congo, told from a point of view that shifts among the mother and the four daughters. The only thing I found annoying about it was that it took the oh-so-typical view that all of Africa’s problems are brought on by white people; one character is constantly trying to atone in some way for her white skin. The only character who doesn’t feel this way is presented as a fool. Despite this, the author does a great job of switching from voice to voice, even making mistakes in language appropriate to some of the characters.

Nora and I made our way through the first two Nancy Drew mysteries, which she received for her birthday. Although some of the concepts and old-fashioned language are difficult for her to follow, she seemed to really enjoy them. I read all of them when I was a kid; I think my friends Ginanne and Robin and I used to act them out. What cracks me up about reading these books many, many years later is that the author always describes Nancy as being “attractive,” and/or “attractively dressed.” Also, I’m really, really uncertain as to what Nancy is supposed to be doing with her time. I guess she’s graduated from high school as she’s 18, but she’s clearly not in college and apparently doesn’t really have a job either. I mean, I guess she goes around solving mysteries but there doesn’t seem to be a real career path there. Maybe she’s biding her time until Ned marries her?

Nora herself is ready to run for president, as depicted in a recent drawing:

At the same time, I should note, Alexander finished the first five or six Hardy Boys books, in addition to the first few books in the Percy Jackson series (which is extremely popular among kids at the moment). George, to whom Alexander read aloud one of the Percy Jackson books, says that the author’s approach to presenting the main character’s autism and dyslexia is to make these conditions almost a secret advantage, giving the kid super, elite abilities. For most kids with these conditions, I imagine this is not the case so I wonder what message the author is trying to project?

Audiobooks

Lush Life by Richard Russo. I had read the author’s book Empire Falls, which was made into a movie with Paul Newman, but nothing else. His book Lush Life reminds me a lot of the HBO show The Wire, which George and I love. The story concerns the investigation into a murder on the Lower East side of New York City. The book explores, in colorful language, the motivations of the numerous characters, including the police detective, the victim’s father, and the perpetrator, as the murder is solved. The melting pot is thoroughly explored as the various witnesses are interviewed (and reinterviewed).

Open by Andre Agassi. I used to be a huge tennis fan, and I can still remember watching some really gripping matches, such as when 17-year old Boris Becker was playing in Wimbledon. Or those epic matches between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe (one in particular had the whole Donaldson family gathered on the floor at my aunt’s house in Carlisle, Massachusetts, glued to the TV for four or so hours). And the match that won Andre Agassi the French Open the first time. I remember when I was a big fan of Stefan Edberg; my friend Carrie worked at that time for a sports management firm and managed to get me a glossy Stefan Edberg brochure package to peruse. The big revelation in Open has been repeated in the press a lot—that Agassi actually “hates” tennis—but the story of his childhood, his ups and downs as a player and marriages to Brooke Shields and Steffi Graf is fascinating and well worth reading for anyone who is or has ever been a tennis fan.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. This book is a very engaging story of Thomas Cromwell, the aide to Cardinal Wolsey and then advisor and fixer to King Henry the Eighth. The way she tells the story is very fluid, non-linear and the point of view shifts very gently throughout. I found myself admiring the book rather than loving it, but it brings English history alive. The most frustrating thing for me in any work of historical fiction is the lack of accurate pictures. The portraits of the time are so static looking, it’s difficult to see them as representing real people and in the case of pivotal figures such as Anne Boleyn, who charmed the king so much that he absolutely had to have her, it would be useful to know what she looked like in real life. The book won the Man Booker prize in England; I like this review in the Wall Street Journal.

Climate Change Update

The case for climate change is beginning to take on the flavor of the arguments for or against the existence of WMD in Iraq—the more people tell me I have to believe it the more resistant I become. I am extremely suspicious of the arguments made by many politicians and advocacy groups that we’re utterly destroying the future of the planet; there are too many unanswerable questions and ambiguous data. I am also suspicious of arguments made on the other side that the only fuel we can depend on is oil—I think that displays an amazing lack of confidence in scientists who are investing a lot of money and brainpower in energy research. Why would we want to remain so dependent on a dirty (in more ways than one; all we need do is peruse the state of the Gulf) and politically destabilizing fuel? Where is the progress in this? I for one am all for investing in solar panels and wind and working through the technical issues associated with them (or the political issues, as the Kennedy family, of all people, recently fought against the wind farm that they would be able to see from the Hyannis Port compound). George likes to read the magazine Scientific American and often brings to my attention the incredibly innovative approaches that scientists are developing for agriculture, energy production, and the like.

Al Gore wrote an editorial for the New York Times a few months ago that summed up for me the ugliness and utter lack of perspective of people on both sides. It was presumably meant to convince those on the fence to commit to action against climate change because really, why write an editorial that brings with it no new converts to your cause? The tone, however, drips with contempt for people who don’t buy the climate change arguments lock, stock, and barrel. He is either as dumb as I’d begun to think he is, or he has really bad PR people.

On the subject of fuel, I have a vivid memory of the gas lines in the 1970s—when you had to buy gas on certain days based on whether you had odd or even numbers on your license plate. I think I can remember my mother packing a lunch for us and then us going to sit in the car on line at the gas station that was somewhere between Irvington and Parker avenues in Maplewood. I’m sure that was a real thrill for her.

Obama is seriously beginning to annoy me. It’s one thing to, I don’t know how else to put it, “rebalance” our alliances so that we take account of the rising powers and turn some of our focus from traditional allies in Europe. It’s another thing entirely to stand with the president of Mexico while he trashes Arizona’s immigration law. All the while, of course, the Mexican government isn’t so fond of illegal immigrants itself, which Calderon admitted to Wolf Blitzer in an interview on CNN. This is amusing because what in part made Arizona act is at least the impression that the federal government is not enforcing its immigration laws. I guess maybe the federal government in Mexico does at least give lip service to enforcing its laws. The same week in politics saw the absurdity of our diplomats in China who brought up the Arizona law in discussion with the Chinese to make a point that we have our own human rights problems to work through. What is thoroughly ridiculous about this is what is the administration’s ultimate aim? Obama is projecting weakness through these and other head-shaking approaches to foreign policy. Purely from a politician’s own point of view, he is working to erode his own power base! What kind of testosterone-fueled politician does this? When you’ve got control of the U.S. government, which has enormous economic, military, and persuasive power is the world, why would you want to undermine any of the pillars of your power? If foreign leaders (assuming it’s reasonable to compare them to dogs) perceive you as weak and likely to back away, then they will come right up, put their paws on your shoulders and start breathing in your face. Whatever it is that you want to do with your power as U.S. president, whether it’s launching military strikes on Iran’s purported nuclear facilities or passing a global climate-change treaty, you cannot be perceived as weak. Weakness does not equal fairness or respect for points of view, it just equals diminished possibilities.

Here are a few interesting articles I came across recently:

First, one on the power of the left in Germany.

Next, one on Hinduism and yoga.

Also, the best investment advice I’ve heard yet, courtesy of the creator of “Dilbert.”

And the final note, courtesy of George, is the following excerpt from the Drudge Report around April 15th:

Coincidence? You be the judge…..

47% will pay no federal income taxes...

45% say amount of tax they pay 'about right'...