Lecture: Elie Wiesel

Sometime around seventh grade I read Elie Wiesel’s Night. I was fascinated by Holocaust stories and devoured everything I could find about that time. It was my first introduction to mass evil and the Jewish people.

I am the product of years—1st grade through graduate school—of Catholic education. Back in my hometown in my Catholic junior high school, I never met a Jew. I don’t think I did until college. Even as I learned about Jewish culture and Hebrew Scriptures I still lacked the personal element. When I did think about Jews, I saw them as victims. While this is sympathetic, I still also thought of them as “other.” Two recent experiences have changed my stance.

Last Friday L. and I were invited to Sabbath dinner at the house of his colleague. It was the first time I had been invited into a home that observes the Sabbath. I was a bit nervous, but not any more nervous than when I have to meet anyone for the first time. Sure enough it was a delightful family and their children and I talked about books and played War (the endless card game). We didn’t have time to get to Spoons. The hospitality they shared with us had been cultivated and nourished, and we reaped the blessings.

Tonight I went to Boston University to hear Elie Wiesel speak. His talk was one of three in a series labeled “The Fascination with Jewish Tales.” Doors opened in Metcalf Hall at 6pm for the 7pm lecture. I thought that he was going to speak at the BU bookstore at 5:30, but it turned out that that event was only a book signing. Even though I had already gotten in the soon-to-be long line to have his newest book, The Time of the Uprooted, signed, I opted to head down to the lecture. I wanted to see his face as he spoke. I got my wish.

I was in the first wave to enter the hall and made my way to stage left, second row, fourth seat from the center aisle. As it happened, Wiesel arrived early and then stayed late just feet from my seat. He is a small man with a lively face and a halo of silver hair. He was dressed comfortably in a navy blazer, light blue button down and a navy tie. His thick Hungarian accent was music—he was born in Transylvania.

Steven Katz, Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University, introduced Wiesel. He stood at the podium and boomed his brief comments to introduce Wiesel as the final talk in a conference entitled “Reconsidering The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: 100 Years After the Forgery.” Katz cut an impressive figure at the podium and when Wiesel took the stage and sat at a wooden table provided for him, he perched on the edge of his seat, crossed his ankles and leaned into his papers ready to do the opposite of boom.

As I learned from Wiesel, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a forged document, utterly false, published at the turn of the century that pretends to be a series of notes, lectures and plans written by Jewish leaders in the Diaspora whose plan is simple: world domination. As Wiesel noted, any intelligent person who reads it will be horrified at the hate and ignorance in its pages. Yet the document was used and is still used in our times to justify anti-Semitism. Henry Ford published the Protocols in his own company newspaper, with a circulation of 200,000 and had 300,000 copies published as a book. Today fanatic Muslims read it with as much fervor as they dedicate to the Koran.

Wiesel sat calmly as he recounted what is known about the origin of the document and how it has been received over the past 100 years. Occasionally he swept his right hand up and through his hair to make a point. It is not possible to track down the exact place or even language of origin. Perhaps we should be more concerned, he suggested, with how it has been received, how it has been used as a weapon of hate in our world.

It has survived and flourished precisely because it is easy for the world to entertain a conspiracy theory to explain how the Jews have survived down through centuries of hate. It has survived because the Christian myth inherited both the notion of a Jewish monotheistic God as well as the myth that the Jews destroyed their God. Christians, over time, have remembered and relived only the consequences of the second part of the myth. To paraphrase Wiesel: The Jews gave us God and God’s murderer, but now only the second part is the Jewish legacy.

The existence of the Protocols helped me to understand the great fear of Zionism I had come across in history books over the years. The fact that people’s fears, condensed in a conspiracy theory, were actually written down turned a fear into mandate for hate.

Wiesel’s speech built up to his theme: hate empowered by words. Literature, with a few exceptions, is creative and therefore can not be created from hate. Among many examples, Wiesel mentioned that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet survives as literature because it is not only about civil strife and warring families, but about innocent, desperate love. The Protocols, even though it has been published as a book, survives not because it is literature, but because it uses words as weapons. The weak, the fearful cling to these words and find those hateful words coming out of their own mouths. If you want to understand hatred, Wiesel said, study its language. The Protocols is a prime example.

Wiesel concluded his speech by clearly stating that Jews do not want to dominate the world or conquer it, they want to redeem it. When the messiah comes, Jews do not expect everyone to become Jewish. They do want more hospitality, people to be more human and open to what is noble in all of us.

He finished on that resonant note, and didn’t take questions. The audience applauded and a line immediately formed to kiss him on both cheeks, embrace him, fumble out words of praise and thanks. A young student asked him to autograph Night and said, “You are such an inspiration. You probably hear that all the time.”

He replied, “No, I don’t” and returned her book as he looked her in the eye and smiled while his brawny bodyguard hovered nearby.

I could have asked him to sign my freshly purchased The Time of the Uprooted, but I held back and just observed him and how people moved around him. Those who knew him were relaxed. His fans were respectful. One woman murmured to her companion, “This is such an honor to be here.” He is “one of the great men of our century.”

A jeans-clad student, perhaps one of the many required by their professors to attend, emphatically told her friend, “I am going straight back to the library.”

“Me too,” her friend affirmed.

Wiesel slowly greeted as many fans as he could, then took his leave. I did too.

The walk home was unseasonably warm for a Halloween night.

I don’t know what I could have said to him if I had waited in line, but I do know that his lecture has made me more aware of the way words can be powerful weapons of mass destruction, words alone.

The final lecture in the three part series centers on his new book and will be November 21, 7pm at Boston University. More information: 617-353-2238

Link to NPR recording of the lecture: http://www.buworldofideas.org/
(This may not be a stable link)

My New Hat and Theater Offensive

L. and I had a lazy afternoon defined by our search for a real, sinful hamburger with all the fixings. We ended up at Harvard Square and settled into our 3 o’clock plates of beef for him and tuna salad for me. I had actually gone to the gym that Saturday morning and I wasn’t about to invalidate my sweat with French fries (although I did steal a few of his, of course). It was snowing huge, wet flakes outside. I still haven’t gotten my winter coat ready for the season and was a bit chilled in my leather jacket. Then, the hat.

I swear I have been waiting thirty years for this hat to happen to me. What a revelation to have a warm head. We had ducked into the Cambridge Artists Cooperative, mostly to get out of the snow, and found our way into the back where hats galore adorned the walls. I walked out of there with a “Wild Tibetan” in green and black made by Susan Bradford. The hat came with instructions. I love it. I wish I had a picture of it. More important than the impressive rim, however, is that it keeps my entire body warm. This is amazing. My whole life I have been missing this hat.

The hamburger and the hat tired us out and we headed home for a late afternoon nap. The physical pleasure of a Saturday afternoon nap makes the entire week go down a bit easier. It was good that we napped because we decided at the last minute to go to the theater. It was another first for me. Readers beware: the production was by The Theater Offensive, whose mission statement reads:

To form and present the diverse realities of queer lives in art so bold it breaks through personal isolation and political orthodoxy to help build an honest, progressive community.

The play we saw, “Varla Jean Merman’s Girl With a Pearl Necklace: An Act of Love” was part of the 14^th Annual Queer Theater Festival called “Out on the Edge 2005.” With my Wild Tibetan perched on my head, it was no problem to brave the snow and walk to the theater. We headed toward the theater early enough to grab a bite to eat nearby before the 10:30 show. Luckily we had been to the same arts complex before and know a place, Garden of Eden on Tremont Street, that has tasty sandwiches and desserts.

We headed into the theater a few minutes before the show to find a lively crowd and an open bar (though I think the drinks were nonalcoholic). That evening's show was the last of a four-day run for the actor, Jeffery Roberson, and there was a spirit of celebration in the air.

This was our first time to see a show performed by a man in drag. It was hilarious—pure outrageous, campy fun. We were definitely in the straight minority, but we were not “outed” in any way or made to feel uncomfortable. Varla Jean Merman regaled us with her stories about looking for love in all the wrong places, impressed us with her medleys (especially the Puccini/Beyonce number) and delighted audience members with jokes and her amazing ability to sing and eat cheese at the same time. Hilarious.

After the show, thanks to our nap, we were wide awake as we strolled home. It was a beautiful night, and we marveled about the show we had seen---we certainly are not in the Midwest anymore.

Temper Chocolate Class

About one month ago, I read a blurb in the Boston Globe about a Chocolate Class offered by a small independent chocolatier, Temper Chocolates. I called and reserved a spot for L. and me that day. Then I carefully entered the date, Oct. 27th, and time in L's palm pilot to make sure that we both made it there!

The class was held in the Commonwealth hotel in Kenmore Square, just upstairs from the tiny kiosk store. About 25 or 30 "students" enrolled and the room was packed. Each place setting in the u-shaped configuration had a small plate with about 9 squares of chocolate. Ice-cold water in pitchers and goblets were at the ready so that we could cleanse our palates between nibbles.

Caroline Rey, the young owner and chocolatier, led us through the evening.

We had a packet of information next our plates that detailed the major trends in the chocolate world: country/region of origin, percentage of cocoa content and cocoa varieties. Just as the grapes grown in the hills of Tuscany produce a distinct vintage, so too does the cocoa plant grown in a specific valley in Venezuela affect the taste of the final chocolate product. Or so the theory goes.

The finest chocolate in the world grows in a Chuao, Venezuela. We got to taste it. We had started with a Hershey's bar and moved up to the refined Chuao chocolate. And, sure enough, I could tell the difference. And I did think the Chuao was amazing. But I am no chocolate snob. There is a time and a place for a Snickers.

One of the most useful, and poetic, things we learned that night had to do with cocoa content. It turns out that the best chocolate bars should have five ingredients: chocolate (cocoa), sugar, soy Lecithin (an emulsifier), cocoa butter (which is the naturally occurring oil found in the bean) and vanilla. Milk chocolate, of course, should have milk as the sixth ingredient.

Many chocolate makers take out the cocoa butter and sell it the cosmetics industry for a huge profit and then use synthetic fats in the chocolate instead. For example, a Godiva bar we looked at used "butter oil" which is soy bean oil treated to taste like butter. Yuck.

Another useful fact: While Godiva did in fact start out as a small Belgium chocolatier, it has been owned and operated since the 1970's by Campbell's. Yes, the soup people. Do not be seduced by the brand name.

Ms. Rey sells chocolates by Amedi, who manufacture in Tuscany. Although all cocoa is grown in South America and Africa, it is all manufactured in Europe and around the world. A student did ask about Fair Trade, which is an obvious concern, but Ms. Rey deftly replied that she believes Fair Trade is mostly a marketing device. In other words, they claim to monitor the plantations, but in reality this is nearly impossible. So don't buy it to ease your conscience, because it is most likely just a ploy to get your chocolate dollars. Hhmmm. I am not sure about that, but I see her point.

As the class ended, a student next to us identified herself as a Boston Globe Food Writer and asked us questions about our experience at the class. She was a lovely woman and we enjoyed telling her about our passion for sweets, even if he prefers milk and I prefer dark. I'll keep my eye out for the article!

Basic Plain/Dark Chocolate Tasting Technique:

To taste the base and primary flavor notes, wait a few seconds after you place a piece of chocolate in your mouth.

To release the secondary flavors, expand the chocolate's surface area by chewing five to t ten times.

Let the chocolate melt slowly by pushing it gently against the roof of your mouth. Note the flavor, the texture and the way the chocolate lingers on the tongue.

Carol Mulroney: Review and My Response

Here is the review posted in today's Boston Globe about the play I blogged, Carol Mulroney. Let me just say, I thought the review was off the mark. Way off. So, for the first time, I emailed the reviewer my thoughts. I have pasted my email below. I know that most of you have not seen the play, but alas, for posterity.

Here is the review:

STAGE REVIEW
Up on the roof
In 'Carol Mulroney,' actors reach heights the script can't match
By Louise Kennedy, Globe Staff October 28, 2005

Stephen Belber's ''Carol Mulroney," in its world premiere by the Huntington Theatre Company, has many clever lines, an ingenious structure, thoughtful acting, solid design, and the kind of commitment and backing from a significant company that most playwrights only dream of. It is painful, therefore, to report that the play has a hollow core where its heart ought to be.

Belber, whose credits include ''Match," ''Tape," coauthorship of ''The Laramie Project," and multiple episodes of ''Rescue Me" and ''Law & Order: SVU," has said that he wanted to write a play about ''someone with a sort of inexplicable sadness."

Carol Mulroney, who spends most of the night on the roof of her urban town house, is indeed inexplicably sad. Belber gives us some of the reasons -- a troubled marriage, a childhood tragedy, a complex relationship with her father, an untrustworthy friend -- and has the characters around this young woman spend a lot of time describing her sadness. He also has them talk about her other qualities, and we see her in a variety of moods. Clearly, he wants to depict a complicated person whose motives and desires are often mysterious, even to herself.

But there's a difference between mystery and confusion. In plays, if not in life, we look for some kind of exploration of the mystery -- not a tidy resolution, but a coherent, emotionally satisfying narrative that, by the end, makes us feel that we have walked a path with a real human being and gained some insight into her sorrows and joys. What ''Carol Mulroney" gives us instead is a collection of monologues and images, some wonderfully intelligent and some depressingly crude in both language and thought, that leave us, 90 minutes later, struck mainly by the observation that Carol's most typical line is ''I don't know."

As Carol, Ana Reeder manages to inflect this line with various shadings of puzzlement and wonder; she speaks and moves like an exploring, tentative child, which feels right. Like the other gifted actors onstage with her, however, Reeder is hamstrung by a script that at once under- and over-explains. Belber's speeches can run almost shockingly long, and they're full of literary-sounding phrases. But somehow you can't quite get a grip on who these people are; it's as if the language obscures, rather than clarifies, their true natures.

Would Carol's blustery salesman of a father, for example, really say of the women's cosmetics that have made his fortune, ''It's the face we put on to face the folly; it's our savior, our Apollonian veil spread delicately across the void"? Would Carol's complicated best friend, a smart and apparently feminist artist, really use the most hateful word for female genitalia, repeatedly and bizarrely, in a strange and nasty soliloquy that winds up with her imagining her ''spores" being inhaled by a despondent Turkish sailor?

Belber is lucky to have fine actors -- Larry Pine as the father, Johanna Day as the friend -- bringing as much nuance and dimension as possible to such speeches. Tim Ransom and Reuben Jackson also do what they can with the thankless roles of Carol's husband, Lesley, and rival salesman Ken. And if Lisa Peterson's direction sometimes veers too far toward cheap laughs at the expense of character, it's only partly her fault. The script is already tilting in that direction, with its persistent favoring of clever phrasing or neatly worked-out structure over believable human feeling (as when the characters joke at the most unlikely moments or repeatedly mention the time in order to clue us in to how the narrative timeline is circling back on itself).

The Huntington has been working on ''Carol Mulroney" with Belber since 2003, when the play received a staged reading in the company's ''Breaking Ground" program. Its designers have given it their all, particularly in the multilevel set by Rachel Hauck that evokes Carol's rooftop. So much effort; so little reward. It's enough to make a person explicably sad.

Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.

And my email response to her:

Dear Ms. Kennedy,

I have never responded in writing to a review of any sort, but I have been moved to respond to your scathing review of Carol Mulroney.

I recently saw the play myself and found its raw, yet poetic language effective. I loved the cunt spores.

I also recently saw Stoppard's play, The Real Thing, and it helps to draw a comparison between the two in terms of language use.

When I leave a Stoppard play, my cerebral g spot is in a tizzy from all the clever language and multi-layered meanings. I feel smart because I get some of his allusions and excited to go out and better educate myself to understand more of his allusions next time.

Belber's language, especially the self-justifying histrionics of the self-deluded father "Apollonian veil spread delicately across the void" juxtaposed with the cunt spores dissolving on the tongue of a strange man as her salvation for the bitch-feminist friend made me walk out of the theater knowing that I am human. And, unlike Carol Mulroney, still alive. True, my brain didn't sizzle, but my heart did.

After a Stoppard play, you have little to discuss. You feel that you need to see the text, underline the clever bits and discuss it in a Socratic Seminar to uncover its meanings.

After Belber, my boyfriend and I hashed out the characters and the ways they interacted with fervor and energy.

Yes, I thought there were weak moments in the play, but it was hardly the failure you present in the the Globe.

This is a play that my generation can really get. We make jokes at the "wrong time." We have grown up with The Vagina Monologues and are not afraid of cunt spores on stage. Belber is a fresh new voice. What is sad about the play is that your voice might prevent Belber from the audience who can appreciate his work.

Just my thoughts,

J.K.Kelley

Play: Carol Mulroney

L. had wanted to go see a theater piece ever since our arrival in Boston. I had seen Stoppard's play while he was out of town. Finally last week we decided we would see something together, even though the listings were not too enticing. We put off buying tickets.

Wednesday morning I read an article in the Boston Globe about the playwright Stephen Belber, which noted that he had co-written and acted in The Laramie Project. My interest in the playwright was peaked. I have never seen The Laramie Project, but intend to do so. But that work was on my mind because of a story in the news about a production of that play last week in Kansas that faced the threat of protesters who see the play as "pro-gay." Imagine that. The horror. The real horror is that the protesters claim they act in the name of Christ. I digress.

I also learned that the play was a world debut. That did it. Thursday morning we bought the tickets online to see Carol Mulroney that same night.

We were almost late, but thanks to a speedy Greek, who showed me what it means to DRIVE in Boston, we were just in time.

I won’t give away too much about the play. Here is an official blurb:

The allure of the simple life often finds its way into the souls of complicated characters. But matrimonial love and home-grown potatoes are not enough to overcome the demons that haunt Carol Mulroney. Sitting on the roof, overlooking the beauty of the city from a distance, she contemplates her tempestuous past with her father and her uncertain future with her husband in this compelling world premiere drama.

The whole play takes place on the roofs of New York, a fresh idea that Belber claims he developed as he stood onstage during a long scene in The Laramie Project that required the actors to stand still and avoid the fidgets. Most of us would have let our minds turn to mush while we waited for our stage exit. He wrote a play inside his head.

The language, his diction, is natural and unaffected. After Stoppard, your cerebral pleasure zone tingles. After Belber, you know that you are human.

When we left the theater, the temperature had dropped and we were freezing in the wind. Hot drinks were necessary. Actually we stopped in a nearby café/bistro and had red wine—for our health—and pumpkin cheesecake (for me) and a chocolate-raspberry concoction (for him). Naturally we shared. Tannins and fat do effectively raise one’s internal heat.

Show Information:

Carol Mulroney
by Stephen Belber
Directed by Lisa Peterson
Virginia Wimberly Theatre
October 14 - November 20, 2005
Tickets

Don't be Shelf-ish with your books!

bookcrossing n.

the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.

(added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary in August 2004)

If you haven't clinked on my new favorite link, then please do so today! Commit Random Acts of Literacy at BookCrossing.com. The visionaries who started the site want no less than to turn the entire world into a library! I love it! Let's take over the world! Literary Geeks in Kansas and Thailand and everywhere in betweeen unite!

The idea is this: Read a book, label it and write a short journal about it, then set it free in the wilds. Someone comes along, captures it, reads and journals about it, then sets it free once again. The book's journey--where it goes and who reads it--can be followed online and readers can even email or meet, if they wish.

It is too much fun and whimsy to ignore.

Be warned that while registration is free, you do need to purchase materials to release your books (stickers, labels, etc.). But the basic package is less than $20. Just think of all the dusty books you have in piles and how they will thank you to be set free. If you love them, let them go!

So far I have set free two books: Snow in August and The Tipping Point. Here is the journal I wrote online at BookCrossing for The Tipping Point:

BookCrossing Journal

The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell

There was BG and AG in my reading life. Before Gladwell, and after. Before Malcolm Gladwell I had no time for nonfiction. There were too many delicious novels out there. Now I can’t get enough of him. I devoured this book and then his next, Blink

If you are familiar with Gladwell's other books or essays, you know what to expect from The Tipping Point: smooth prose, intriguing stories and the endless reward of having good stuff to mull over.

It is Gladwell--not Sue Monk Kidd or Anita Diamant or, even, Dan Brown--that I find myself talking about. At dinner parties. At family reunions. On the metro. I even picked it for my traditionally fiction-only book club. They adored it.

Even if you are too busy for nonfiction, trust me. Take a bite.

You will sink your teeth into Gladwell’s compelling idea: “little changes can have big effects; when small numbers of people start behaving differently, that behavior can ripple outward until a critical mass or "tipping point" is reached, changing the world.” (From Publishers Weekly).

Isn’t this a PERFECT book for BookCrossing.com? See if you know what I mean after you have finished it!

For more Gladwell reading: Check out the follwoing website, where he has posted all of his New Yorker Essays: Gladwell.com

Since Kozol and My Reading Shelf

Since Kozol’s last Tuesday, I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about his lecture and my experience in Wellesley. I have also found out that some people close to me are reading his books as well. One should use life well, he said.

Well in the last week I used my life in the following manner: reading, writing (one story has characters inspired by Kozol’s work), cleaning, exercise and braving the dreary, endless rain to hit the Boston streets. Did I mention thinking? Because all of the ways I mentioned to use my life are also just the kind of things that let ideas and feelings incubate and blossom from time to time. More on those interior journeys later, perhaps.

In the meantime, here is an update on my Reading Shelf.

I am struggling, sadly, with Saul Bellow’s Augie March. I finally resorted to commentary on the book in order to justify my labor between the pages. Of course, the experts say it is genius. It is a good read, but dense, dense, dense with precise—utterly beautiful—realistic detail. Well done, but I slog through nonetheless. I don’t like to slog, especially when so many other delicious books are out there. So, I did renew the book on the library’s online service to have one more go at it. If you have read it, please encourage me.

You might wonder why on earth I chose Bellow’s novel to battle with. In a way I did and did not choose it. When I choose new books to read, I rely on a combination of word-of-mouth, allusions that drive me mad, reviews, overhead conversations, impassioned accounts, and random shiny covers. In addition to these methods, I also decided to attack the Indiana recommended reading list for high school students. I came across this list in teacher training and was appalled at the sheer number of unfamiliar titles. I decided that if I teach in Indiana, I should read the books that are suggested for my students. Augie March was second on the list, I think.

The truth is that many of these books are not taught in classrooms, for various reasons. And I have no idea who develops or if they even update the list. But it is a good touchstone.

I also finished another book on the list this past week. The Abduction by Mette Newth is a strangely sparse prose style with lots of exclamation marks! But it does have compelling characters and a sophisticated theme, the clash of ancient and modern people! Two characters are abducted from their native culture and held hostage, as animals, by Europeans. It is an interesting way to get at slavery, oppression, and cultural dominance without using the case of African slaves in the Americas. A strange little tale, a quick read.

Another book that I just finished, which I thought was on the list, is Snow In August by Pete Hamill. As it turns out, this book is not on the list at all and I have no recollection of why I decided it was a must read! That is a bit scary. At any rate, I am perfectly happy to read it. I am nearly 2/3rds finished with this post World War II story of an Irish-American Catholic alter boy in Brooklyn and his friendship with a Czech Rabbi. This is a delightful story written in a clean prose style and packed with allusions to Poe and Jack London. Baseball aficionados, especially of the Dodgers, might salivate. I would almost rather teach this than The Chosen, but Snow in August is a bit long, but not too long. It tackles a boy’s coming-of-age, a father lost in the war, immigrants, the Holocaust, Jewish culture, anti-Semitism and racism. Jackie Robinson’s emergence into the major leagues almost makes him a major character in the narrative. We’ll see how it ends.

Next on the recommended reading list: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines. I am quite familiar with Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying and look forward to reading another one of his works.

Now, not on the list, but sweetly devoured: The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich. You might remember that I blogged about another one of her books, The Master Butcher’s Singing Club, a while ago. The Painted Drum is her most recent book and I had been on the waiting list at the Boston Public Library for quite some time for this little jewel. Unlike the other novels I have read by her, this story is quite compact—less than three hundred pages with large font! But it is amazing. Please read it. I tried to look through it for some memorable lines, but I simply couldn’t separate out any discrete lines without including a huge chunk of text. The language and images appear simple, but they build and fit together in poetic ways.

I am also reading the current Harper’s magazine (with fiction by Margaret Atwood), Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver and the Boston Globe (daily newspaper). And of course, as many short stories as I can uptake without stuffing my brain with too much noise.

Amy Tan is reading from her new book, Saving Fish From Drowning, at the public library this Thursday. I am still number 20 on the waiting list for her book, so I probably won’t have a copy read before her talk. I will probably go anyway. Check her out. Check out the scene, perhaps. Or should we go to the theater? Can I just say, I am so pro-choice.

In the meantime, send me your reading suggestions!

Kozol: The Shame of the Nation

It was rainy. I hate to drive. But Kozol was speaking in Wellesley. There is a train to Wellesley, but his talk was in the Unitarian Universalist sanctuary and, sadly, the train did not stop precisely in front of the church. For those of you who know me, you know my horror at hitting the highways, at night, in the rain. You know that I really, really wanted to see Kozol speak. So I went.

Kozol was tired, and not just because of the exhausting book tour. In fact, this talk was “at home” here in Massachusetts. So he was technically taking a break from the tour. He was tired too because of his elderly, frail parents. But more about them later.

He was tired, but he was delightful and outrageous. He believes that we should be outraged at outrageous things. He has focused his life, spent his life, working with and for kids. He has tried to make sense out of the American public school system. When it wasn’t possible to make sense out of the injustice and apartheid conditions he faced, he turned to outrage. He is right.

The speaking engagement was an intimate one for him. Usually he speaks to audiences of 800 or more. Our gathering in the packed sanctuary numbered about 200. I had left very early to give myself ample time on the highways and arrived near 7:00 for the 7:30 speech. I sat myself in the second row, just beneath the pulpit. Soon the chilly church began to warm up as the crowd, mostly women, gathered. He started promptly and when he asked if there were any teachers in the audience, a good half of us raised our hands. Teachers have been turning out in droves for his talks. Teachers want answers.

Kozol wore a light blue button down shirt, rolled up past his elbows, and a navy tie. His voice was soft, almost high-pitched and moved higher when he posed a rhetorical question and softened playfully when he recounted a story about a kid he had met. He smiled when he talked about the kids he knew and loved. When he came out from behind the blonde wood pulpit at the end of his talk, I saw that he wore navy sneakers with white piping. He was not nearly as tall as me, which must make him fit in very well with 4th graders.

Kozol graduated from Harvard and went to teach 4th grade because he believed in little kids. He still believes that bringing “joy, magic, mystery and mischief” to pint-sized people is the best thing you can do in life. He has spent his career working on their behalf, and now only visits classrooms. Seven-year-olds, he said, have only a theoretical connection to their chairs. When he asks questions they jump and wave, even thrust their little waving fingers in his eyes. He recalled one little girl who nearly blinded him and so, afraid she might die, he called on her to answer his question. She looked up at him with a sweet smile and asked, “What?” She just wanted to be recognized, he said.

During Kozol’s talk he discussed one of President Bush’s education catch phrases. Bush often talks about what he calls the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Bush accuses teachers and schools, and the public at large, of this new, more insidious kind of bigotry. As if race had nothing to do with it.

Bush accuses schools and teachers of failing our kids because of low expectations. It seems that Bush doesn’t get teachers. Teachers, in America, do not get into the profession for financial gain or even to earn social status. They teach because they are idealists, at least to start out. The best ones remain idealists despite the odds. Idealists, by definition, have high expectations.

So if teachers and schools don’t suffer from the soft bigotry of low expectations, I wonder, then who does have this disease?

“Be not offended, but feel a little threatened,” Kozol intoned from the pulpit. “It is my job to make people feel uncomfortable.”

“Outrage is not in fashion.” Kozol was right on. The American public, even the world today, is too tired to get mad. It is far easier to ignore the problems that do not directly affect us. “We should be outraged at outrageous things,” he said.

And the most outrageous thing in the America right now: Apartheid in our democratic schools. Segregation across America is worse now than at the time of Martin Luther King’s assassination. If you want to see a segregated school, just look for one that is named after a great Civil Rights leader. The student population will be nearly 100% dark-skinned, the teachers will be the most inexperienced and low paid in the district, it will have the largest class sizes, the building will be in ruins and the hallways will reek of depression.

Some say that Kozol’s use of the word “apartheid” is too strong. Apartheid in South Africa was a legal division of the races. Kozol says that in the eyes of children, it doesn’t matter. It is apartheid. It is not a legal mandate, but it is economically and socially enforced.

26 out of 11,000 students in the Bronx are white. (Try saying that out loud.)

“Children are equal in the eyes of the Lord, but not in the eyes of the United States government. . . . they come into the public schools with a price tag stamped on their foreheads,” Kozol claimed. For example, an inner city kid in New York is worth about $8,000 per year (this is what the government spends per pupil), while a kid in the suburbs is worth easily $14,000 and up to $22,000 in the wealthiest areas.

These are separate schools, and unequal.

How can we solve this problem? Kozol related stories of getting stuck at dinner parties with his old Harvard grads. They like him and admire his work for social justice. They might say, "Your last book made me cry." But by the time dessert and coffee are served, they lean back in their chairs and ask, “Can these problems be solved by throwing money at the situation?” This question comes from parents who spend thousands upon thousands to send their own children to private elementary schools.

“Yes!” Kozol says, “Throw it, throw it from a helicopter!”

How can the rich claim that money can’t solve the problem when they throw their own money at their kid’s private education? Even the use of the verb, throw, instead of allocate or even spend, betrays their “soft bigotry.”

Kozol believes in kids. He believes in Pre-K education for all, especially the inner city kids who need it the most so that thy have a hope of passing the standardized tests mandated by the government. He believes in real literature, not merely phonics. He believes in teaching lessons, not merely Standard 267b. He believes in accountability, not merely for kids, but for the government first.

The lecture ended on a personal note. Kozol's father is 99 years-old. He was a leading neurologist in Boston and has been diagnosed by one of his former students with Alzheimer’s. His mother is 101 years-old and still bossy! When she saw the tie he planned to wear on the tour, a navy thing with coffee stains, she said, “Do me a favor. Go to Lord & Taylor’s. Buy yourself a tie and charge it to me.” (He was wearing the tie, by the way.)

Kozol said that his mom is still his best friend. When he was fired for teaching Langston Hughes to his 4th graders, his mom and dad came to the school to march with the parents who protested his departure. He was a Rhodes Scholar fired from teaching the 4th grade due to “curriculum deviation.” His mother marched for him all those years ago, and he can’t bear the thought of losing her now. He ended his speech by concluding, “Life goes so fast, use it well.”

Use it well.

I teach in an affluent, white suburban school. I didn’t mean to. Now I have to consider, carefully, how I use my life, my profession. I want to use it well.

The crowd moved into a meeting room for the signing of books, and coffee and cookies. I didn’t know a soul. I had checked out his book from the Boston Public Library, The Shame of the Nation, and read it before the talk. I hadn’t intended to have him sign anything. But I gave in.

I bought a copy and then tried out little speeches in my head to say to him while he signed it. I had lots of grand, succinct, eloquent things planned out. In the end, I mumbled. He thought I said Philadelphia instead of South Bend. I mumbled some more, put my book in my bag and headed out into the rain. I started the drive back clutching my mapquest directions with my tank on E.

Someday I’ll tell him thank you, properly.

Stoppard, Tom that is, and Me

Last night it was Benoit Mandelbrot, tonight my man was Tom. Tomorrow is the last show of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing (written in 1984) playing at the Huntingtom Theatre Company, directed by Evan Yionoulis. Not that I know Evan, but I thought I should give credit to her for staging such a lovely play.

Tom. What can I say? If you know his plays, and screenplays (not to mention his fiction and nonfiction and just about every word out of his mouth, I’m sure), then you know how it is to be post-Tom. So, at any rate, tomorrow is the last show and I finally got my act together and went online to see if there were seats available. When you look for one ticket, there is always a prime seat stage center so that your single seat status is no secret. Alas. I don’t hate going to plays, movies, dance, whatever alone. But I don’t love it either.

Of course, since it was Tom, all was good. My affair with Tom started back in college when we read his play Arcadia. In the intervening years I saw glimpses of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (I had to leave the theater early for some unfathomable reason). I saw Shakespeare in Love and Enigma, for which he wrote the screenplays. I saw The Invention of Love on Broadway, I think? Or was that in Chicago? I remember the stage set, but I can’t recall the city. Finally, last year, I saw a production of Arcadia at Notre Dame. I adore play analysis, but seeing a play in the flesh is always so much, well, more. So tonight I happily went along to see The Real Thing, even though I had no idea where the plot might take me. Even though it is raining like crazy out there and I had to make the fifteen minute walk in my heels. Okay, so that last part, about the heels, was a choice.

Of course, it was witty and dense with allusions—an English teacher’s wildest dream on stage. The four main characters, who lived in London in the early 1980s, worked through the verbal gymnastics of their relationships as they vaulted over and tumbled across whatever the "real thing" might be, or not be. Lots of quoteable lines, only I can't quite remember them. It is more like I feel them still. I should buy the script of The Real Thing and underline all those bits. The worst part of seeing something great when you are alone is that it seems less great somehow. Darn it.

I am no Stoppard expert and so here is a link or two and a quote for your enjoyment. My advice, if you see a Stoppard play in production: Go.

http://www.geocities.com/stoppard2004/index.html

http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Tom_Stoppard/


"I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contra-dicting yourself. I'm the kind of person who embarks on an endless leapfrogdown the great moral issues. I put a position, rebut it, refute it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation. Forever. Endlessly." — Tom Stoppard from an interview with Mel Gussow in the New York Times, 26 April 1972.

Charlie Weis

Promise keeper: the last wish of a dying boy
By: Terry Moran
Date: October 2, 2005
From: World News Tonight (ABC News)

(Off Camera) Finally tonight, keeping a promise. There are many great stories about the Fighting Irish of the University of Notre Dame. Stories that wake up the echoes, as the song goes. This is another one. It's a story about a dying boy and his last wish. He wanted to call a play for the Irish football team, in a real game. ESPN's Tom Rinaldi tells us what happened.

TOM RINALDI, ESPN: Almost from the day he was given his name, Montana, after Joe Montana, Montana Mazurkiewicz grew up watching Notre Dame football. From the day he was diagnosed with a brain tumor a year and a half ago, he kept watching. And last week, he asked if a player from the team could visit him at home. The head coach came instead.

MOTHER: The coach walked right past me. And he said, hi, I am Charlie Weis, and Montana's eyes just lit up.

CHARLIE WEIS, NOTRE DAME HEAD COACH: You're looking at a kid that you know is not going to make it. I thought my job was to do all I could to get a smile on his face.

MOTHER: The coach just asked him, what would you, what would you like to do? Would you like to call a play? And Montana said, I'd like to call the first offensive play. Charlie Weis says, well, do you want me to run or pass? And he goes, pass to the right. Not just pass, pass to the right. And the coach just kind of broke out in a sweat, you know?

TOM RINALDI: Just a day and a half after the visit, Montana died in his mother's arms. He was ten years old.

MOTHER: I just held him and sang him the stupid Notre Dame fight song, and then, some other songs that my daughter had written. And I just told him he could rest, it was time to stop fighting, that he could rest now, and that he was my hero.

TOM RINALDI: A day later, the family watched as Notre Dame played. For its first offensive play of the game, the ball rested inside the Notre Dame one yard line.

MOTHER: No way. He's not going to pass it. He's not gonna do it. He can't, he can't make that play.

CHARLIE WEIS: I said, well, we don't have a choice. I said, it's not whether we're going to do it, we don't have a choice, run the play.

ANNOUNCER, MALE: Play action for Quinn. Throws, wide-open, (inaudible). The tight end with a hurdle. Provided a first down.

TOM RINALDI: The play went for 13 yards, but reached much farther, all the way to a family in Indiana, a family in grief.

MOTHER: It was the fact that coach Weis kept his word. That was the big thing, that he kept his word in an almost impossible situation to a ten year-old kid that he didn't even know.

TOM RINALDI: Last Sunday, Weis returned to the house and gave the family the game ball, signed by the entire team. But he knows and they know, it's about more than football. For ABC News, Tom Rinaldi, ESPN.

TERRY MORAN(Off Camera) Pass to the right.

TERRY MORAN(Off Camera) That's our report. Tomorrow on "Good Morning America," more on the Lake George boat accident.

TERRY MORAN(Off Camera) I'm Terry Moran. For all of us at ABC News, have a good week. Good night.

http://newsinfo.nd.edu/content.cfm?topicid=13703

Mandelbrot and Me

Friday night in Boston and the temperature was an unseasonable 70 degrees, relative humidity at about 85%. I had spent the day writing, reading, paying bills and then getting out of the house to exercise at my health club. I rushed home to eat a quick peanut butter sandwich and then dash out the door for my hot Friday night on the town.

I had been to the Museum of Science a few years ago, but had to find it all over again on the T (metro) and then find the right bus/shuttle in service while the last section of the line is repaired. The bus teemed with life. A distinguished old man in a three piece suit sat just in front of me, but he got off several stops before my destination. There was a stunning black woman with her little boy asleep in her arms just next to me. That kid must have had lots of experience sleeping on public transportation. He was out. I spotted a few other people on the bus that I suspected might be heading in the same direction as me. I could just tell. Khaki pants, unkempt skin. Healthy, if a bit pasty.

I was late, mind you. So I dashed across the street with a few others when we arrived. I picked up a ticket at the door and jetted to the Cahners Theater. I was seated and ready to go at 6:59. It was just enough time for the well-heeled woman next to me to strike up conversation. “So, what brings you here tonight?” I explained that I was not a scientist, but had heard of Mandelbrot’s work and so there I was. She and her husband had come to the museum for some other event (I think) but stayed to hear the lecture because, of course, they had read all about complexity theory and had followed its development over the years. Yes, well.

The large crowd, a nearly packed house of at least several hundred, settled down as he was introduced. It was a funny crowd—teenagers in workout clothes, college types, professor types, and your well-educated, well-dressed Bostonian off the street.

So Mandelbrot was my hot date. He didn’t even know that I existed. Typical date, he talked and talked and I just smiled and listened. His two favorite words: astonishing and banal. The title of his talk was “From Cauliflower to Chaos: The Fractal Geometry of Roughness.” And indeed we did get to see cauliflower as well as the Eiffel Tower and a Jackson Pollack canvas as Mandelbrot took us through a very brief tour of the history of fractals. It is all about roughness, I gather. For, well, ever, scientists didn’t know how to measure our rough edges. Mandelbrot had a breakthrough moment, à la Gladwell’s “blink,” and he visualized the solution before he, or others, were able to prove it with mathematics.

His presentation was punctuated with his personal anecdotes about Ligeti, the Hungarian composer, and the Empress of Japan. He is unabashed about his accomplishments and spoke with great joy about his work. He obviously takes great delight in his work, as well as in music and art. Really the kind of man with whom I would gladly share a meal.

After his presentation, he was joined by Christopher Lydon, a host from National Public Radio, who moderated the question-answer period. Many of the questions led Mandelbrot into territory that had too much geometry for me to follow. One person did ask him if there were any applications for fractal theory and Kevin Bacon. Mandelbrot commented that “Yes,” it is called “Fractal Networks and lots of people are making a big business out of it.” And then he moved on to the next questioner. Soon enough the applause sounded and we all headed out the door.

I boarded the shuttle with another colorful crowd and headed off into the sultry night. I am glad that I attended his lecture. He spoke with a Nobel Prize authority that actually got me hot to sign up for a geometry class. After all, it is never too late to finally learn math, right?

Tonight the heat should break and finally the Fall should come rushing in next week. My night with Mandelbrot was a hot and steamy evening in Boston to remember, even if he never gave me a glance.

And just in case you are interested, here is a link to a few of many of Mandelbrot's books

Cookie Dough Ice Cream, Children's Motrin and Stuff on my Reading Shelf

After much debate about whether not it was worth the drive, we did hit the road and make our way up to Stowe, Vermont for the weekend. L. had to give a talk at a conference held there and Dani and I were happy to accompany him.

The weather was perfect and the Fall colors were just beginning to show. Our resort had more stuff than we could have needed: a spa with “Hungarian” mineral bath; a workout facility better than my club here in Boston; pools and a cafe, not to mention two upscale eateries. Dani and I did take advantage of the chess board in the lobby. He beat me. He is ten.

The only damper on events was Dani’s Trojan Horse virus. He looked so sweet and innocent, but carried a hacking cough that erupted at three o’clock in the am our first night there. So far we have not succumbed to his bug, but time will tell. Poor kid sounded worse than he felt, but still we took things easy and didn’t rent bicycles or canoes as we had planned. We did manage to squeeze in a tour at Ben & Jerry’s factory and sample two flavors fresh off the line. We ate amazing pizza at Pie in the Sky and the BEST calzone I have ever had. I could describe it in scrumptious detail, but I am not that cruel.

On Saturday I took Dani to have his first ever fondue—it was a hit. We took two turns zooming down the Alpine slide. We visited the Trapp (as in owned by the family that inspired the movie) resort in search of Austrian cakes. Sadly we arrived at 2pm and the bakery had closed an hour earlier. We took less than an hour and much teamwork to extricate ourselves from the amaizing corn maze. We drank fresh mulled apple cider with our freshly fried apple-cake doughnuts at the Cold Hollow Cider mill. I also put a pin into Hutchinson, Kansas on the map as the first from that town to visit. We stayed up too late to watch Notre Dame beat Purdue on ESPN, which was actually a factor that put us on the road. Our resort had cable, we don’t.

Sunday morning: Dutch pancakes. They were twelve inches around. Only I managed to entirely polish off mine, which was slathered in lemon-compound butter and sprinkled with powdered sugar. The rich dark coffee, two mugs worth, made it all go down smoothly AND kept me awake despite the sheer quantity of blood redirected from my brain to my stomach for digestion. Despite our bellies, we happily stumbled down the recreation path to visit an outdoor sculpture garden near the river (which had these delightful, spontaneous sculptures on the rocky beach) and a farmer's market on our way pack to our resort before we hit the road back to Boston.

Today: back to the gym, I swear.

Reading Record

I recently read these in the search for novels to use with or assign for young adult readers:
Nectar in a Sieveby Kamala Markandaya
Whale Talkby Chris Crutcher
Spider's Voiceby Gloria Skurzynski

The following I read to satisfy my craving for short fiction:
"The Stone Boy" by Gina Berriault (A short story that I would love to teach!)
"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson (a classic short story; you can find this story in her her collection of short fiction in The Lottery)
"The Teacher of Literature" a short story by Chekhov

I am reading from this collection for my fiction writing class: O Henry Prize Stories 2005 (a collection of short stories)

What I am reading now and you should expect to hear more about this: The Shame of the Nationby Kozol

Also reading: The Adventures of Augie Marchby Saul Bellow

And I need to find a copy to start reading for October book club: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstressby Dai Sijie