Sleepover!

Had a sleepover last night.  With my boss's cousin.  Whom I'd never met before.

Our first encounter was a slightly tetchy exchange on Facebook about a year and a half ago.  My assistant principal, Michele, had posted an online game of sorts.  Her cousin Carol pops off, third response from the top, and I pop back two later.  I've reprinted the exchange, below:

Michele Montana

Let's see if this works.

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 Monday, February 16, 2009 at 8:11pm

Rules:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.

* Turn to page 56.

* Find the fifth sentence.

* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.

* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellect

"It is a chip of mind, a pleasing intellectual object."

Updated over a year ago · Comment · Like · Report Note

Joan Lesko Giardina ‎"She's Mommy's girl."

February 16, 2009 at 9:25pm · Like ·           

Marie Feehan Simmons Then bail is denied until the preliminary hearing :)

February 16, 2009 at 9:30pm · Like · Report           

Carol Montana Please forgive me, but do people really care about this stuff??

February 17, 2009 at 2:05pm · Like · Report           

Lydia Bassett Tyner I sat up.

February 18, 2009 at 10:06pm · Like · Report           

Joan Lesko Giardina ‎{With all due respect to one of my boss's relatives, let's hear it for the triumph of pleasant goofiness over excessively rational killjoyishness!}

February 18, 2009 at 11:03pm · Like ·           

Joan Lesko Giardina  Sorry, Carol, my accusation of snarkiness was a little harsh…I  do see your point…hope you didn’t take offense!

February 21, 2009 at 8:09pm · Like · 

Carol Montana  No offense taken, yet.  When did you accuse me of being snarky, and why?

March 3, 2009 at  10:17am · Like · 

Joan Lesko Giardina Carol, See above. Apparently I used a rather sophisticated synonym for snarkiness, but a kvetch by any other -- oh, excuse me, I was apologizing! ;-)

March 11, 2009 at 11:14am · Like ·           

Carol Montana Got it. I was in a particularly foul mood that day, and didn't give two hoots about what was on page whatever (please forgive me, but unemployment does that sometimes). Apology accepted, and I'll try to be less snarky next time. 

So you work with cousin Michele? Do you teach? Are you an administrator?

March 11, 2009 at 11:19am · Like · Report           

Joan Lesko Giardina Lucky me, I'm right next door, and work is hardly the word. We LOVE Michel, and are so lucky to have her. I'm the literacy coach and unofficial administrative mascot. Today I'm am home green, though. Not pretty.

March 11, 2009 at 11:22am · Like ·           

Carol Montana ooh, so sorry - feel better you mascot you

March 11, 2009 at 11:23am · Like · Report           

Joan Lesko Giardina thanks, and I hope the employment situation is looking up for you! (p.s. don't drop the snark. it's the sign of an obviously strong critical mind!)

March 11, 2009 at 11:26am · Like ·           

Carol Montana Thank you, and thank you, I'll keep it. LMAO !!!

March 11, 2009 at 11:28am · Like · Report

           

Write a comment...

Carol and I continued to socialize on Facebook.  She turned out to be every bit the mixture of snark, intelligence and engagement I sensed in her after that initial exchange.  She is also wildly creative, truly talented.  We chatted about her theater productions, breathtaking photographs and the thoughtful reports she wrote for the Catskills Chronicle.  And we commiserated, fists e-wagging, about the world's injustices.  To this former theater major, and weekend writer/photographer/windmill-tilter, it was a fast friendship.

Over time, Carol regularly invited me to the various plays in which she acted and often directed.  But the three-hour schlep to her Catskills home was beyond g.u.  When summer vacation/sabbatical began, however -- with a plan that included seeing old and neglected friends -- I delightedly accepted an invitation to this brand-new old friend's local library fundraiser, "Shorts and Sweets," a reading of her favorite short stories, with dessert!  I wondered if our cyber friendship would stand the test of virtuality...

Carol picked me up at the bus, and we gave each other a warm, familiar hug. She looked just like the tiny, artsy earth mother powerhouse her pictures had captured! We sprung her husband Ken from his rehab facility, where he is recovering from hip replacement, so he might join us for the festivities.  With a little time to kill before her reading, we stopped off at an adorable mom-and-pop coffee house for a snack and chat.  The waitress on the counter just happened to be the lovely 17-year-old Summer, who was the daughter of the library e.d.  hosting the fundraiser, and who also had double-billed with Carol in a number of plays and musicals.  Carol, Ken and I had a cozy get-acquainted coffee break, then headed for Hamish and Harry, the bookstore where the reading was being held.

To be continued...

P.S. Forgot the Gratitude

In this YouTwitFace age of mass public attention-seeking, I worry a bit about the electronic exhibitionism I am nurturing, in my already lookie-here ego, by daily social networking and semi-confessional blogging.  As the life-imitating-art memoir becomes ever more ubiquitous -- Elizabeth Gilbert received a $200,000 advance to chronicle the life-altering experiences in Eat, Pray, Love before she'd had them! -- there may something more authentic and gracious about hiding your light under a nice, private bushel.


But Lucy Calkins, in The Art of Teaching Writing, asserts that that writers lead more "wide awake lives" as a result -- they are better able to see the significance of events as they shape the narrative of them on the page.  Writing has always been, for me, a powerful tool for making sense of the jumble of memories and thoughts that crowds my brain, and usually evaporates if unattended.  And the expectant hum of an audience motivates my clarity, volume and stamina.


So the blog will continue, and even the gratitude (yesterday's, below) goes cyber.  But I will refrain from excessive collar-grabbing.  I may not hide my light under a bushel, but I won't advertise it daily, either.  I am grateful for all who have read my musings here and elsewhere, and have encouraged, responded and even quoted, nearly forty years after the fact, in the case of my high school bud Susan!  I hope you will continue to tune in every now and then.


Gratitude, July 8, 2010


1.  I am grateful for my husband's daily phone call from work, which I've actually been able to answer this week, just to chat and tell me he loves me.


2.  I am grateful for my pretty, edgy buzz cut, this time from the barber on the corner, $14.


3.  I am grateful that the barber charged me, without my having to ask, the $14 men's price instead of the $17 women's rate, which I would have paid but silently resented.


4.  I am grateful for the long, chatty call from my brilliant, beautiful Minnie.


5.  I am grateful that the book I am reading, Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists, has been living up to Christopher Buckley's insanely glowing review, and that it had the cosmic and ego-gratifying sense to be about American writers living in Rome.


6.  I am grateful for the very long walk I took in today's lovely, breezy break from the recent dog days.


7.  I am grateful for my work, which I very nearly love, but more so for the sabbatical from it.


8.  I am grateful for the gifts, from my parents, of creativity, intelligence and resilience.


9.  I am grateful for the gifts, left at my door in a wicker basket, of optimism and engagement.


10.  I am grateful for my new bras, because gratitude comes in small -- um, I mean ordinary -- packages.

Mediations on an Iron Workhorse

On the treadmill this morning, my mp3 player shuffled through the usual exercise tunes to a Jon Kabat-Zinn Lovingkindness meditation download. Not exactly the Shirelles.  But I've been so angsty about and resistant to sitting thoughtlessly in a quiet room since I decided that I must or else, that I've been working on the idea of forging a workout-meditation combo.  Swimming really fits that bill for me perfectly, as womblike and elemental as it is.  I count the laps as I go, a mantra of sorts, and have, from this state of mindful mindlessness, found myself sobbing cathartically, or just simply heartfully, from time to time.

Might this be translated into the more punishing struggle of a treadmill regimen?  I doubted it, but decided to see where Kabat-Zinn's coo on forgiveness and kind acceptance might lead me.  I was reminded of my friend Sue's decision recently to start a gratitude journal.  A list of five things nightly, just to keep her more present in her life, in the abundance of the moment.  Maybe I should postscript that to the end of each blog entry?  Gratitude is a no-brainer when you're on vacation and about to start a sabbatical, so I'll probably be able to knock off ten a day for now. No repeats, that's a good policy, though, so the number may be winnowed down more quickly than I think.  But I am unsure about the wisdom of public consumption for all my reflections:  how honest and soul-searching will I be when this venue is the very definition of crafty?  Perhaps better to get a separate, old-fashioned bound journal when I go to get a haircut later.  And my bras are getting rather decrepit, I need new bras.

I was summoned back to my electronic conscience by a lengthy silence.  Had I missed the whole tape?  Needless to say, I had not been the slightest bit present for Kabat-Zinn's lullaby to presentness.  Didn't even watch the thought bubbles affectionately as they evaporated -- just indulged the monkey mind wholesale.  As I tuned back in, he was wrapping up the silent d.i.y. part of the session by creating a vision of cradling oneself in one's arms maternally.  I stretched my achy calves behind me on the iron workhorse and tried to summon a cradly spirit. I wonder if Victoria's Secret is having a sale?

Zinn ended by reading an excerpt from Yeats' Dialogue to Self and Soul:

I am content to follow to its source

Every event in action or in thought;

Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!

When such as I cast out remorse

So great a sweetness flows into the breast

We must laugh and we must sing,

We are blest by everything,

Everything we look upon is blest.

At Yeats' invitation, I followed my earlier, distracted thoughts to their source:  I do believe I am (we are) blessed, with consciousness alone but with so much more.  But I am on a lifelong frantic treadmill to keep that going, keep those pretty plates in the air.  As the baby of a troubled, chaotic household, I adopted the role of the desperate Little Joany Sunshine.  I must cheer everyone out of misery -- let me dance!  

But Yeats is also inviting me to cast out that old remorse, forgive them and myself, and just let sweetness flow.  We must laugh and we must sing, but it doesn't have to take so much work.  Get off the treadmill, let it flow.


When I was a teenager I invented a game I called "Television Oracle." My friends and I would ask the tv a question of either actual or teeny-giddy importance (is there a difference when you're 14?), and the first utterance we heard when we turned the tube on was our answer, I-ching style.  I decided to let the first song the Ipod shuffled to after Zinn be the punctuation on this interesting session.  It was (I swear, no artistic license here) an Indigo Girl Song called Land of Canaan.  I had never heard it before --  my daughters sometimes borrow the device and load little surprises on for me.  It began:


You can go to the East
To find your, inner hemisphere.
You say we're under the same sky babe,
You're bound to realize, Honey, it's not that clear.
I'm not your promised land
I'm not your promised one
I'm not your Land of Canaan, sweetheart,
Waiting for you under the sun.

I'm lonely tonight, I'm missing you now.
I'm wanting your love and you're giving it out.
I'm lonely tonight, I'm lonely tonight, I'm lonely tonight.


What to make of this punctuation?  It seemed eerily relevant without any stretch, and I am a believer in the perceiver-imbued significance of everything we decide to attend to in that way, every horoscope, tossed tome, dream (all right, there are occasional cigars).  It is not mystical, there is just eternity in every grain of sand if we choose to see it.  Or, more mundanely, we find our reflection in every pond we peer into. So what did I see in this?  


A bottom-line call to presentness, I think.  Don't get too caught up in the quest for Enlightenment, in the external trappings of the search for the Promised Land.  Don't look for or "give your love out," find it in and give it to yourself, to the ones you love who are also, please god, the ones you're with.  Can't wait to make a delightful summer pizza and open a bottle of red wine with Julie tonight.


The iron workhorse came through.  Do I still have to sit in a quiet room?

Top Ten

Top Ten

 Things I Won’t Be Doing on My Sabbatical, But Wish I Were


1. Making a livable wage…or at least a teacher's salary


2. Absolutely nothing, while ghost bloggers make me look good


3. Fighting off the boozy attention of unnamed first spouse at Chelsea Clinton wedding


4.  Patenting my Gulf-oil spill contraption, while Costner brags on his bike

     5. Gobbling up my grandchildren (sorry, girls, but at least this isn't as annoying as when you were teenagers)     

    

     6. Gobbling up someone else's grandchildren

    7.  Marrying Jon Stewart (sorry, Julius, but at least this isn’t as annoying as when we were teenagers...)

    8.  Sheltering the ill-gotten gains of my Ponzi scheme 

    9.   Using the hysterically-radical gains of my Jon Stewart spinoff to "Billgates" the world

     l0.  Establishing the post-Kagan Giardina Court precedent: “Stare this, Kimosabe!!”  

Luis as a Second Language

I'd been warned about Luis.  His third grade teacher, Millie, lowered her eyelids and shook her head sadly as she handed me his “cume” records in June.  Enough said, since his reputation was already mythic, the stuff of school lore.  He had a rattail, an appendage not at odds with his general demeanor and impression.  He was thin, wiry, and hunched.  He scurried.  He reeked of cigarette smoke from a gritty home life and careless hygiene.  He was trouble – he teased and bullied, fought with adults, ran wild through the halls.  On the first day, when I called the kids to the meeting area, he refused to come.  First day, and I was ready for a showdown. I glowered at Luis.

Then I remembered my principal’s words from the opening day faculty conference the day before.  “Our parents are not keeping their best at home – they all send us their best.”

Teaching -- especially in a diverse classroom-- has always been, for me, a deeply, mutually transformative act.  What a heady honor it is, first, to be entrusted with the intellectual, creative, social, moral, personal, interpersonal and civic development of young people as individuals.  As teachers, we are charged with no less than supporting the creation of a thoughtful citizenry that believes in democratic ideals and is willing and able to participate intelligently and productively in the civic life of the nation-state.  How careful we need to be, then, in conveying the foundations of all of this as we see it and find it self-evidently truthful and universal – the intellectual values and habits, the social, cultural and political bricks and mortar that will help shape the people our students become.  With our every word and expression and interaction in the classroom, we serve as models for our students, for better or worse, consciously or unwittingly, thoughtfully or carelessly.  What a joy it is when our students leave us loving learning, celebrating themselves and respecting each other, instead of enduring, doubting and fearing.  This is the enormity of our assignment, should we choose to accept it.

Even with Luis.

This membrane through which we indoctrinate is best when there is some mutual permeability.  Children are not blank slates -- they come with interests, insights, needs, values, family, culture.  If we recognize and honor their identities, not only will they be more likely to accept willingly the huge load we hand over to them, but we can package it and tie it up to make it a better fit, an easier handle. When parents are wary of entrusting their child to an institution, a group of sometimes hostile-seeming strangers, we can have them in to help us out, to bring in a slice of home, to teach us something about their side of the wall, to begin to bring down the walls that separate home and school.  And it’s not just for their benefit. We can learn from them.  Learn about them as individuals -- about their thoughts and ideas and fears -- and as members of a group, with fully supportive customs and patterns, language and food.   Enrich our teaching and lives in the process.

And so, with my principal perched on my shoulder, her words an invitation to the better angels of my nature, I wiped the showdown expression off my face.  I explained to Luis how much I loved bringing my babies near to me as I read or taught.  I apologized for calling them babies, but explained that I am a mom, and my kids will always be my “babies.” I asked him if he might humor me, said that the students usually wound up enjoying the coziness of meeting time.  I lit our story time candle and invited him to join us when he felt ready.  He inched over imperceptibly in his chair until he was finally in the circle.  I smiled subtly, and no one complained about the chair. 

Luis was not done testing, yet, of course.  But I would take him out in the hallway, send him “I” messages, pick my battles.  I discovered and ballyhooed his creativity as a writer and his fabulous vocabulary – he described his father’s armpit (!) as “an untamed forest.”  His mother was bright and discombobulated, began to confide, girlfriend-like, in me, and made a mean flan for our Harvest Festival.  By early spring, Luis and I had fallen hard for each other.  He was still a spitfire, but he was a much more confident, sociable and engaged spitfire.  And he made each day so much richer and more fun for us all in 4-225.

When I first contemplated a sabbatical from my present position as a literacy staff developer, I knew I would want and be required to take a course of study.  Too burnt and mired in the busyness of the year, I had little idea or even interest in what that would be at first.  My current principal, nicely enough, was reluctant to see me go, and I wanted to repay her patience with something that might help the school.  We are a mighty diverse community, with almost a quarter of students speaking English as a second language – the firsts being Bengali, Spanish, Chinese, and others. Our school -- every New York City school -- is always in great need of licensed ESL teachers. 

I thought of getting my certification in Teaching English as a Second Language.  The heavens huzzahed. 

I remembered my one ESL professor at Hunter, Carmen Mercado, who taught one of our classes in Spanish for 15 minutes without prior explanation, just to have us walk the walk of our second language learners.  Who had us reading and discussing fascinating studies of teachers who’d spent time fully immersed in the communities where they taught, and learned how whole they already were, without our pedagogical noblesse oblige.  Who opened my eyes and heart to what it meant to teach and live and love in a diverse culture. I ate it all up gratefully at the time, absorbed lessons I would put to use later, without knowing quite where I’d found the impulse.

Isn’t that our dearest hope for our students?

On my sabbatical, I will be studying Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages at City College. 

Soy feliz y entusiasmado.  Y agradecido.