Bury the Beret! Nurturing Artists in the Classroom

Is artistic talent inborn or can we cultivate it?  I have always of an artist as one who envisions what wasn't there before and, through knowledge and experience, makes it happen.  In an article I wrote years ago, The Poet as Patriot (Journal of Children's Literature, v23 n2 p42-46 Fall 1997), I bemoaned the fact that the art room had been moved down the hall, outside of our typical classroom.  Since then, the art room, along with recess, has been moved right out of the school.  Useless! Is the cry.  Not rigorous. And worst of all from a tap-every-potential-market stand point, Untestable.   

Our vocabulary is SO not up to date.  Go to google images and type in ARTIST and up pops a picture of a cartoon character in a beret.  We are apt to define an artist as not only a person with bad taste in hats, but also 

1. Someone on the outskirts of society 
2. A person who makes up stuff that may get a response out of others, but is really not productive in a societal sense and 
3. Starving (see 2. re: non productive).    

Why doesn't an image search reveal a picture of Steve Jobs or Arianna Huffington?  How about plastic surgeons who construct intact smiles out of cleft palates or engineers who build skyscrapers out of glass and football fields out of old tires?  Are these people not artists?  What's worse than the perception adults hold of artists is the fact that we are teaching this same vocabulary to our kids.  I sometimes ask kids at school visits to go home and tell their parents that there was a poet and school and then suggest that now that they think about it, they would like to grow up to be a poet and watch the parental response.  It's a good laugh line.  A real knee slapper.  Even third graders know that their parents don't want them to grow up to be artists.

Michael and I just got home from an art show at the Geauga Nature Preserve where one end of the room was consumed by a big poster, "What if Art Ruled the world?"  My response?  It does!  Look around.  The people who come up with the new technologies and problem solving fixes wind up in charge.  The administrative types whose eyes are trained to look backward at precedent, only studying what has succeeded in the past, are doomed to fail.  I don't know if that is economics, poetry, or basic math, but it is true.  Ask the executives at General Motors who first laughed at the introduction of Honda cars in the U.S. and said, "let the kids buy those toy cars, when they need a real car, they'll come to us."  Ahem. 

Any profession taken to its highest level becomes an art form, a place where we take knowledge and experience to create something new.  The label has become so stigmatized over the years that we keep coming up with new names for artists.  We call them entrepreneurs, inventors, creative problem solvers.  Maybe if we started calling the artists in our midst by their true names, we wouldn't be so hesitant to spend some time nurturing artistry in our schools. Seth Godin in his article, 3 Essential Skills Every Entrepreneur Should Cultivate, cites three qualities to nurture: 1. Quiet the Lizard Brain, which means silence the resistant part of your brain that is responsible for fear and rage. 2. Think like an artist, where he notes that, "Art requires the artist to care, and to care enough to do something when he knows it might not work," and 3. Connect the disconnected, this he recommends as a route to problem solving.  I haven't read this guy's book, but I like his line of thinking in this article. It gives credit where credit is due -- to the artists and the risk takers.   

I hate when a well-meaning educator introduces me to a kid at a school as: This is our poet.  It discounts the other kids in the room or school who are also nurturing poetical observations and metaphorical connections they just haven't found the words for yet.  Or maybe they will never express themselves in words, maybe they will use mathematical equations, chemical formulas or organizational genius.  It implies that as long as we have one kid with a poetic eye in our midst, the rest of the kids can (should?) stand down, not risk their own self expression.  The fact is, every one of them will need the careful, observational skills of a poet at some point.  They will need to be artists, to draw on their creative abilities to problem solve. 

As Susan Ohanian points out so eloquently in her article: Against Obedience Critical Education, 3(9).,  "We need artists, bakers, lumberjacks, manicurists, welders, and yurt builders, as well as people who study math and science in college. Let's respect the variety of skills needed in our communities--and make sure everyone receives a decent wage." Of the wild flower bouquet of skills needed to make society function, we need an artist at the velvet heart of every blossom.

Enter uniform proficiency tests and standards that reward conformity and compliance and it becomes evident that our schools may not be preparing kids for all of their tomorrows.  Being able to black out little boxes with a number 2 pencil is not going to help students care for future families in a precarious world.  We are feeding these students a false narrative: If you fall in line and memorize what we ask you to, you will reap rewards.  Not true.  If you are creative and an evaluative risk taker who uses knowledge and experience to make stuff up, that's what is going to put food on your table and advance your pursuit of happiness.  In order to respond when the future asks, how do we position this product? How can we cure this malady or design this to be more efficient in terms of cost and resources. How can we expedite this procedure?  The adult, 2.0 versions of the kids sitting in classrooms today will most likely be collaborating and making up stuff like crazy, connecting all kinds of disconnected dots and inserting a few that weren't there before trying to service the needs of future generations and clean up the messes previous generations have created.  Successful adults are their own bosses, whether working inside of some institution or self-employed.  Kids will need to be so much more than compliant.  

We need to find a way to reward thoughtful risk taking in school. Eleanor Roosevelt advised, "do one thing every day that scares you."  We need an assessment rubric for that one, accomplished, showing signs of progress, or needs improvement. Or make this a criteria for assessment: Student applies logic in assessing risks.  How about: Student demonstrates an ability to discover and achieve as part of a team (not involving a ball)?  Or:  Shows unlikely but valid connections across content areas and is able to communicate ideas in a convincing manner using words, images, coding, mechanical devices or movement. Where is the assessment rubric for curiosity or tenacity? Most of all, schools need to stop buying programs that promise to help kids on tests and start looking for ways to foster creativity. Toss the fill in the blanks worksheets and bring back the crayons and blocks.

We need to bury the berets and bring out the true artist in every child, every day, in every academic discipline. 

Changing Perspectives

When Michael Salinger and I were teaching in Morocco, we were introduced to a new fashion trend.  Teen girls were wearing the shortest of short shorts over tights and patterned stockings.  They obviously had studied the student handbook, which probably said "no bare legs up to your bum" or some such language, and found a creative way to stay in compliance.  They saw their window, and they took it.

The CCSS are market driven, of that there is no doubt.  But much like commercials in between segments of a sitcom (say, the sitcom that masquerades as school reform) people will learn to live with them the same way we have learned to live with fast food, once size fits all, and bigger is better -- with a healthy dollops of irony and skepticism and a little of what Michael calls middle school logic, "Hey, they didn't say we couldn't!"

So, until the next set of standards is cooked up to be stuffed down the digestive tract of public education, creative teachers will be heartened to find that although the CCSS don't specifically mention writing poetry in the W strand, they don't say you can't write poetry as (say) informational text.  They don't say you can't write a poem to demonstrate understanding of point of view.  They don't say you can't write a persuasive poem.  What the heck is a persuasive essay anyway? Certainly that's more of a stretch than a persuasive poem -- persuasive essays don't even exist off the educational verbal playground.  Poets have been trying to change hearts and minds since the days of foot-binding.  If it was the intent of the marketing folks who created these standards to eliminate poetry from the curriculum, the CCSS are a pitifully poor attempt.

In RIT 4, it says that students should "interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning and tone."  But in the fine print it says, that these analyses will "serve as models for students' own thinking and writing."  In other words, it is in the reading standards that the CCSS recommend using poetry as writing models, not the writing standards.

That's one window.  There are plenty of others.  Those of us who know that poetry works as a means to lead young people to a better understanding of their world need to remain confident that jamming poetry into the windows of these standards will help young people grow in both their communication and thinking skills.  Subversive infusions of poetry may even help kids on those bubble tests that no one has ever linked to success or happiness in life.  It remains part of our jobs to open the windows and let poetry work in to work its magic.

Baby Talk 2013

I recently wrote on a friend's Facebook wall, joking about emotional displays in public, that I had thrown up while watching Bonnie and Clyde. True story, no flu symptoms. 

I have no trouble suspending disbelief in a movie. If someone sets a table for tea, I lean in to blow steam from the cup. When the bullets started flying into their roadster tearing Warren and Faye to pieces, I jumped around in my seat, taking it all to heart (and to the gut). That's when it happened. Barf.

Fact is, it was 1967, I was a teenager and had never seen anything like that before on the screen. I'd seen Spartacus, but that was from a time, oh like, a couple of hundred years before 1967, right?

Sometimes at school visits I ask kindergartners if the have seen Star Wars, and 94% of them say yes (the other 6% are braiding each other's hair, so this is not exactly a scientific sampling). This means they have seen bullets tear through bodies, dismemberment, decapitation, torture, and every type of mayhem very creative Hollywood brains can invent to visit upon the human body. Before they are six.

There is no putting this huge rhino back in the closet. It's out there. But I wonder if we maybe need to be having some more conversations about it. Instead of laughing at each other when we cringe (yes, I still cringe and get laughed at) and admonishing each other to toughen up, maybe we need to talk a little to kids about the differences between film and reality. That head shots aren't necessary, that people have families who love them and that's one reason you never shoot first and ask questions later. That people are people and that real life isn't a carny shooting gallery.

Michael's son Frankie was a primary student  on 9/11/2001. A few days after the tragedy, he asked, "when will the bomb hit here?" We thought he understood, we thought he felt safe, we thought he wasn't paying attention. He was.

Even though 1967 is to 2013 what 1921 was to 1967, kids listen when we tell them stories. When we tell them how it was and how it really is. Heros don't spray the room with bullets and then get the pretty girl and live happily ever after. Being strong means to be able to say the words, "I don't like that," not get off a head shot.

 

When we take time to explain the difference between fiction and reality to kids, they get it. But we have to say the words. We can't assume they already know or that they are not paying attention. At home, at school, everywhere. We have to say the words.

Frank and his brother Max grew up to censor movies for me, as in, "don't come in here right now Sara, this movie will upset you." Last weekend, my grandson Dan said something similar about a video game. This "protect Sara," action has become a family story to chuckle about. 

Only, it's not a joke. Not really. It is and should be a discussion starter.

This year my resolution is to follow up my question about Star Wars with, "you know, that really isn't how most people settle fights. Mostly we don't shoot and chop one another to pieces. Mostly we talk things over. Sometimes we even use poetry. Here, let me show you."

 

Art for Malala

 

I received this email from a teacher I have corresponded with in Pakistan, who is looking to create the "the longest and most colourful card in the world’s history" for injured student activist  Malala Yousufzai.  Will you please help her reach her goal and have students email their artwork to her by October 20?  Read the letter below and it will tell you what to do.

I was introduced to Basarat Kazim by Margariet Ruurs and we are in the process of scheduling a SKYPE school visit with her students. 

 

Dear Friends,

I write to share with you news from Pakistan that has saddened the hearts of all. On the 9^th of October, Malala Yousufzai ,aged 14, who has been active in denouncing the closure of girls schools by the Taliban in Swat in 2009, and who continued her education despite threats, was shot in the head on her way back from school. Two of her friends, also in the bus, were injured as well.

Malala epitomizes courage and allows all of us to see that single acts of bravery can, and, do become movements. We are grateful to this young campaigner for encouraging Pakistanis to stand up and be counted.

Alif Laila/IBBY Pakistan is setting up a library in Malala’s school and has organized a KEEP SMILING card campaign for Malala and her two friends. We aim to make this the longest and most colourful card in the world’s history.  For this we need your active support.

Please become a member of this campaign by encouraging  children to write messages and create drawings that are full of hope and will make the girls happy, and hopefully, assist in their recovery.  We also want them to know how compassionately the world has responded to their plight and how they are not alone in their struggle.

Please email us your contributions by the 20^th of October. Emails can be sent to:

aliflaila_lhr@yahoo.com

aliflaila1978@gmail.com

bmk_al@yahoo.com

Thank you for your time and support.

Basarat Kazim, President

Alif Laila Book Bus Society
IBBY Pakistan

Violence Hurts: A Discussion Starter

The past three months we have all witnessed the horrible reports of the shooting at nearby Chardon High School, the shooting at the theater in Denver, and the shooting at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin.  Young Travon Martin was just walking home with an iced tea when he was shot.  Innumerable other cases wind through the courts and across our TV screens daily.  Add to these the various wars and uprisings and the movie heroes that shoot first and ask (or not) questions later and one almost begins to think that violence is the only way to settle disputes. Not only is it not the only way, it isn't even close to being the best option, but it sure gets all the press.

The poem I am posting here is from one of my older books.  I am hoping that teachers might use this as a possible discussion starter/writing prompt, perhaps even an impetus for on-line research. 

There was lots of discussion around the house this morning about whether the police radio is too distracting in the background.  At least the wee video has Michael and me talking about it! 

If any students do write a poem or reflection in response, I hope some will share.



9/11

On Sunday Michael and I, along with 3 other Cleveland poets will be honored to read poems of our choosing at a Cleveland Orchestra Concert commemorating 9/11. The poems I chose were Jerusalem by Naomi Shihab Nye and Reality Demands by Wislawa Szymborska and a sonnet of my own. I am posting the poems by the other poets here because they are available elsewhere on the net. It promises to be a solemn event, but also uplifting.

Jerusalem
BY Naomi Shihab Nye

"Let's be the same wound if we must bleed.
Let's fight side by side, even if the enemy
is ourselves: I am yours, you are mine."
-Tommy Olofsson, Sweden

I'm not interested in
Who suffered the most.
I'm interested in
People getting over it.

Once when my father was a boy
A stone hit him on the head.
Hair would never grow there.
Our fingers found the tender spot
and its riddle: the boy who has fallen
stands up. A bucket of pears
in his mother's doorway welcomes him home.
The pears are not crying.
Later his friend who threw the stone
says he was aiming at a bird.
And my father starts growing wings.

Each carries a tender spot:
something our lives forgot to give us.
A man builds a house and says,
"I am native now."
A woman speaks to a tree in place
of her son. And olives come.
A child's poem says,
"I don't like wars,
they end up with monuments."
He's painting a bird with wings
wide enough to cover two roofs at once.

Why are we so monumentally slow?
Soldiers stalk a pharmacy:
big guns, little pills.
If you tilt your head just slightly
it's ridiculous.

There's a place in my brain
Where hate won't grow.
I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds.
Something pokes us as we sleep.

It's late but everything comes next.

REALITY DEMANDS
BY Wislawa Szymborska

Reality demands
that we also mention this:
Life goes on.
It continues at Cannae and Borodino,
at Kosovo Polje and Guernica.

There is a gas station
on a little square in Jericho,
and wet paint
on park benches in Bila Hora.
Letters fly back and forth
between Pearl Harbor and Hastings,
a moving van passes
beneath the eye of the lion at Cheronea,
and the blooming orchards near Verdun
cannot escape
the approaching atmospheric front.

There is so much of Everything
that Nothing is hidden quite nicely.
Music pours
from the yachts moored at Actium
and couples dance on their sunlit decks.

So much is always going on,
that it must be going on all over.
Where not a stone still stands
you see the Ice Cream Man
besieged by children.
Where Hiroshima had been
Hiroshima is again
producing many products
for everyday use.

This terrifying world is not devoid of charms
of the mornings
that make waking up worthwhile.
The grass is green
on Maciejowice’s fields,
and it is studded with dew,
as is normal with grass.

Perhaps all fields are battlefields,
all grounds are battlegrounds,
those we remember
and those that are forgotten:
the birch, cedar, and fir forests, the white snow,
the yellow sands, gray gravel, the iridescent swamps,
the canyons of black defeat,
where in times of crisis,
you can cower under a bush.


Oblivious?
BY Sara Holbrook


The charred remains of one more bombed out bus.
A swat team storms, a hostage sits alone.
Another hidden camera shot of thugs.
Amber Alert! A child’s been snatched from home.

Some loner kid went postal up in Maine.
Explosive vests? Is everyone extreme?
Death threat! A woman’s clinic up in flames.
More bad news from the flat screen fear machine.

How many died from that last IED?
I can’t take more. I mean it. I am done.
The information age is killing me.
I leave to take a shower of pure sun.
Oblivious, some bird with open throat
starts up a symphony of joy and hope.

Teaching Kindness?

Book smart = street dumb

This thinking is ubiquitous in too many of our upper schools. Smart is stupid, dumb is good. To mark the depth of this river, all you need to do is walk in the door. Ivory towers. Sissies. Nerds. Society just doesn’t give that much respect to the pocket protector sub-group, treating them more like a sub-species until they get out of school and star in a movie elevating the underdog to greatness or invent something that even bone heads can use, like an I Touch.

In an environment where weakness can get you teased and bullied, why risk showing off your book smarts? Bullies are often the most insecure of cowards and they can smell easy meat. Somewhere around 6th grade kids start to learn this and too many begin to stop learning in school. What’s the utility of engaging in a practice that’s going to get you socially ostracized? Nothing drains the enthusiasm out of a classroom faster than the skinny-eyed stare of the kid a silent majority has voted most likely to slam you into the lockers. My experience with adolescents is that it isn’t so hard to get them to buy into the lesson, it’s getting past the fact that they don’t want to show that they are interested. It’s hard on a teacher, but for some kids, it’s a life or death choice.

Nowhere is this worse than in my home district, Mentor High School. It’s been in the news lately since that rough patch couple years back, a two-year period in which five (5) students committed suicide due, at least in part, to bullying. Now a second set of bereaved parents has filed suit. They had complained, talked to the administration, withdrawn their daughter (a recent Croatian immigrant), and even hospitalized her for depression due to the abuse she was receiving daily at school. Like the gay boy before her and the three other children (children) in Mentor schools, she was the victim of what one commentator has labeled an atmosphere of “aggressive conformity.”

Are we teaching the wrong stuff? Is the increased pressure on schools to teach by the book toward measurable outcomes not only making teachers nuts, but driving kids crazy too? By increasing the pressure through testing, are we doubling down on the wrong things? I picked this list up from a cheery piece of reading you might want to add to the stack on your bedside table (you nerd you) entitled On the Death of Childhood and the Destruction of Public Schools by Gerald W. Bracey, Heinemann 2003.


Creativity
Critical thinking
Resilience
Motivation
Persistence
Curiosity
Humor
Reliability
Enthusiasm
Civic-mindedness
Self-discipline
Empathy
Leadership
Compassion
Sense of beauty
Sense of wonder
Integrity
Courage
Self-awareness
Resourcefulness

This is a list of what proficiency tests do NOT measure. Isn’t it also a list of characteristics you would want in a neighbor, parent, or co-worker? Characteristics of a successful person?

I’m not sure all of these qualities (motivation? kindness?) can be taught, but I think we can do a better job of not discouraging those traits by handing over control of our school communities to muscle-headed and spike-heeled bullies, ignoring the human needs of children.

So, I would suggest the following if asked (I decidedly was not asked being a poet, which makes me bottom-line suspect from jump). First, make it a legislative imperative that teachers report when a student is being abused by another student in the same way they must report if a child is being abused at home. Teachers can lose their licenses for not reporting abuse at home, why not the abuse on the stairs?

Second, make school more interactive with small learning groups where kids have to rely on one another instead of the prevailing competitive, every kid for him/herself paradigm. I don’t care what the test scores say, if kids are killing themselves or overdosing (oh, yeah, there were 5 of those this year, too) the school is failing.

If a school fails one of its own, the group who enabled the abuser with their collective silence needs to pay a price. If it is the jocks with the thick necks and the girls competing fiercely to hang from them who are perpetuating this terrorism, how about cancelling a few football games? Suspend the cheerleading squad? Oh, not fair to the athletes vying for scholarships? How about the nerds vying for scholarships who are afraid to participate in class because they might get teased to death? Let’s work to level that playing field.

One good thing kids glean from sports is that you don’t let the rest of the team down. They can also learn it from band, plays, poetry readings or their chem. lab group. But in order to succeed in the workplace, kids need to learn it, whether or not they can throw a ball.

Finally, suspending the abusers individually is not a remedy. Doesn’t work. Just causes more kids to feel isolated and angry. We need to listen to kids. Give them a forum to talk (I recommend poetry performance, naturally) and listen. Give them an audience. One of the most powerful moments in my teaching experience was when a mentally challenged student read a poem to a warm around the collars group gathered in a Michigan middle school library about what it was like for her to be chased to and from her locker every day. It made a difference. The talking and the listening. We all learned something that day.

Street smarts. The hand-on-a-hot-stove kind of learning that doesn’t come out of a book, but is both meaningful and memorable. The kind we get from talking to one another. We need more of that.

It's Love/Hate

Watch CBS News Videos Online

The boy is right -- seems like everyone either loves or hates the president -- no middle ground. But unlike the way people either love or hate coconut, opinions swing wildly. I don't know if that reflects the fact the president is a moving target (unlike the flavor of coconut which remains pretty much the same and as long as you keep it away from my chocolate, I'm not going to pick up a sign and start marching on its hairy head). Or maybe it is more reflective of the fact that not only is the middle class evaporating, so is that wide swath that used to be called the middle ground. And that's not limited to politics.

No one is ever mildly annoyed. They are either jumping for joy or mad enough to rip someone's head off, blustering around like some kind of Tanzanian devil. It's like our whole society has plunged into into a perpetual state of adolescence, wildly mood swinging through events until manic has become the new normal. Too much TV? Too many shoot your way to conflict resolution video games? Have pumped up World Federation of Wrestling Neanderthals winning through prat falls and intimidation become our role models for building community?

Whatever. Drama queens (and kings) are no longer the isolated firecrackers they once were. Attention seeking behavior has become routine and any activity is justified, whether it is eating bugs or scaring the socks off of someone, if it brings you a little fame. Where do you go next when fame and infamous collide?

I would hope people talk about this fourth grader and his question to the president, but they probably won't. He didn't kick him in the shins, throw a tantrum, or threaten Obama in any way. He left that kind of behavior to the grown-ups. He just posed a question, politely asking. He waited for a response. He listened as if he really wanted to know instead of counting the seconds to a zinger comeback.

Good kid. Good question. But not such good T.V.

First: Kill All the Teachers!

This past weekend provided a luxury of reading time as we visited with our friends Sarah Willis and Ron Antonucci in the vicinity of Chautauqua, NY. Hiking, naps, reading in the hammock – a restful way to welcome in the fall for three writer/teachers and a head librarian. Suzi even stretched her stick-fetching skills plunging Phelps-like into the pond, getting a paws-on education in how to gauge the shortest route from the edge and how not to leave shore before knowing where the stick has landed in order to avoid swimming endlessly in circles.


So, I had time to read Luong Ung’s book First They Killed my Father, about her childhood in Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge’s genocide that resulted in the deaths of 2 million of its citizens. It is a powerful story of survival including the author’s child’s eye view of the absolutes taught by the Khmer Rouge.

Their first dictate was to kill the teachers, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals – basically anyone who was educated was under suspicion. “Children in our society will not attend school just to have their brains cluttered with useless information.” (p.61)

Last week, Michael and I watched The Kite Runner, after both having read it. It was a stark reminder of the restrictive view that the Taliban takes regarding education (particularly of girls). Literature and daily news reports are constant reminders that teachers and students alike put their lives in jeopardy for even learning to read under Taliban rule.

One of the most vivid books I have read about the Cultural Revolution in China under Mao is a YA book, Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution by Ji-li Jiang. Guess who the revolutionaries picked first for public humiliation and execution? Teachers. Stalin, Lenin, Hitler -- similar mandates.

It's impossible not to draw parallels. I know the Khmer Rouge and Mao banned religion and the Taliban uses religion as a justification, but the results are the same – dictators using young zealots to help limit access to education as a means of controlling a populace – and the first thing you have to do to limit education is kill the teachers.



Teachers are a hard-headed lot. They taught kids in holding camps on their way to the gas chambers during the Holocaust. They teach in refugee camps. They teach drawing numbers in the dirt in Africa and Afghanistan. They teach in places right here in this country where many people would be afraid to traverse the parking lot.

So, whenever I read something like this account of college conservatives making a hit list of professors they (in their mature wisdom) think are liberal, it scares the la la la out of me. (you know the la la la, that’s what you do when you have your fingers in your ears and don’t want to listen to what’s being said). http://www.thefoxnation.com/college/2009/08/31/college-republicans-compiling-liberal-teaching-list

Or how about those creationist museums that seek to limit any study of what happened in this world if the hieroglyphic or rock is over 6000 years old? Teachers haven’t been killed for teaching evolution in this country – but they can lose their jobs.

Or how about the folks who constantly discredit teachers on the radio and television? The campaign against teachers has been one of the most focused and successful public relations campaigns on record. Ask the average person what the state of education is today and they’ll say it’s awful. Then ask the same person about how her kid’s teacher is and she’ll say, “Great.” It's not as if anyone is calling to kill teachers, but you kill all respect for the profession, if you kill the teachers' self esteem, if you marginalize teachers, shaming them publically and relentlessly, what does that say about our collective position on education?

I don’t know if this organized attack on teachers is designed primarily to break the unions or to privatize schools into profit centers for the crooks on Wall Street, but as in Mao vs. the Taliban, it really doesn’t matter what’s behind it. The net result is to straightjacket those who seek to educate through inquiry and wonder, those whose life’s work it is to help the next generation to not just jump in the pond and swim around in circles until you sink like a pooped out Papillion – but to think.



My wish for this school year is for every citizen. The next time you hear someone spouting off about wanting to limit education in any way, from banning books to underfunding schools to standardized tests designed to clutter up the curriculum with mandates that keep teachers from helping kids to think on their own, ask yourself: What is this person’s agenda and why doesn’t he/she want our kids to grow up to be independent thinkers?

Obama's Speech to Students

Obama is the leader of this country, homegrown like my vegetables, and elected by a clear majority. He is not a foreign power or running for office. A lot of kids look up to him, as they should. As I did to Eisenhower and Kennedy when I was growing up. I didn't know about the President's politics, I just knew he was an important guy and if he took time out to talk to us, that was special. Heck, when the towers fell on 911 Bush was in a classroom talking to kids. Nobody insisted on reviewing his words in advance.

And to those worried about a socialist agenda, guess what? You already live in a country with socialized fire departments, roadways, police departments, medicare, educational systems and we are protected by a socialized military. Socialized means society chips in to pay for common programs that benefit citizens and that are chosen by our elected representatives. It is the antithesis of being dominated by a culture of personality, which would be a dictatorship.

The only human services function that is NOT socialized in this country is medical care and that is sinking us both as individuals and corporations, which are struggling to compete in a world economy where the USA stands alone insisting that large companies bear the burden of health care expenses.

I can't imagine in my childhood being asked to support Kennedy or Eisenhower and people objecting. Supporting the president means to support the country. People need stop all this hate speak and suspicion before a lot of people get hurt.

You know that poem that begins: First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me." attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)?

I have not spoken up about all the hate email I've been copied on since Obama's inauguration. The whackjobs who call themselves birthers. I've not spoken about health care, as I have been one of those left out in the current system. I didn't say anything about the outrageous lies perpetuated by the media. I've not spoken about the mean-spiritedness and media's over coverage of the violent, ignorant few. And I meant to write about Obama's speech, but it took a conversation with Kelly and reading her blog to realize how upsetting all this hate talk and suspicion is.

So, let's start here. Here is a true health care story, not dramatic except to me. I am self-employed and too young for medicare and old enough that insurers don't want anything to do with me. I currently have a $5000 deductible for which I pay $4000 per annum. I have a pre-existing condition (who doesn't) so most companies legally can turn me down. Kaiser has one month of the year, mandated by the state, (unpublished, unadvertised, you have to know someone inside the company to find out that it is October, and that person will swear you to secrecy because they could lose their job if they tell) during which they would sign me up with the pre-existing condition, for better coverage (not great, but better) -- the price tag on that is $16,000 per year. My current coverage does not pay for mammograms or any other tests and I pay an amount for prescriptions and tests that is four times (4) what insured people pay since I do not qualify for the "insurance negotiated amount" until I satisfy my deductible. If I fall ill, Kaiser can cancel me at any time.

I know from when my mom was deathly ill, under insured, and almost but not quite broke at 61, that in order to qualify for medicaid, you have to have no resources for a period of three months before you can apply. Longer until it kicks in. That means if I ever got seriously ill, after I sold my house and all possessions, there would be a three month period before I would qualify for any assistance. This is the kind of thing that would keep me up every night if I thought about it, so I don't. I pay my premiums, eat healthy, exercise, and hope for the best.

And for me, the best would be a public option. For those who oppose or feel threatened by that, I say, what part of option do you not understand? We already pay for the very poor to get healthcare through taxes, it is just the middle class under-insured and uninsured who are vulnerable. Public option would mean that people like me who are willing and able to pay would be paying into the system.

As far as I'm concerned, Medicare is guilty of age discrimination. Fine for those over 65, but what about those who are 50+. Why can't we buy into medicare? That's what public option means to me, any of us being able to buy into medicare. As an option.

So, maybe the controversy over the Obama speech has a good side. Maybe it will motivate more people like me who have been trundling along, shaking our heads, to say something. So, there. I'm saying something. And the something is, ENOUGH.

Enough with the hate. We are all in this together. And kids, listen to your president. Stay in school. The previous generation is leaving you a big mess to clean up. You need all the skills you can garner.

A Stitch in Time

"Will this thread work with this fleece?" I asked the 50 something clerk standing confidently behind the counter at the fabric store. Unlike many retail outlets, fabric departments are not tended by teenagers. 99.999999% of teens can't thread a sewing machine, let alone set a sleeve, bind a button hole, or install a zipper. Girls only, home economics (sewing and cooking) were required subjects when I entered junior high. My first project was exactly the same as every other girl's. An apron. I could choose one yard of any color I liked as long as it was gingham. Woven gingham, not that flimsy printed on stuff. By the end of the semester, every mother of a seventh grade girl at Berkley Junior High was trying to figure out what to do with her customized apron. Since steering a jackhammering needle down a perfectly straight line, one foot on a lurching power pedal, WATCH OUT FOR YOUR FINGERS, is not a skill that comes that naturally to a 12-year-old, our final projects weren't exactly runway perfect. While having those gingham lines to follow was supposed to help, mostly we learned an important life lesson in class: Ripping out and starting over is part of the process. I liked having that one class period a day with just the girls.

Sewing was distinctively a girl thing and I liked it. My granny tutored me in the summers and with a few extra lessons in tailoring from the local Singer center, I actually got pretty good at making facings lie flat and crisp edges. And then in college, about the time Virginia Slims tried to convince women that we'd come a long way baby, long enough that we could die of lung cancer at the same rate as men, I bought my own sewing machine for the equivalent of 100 minimum wage hours (a little less than $135). Blackberries and laptops may have been glimmers in someone's eyes, but in mine, I was set. That zig zag machine and my new electric Underwood were the only two machines I'd ever need.

Like riding a bike, sewing skills stay with you for life. I could recreate that apron tomorrow. Over the years I've made drapes, curtains, pants, suits, kids nighties. Some projects to be worn, and others soon found their way to the back of the closet with that first apron. No matter. I just like doing it. But like finger painting and star gazing, I just don't do it that much anymore. But I love the new fabric smell, putting the pins in, taking them out, even ripping and starting over is okay. Part of the process. Sewing is a novelty now. I've outsourced my own craftsmanship.

Unfortunately somewhere between their T Ball games and pre-calculus, I forgot to pass this knowledge along to my daughters who have never learned to sew. So when Kelly wanted Thomas to have a new blanket with weights in it (new idea for making restless little sleepers less, well, restless) I welcomed the task. No gingham, but being a bit rusty, I did choose a fleece with a block pattern.

Along with the wagon full of mother-regrets I and every other mother drag around, I deeply regret this oversight. And it's not because every time they need a hem tacked up or a split re-seamed they come to me -- I like that part. Because somehow, treading water in the tsunami of self-doubt that was seventh grade, using an overworked checkered apron as a sail, I managed to gain some self confidence. Suddenly I not only knew how dresses and skirts worked from the inside out, I began to understand how tables and cabinets are made. How pieces can be notched and attached. How to make a pattern. To know what it means to have a vision and make it. The ability to sew is part of the fabric of me, being a constructionist is part of who I am and how I view the world -- in little pieces that just might work if put together right.

So, tonight while adding the binding to Thomas' blanket spread out on the dining room table, twirling thread between my fingers to make knots, I was listening to the misogynistic debate over Sotomayer. Does she think she's better than white guys? (doubtful, but has she had to work harder than white guys to get where she is?) Is she smart enough? (ivy league, summa cum laude, pahleeze) Limbaugh compared her to David Duke of the KKK despite her lack of hateful actions or rhetoric and G. Gordon Liddy even went so far as to say he hopes he doesn't have a case come before her while she is menstruating. How stupid can an white male convicted criminal be? She's 54 years old. In lawyer speak, we call that twisted point moot. (Maybe he was the white guy she was talking about having better judgment than. Eh?) Who are these people and why does the news media give them a platform? Honestly, this kind of rhetoric really tests a woman's opposition to gratuitous, blood spattering violence, especially one no longer in possession of a gingham apron.

Which is all to say, us fifty something women still need some girls only time with the young ones. Passing along such important wisdom such as "you can't go wrong with dual duty thread," teaching them how things are made from the inside out. How to be constructionists in their own lives. Clearly, we might have come a long way, but not long enough.

The Love Song of Stephanie Lufkin

Maybe the sun was out that day. Or maybe Dennis Cox looked at me at lunch. Or maybe that was one of the 47 days I was dismissed early to have my braces adjusted. Probably it was a lesson that my teacher presented more than once, but drizzled out my ear after the quiz. Platelets. What are they? What do they do, exactly?

Given the fact that I managed to avoid science classes entirely after ninth grade biology (except for that astronomy class in college, an apocryphal amalgamation of math and science still capable of giving me night terrors), it is not surprising that a year ago if you had asked me what a platelet was I would have responded, "that's something in the blood, right?" I didn't connect platelets with clotting, the lack of platelets with brain bleeding or the true meaning of apocryphal.

Michael and I stayed with Debbie and Guy Cartwright in Phoenix last week while we attended IRA. Old friends of mine, new friends to Michael. Guy's daughter Margaret fought ITP in her childhood and like most kids, eventually outgrew its threat. He told us she got to a point that she could sense when her platelets were getting low, she'd be rushed to the hospital for an infusion. Because of other people's generous donations, platelet transfusions had been available for Margaret to help her out of crisis.

As Stephie faded from our midst last May, the hospital waiting room swelled with grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors -- all of whom would have willingly opened their veins to help her, but by then, after three days in the hospital, it was too late. Today, Stephie's picture is on the front page of the ITP Foundation site and while we are all proud to see her there, we wish she were back here, singing along with Kelly Clarkston and Hanna Montana and cartwheeling across the living room.

I tagged along as my cousin Billie Holbrook donated blood last week and if you know anything about the blood suckers at the Red Cross, you know they didn't let me get away without giving a pint. I hadn't donated in years, I'm embarrassed to admit. And I had never given at a full service facility where they also take donations of platelets, a slightly more complicated procedure that takes 70 - 120 minutes. I had myself tested and it turns out I'm loaded with the things -- 273,000 per microliter. To put that in perspective, Stephie's level was 2,000 when she was admitted.

The Red Cross called me today to give me the good news that I am a viable candidate to donate platelets, which I will do for the first time next week because although it may be too late to help our Steph, it is not too late to help others.

We have all learned so much these past nine months. Learned about heartache, love, family -- and the blood that binds us together as human beings. We are continually and simultaneously propelled and stricken by the love song of Stephie. We want every person who ever zoned out in biology class to know and understand the importance of platelets.

It's a Magical Day.

The whole world is watching

The population of Cairo is 19 million at night and 23 million during the day -- it is a city on the move. We are half a world away from the US, but all anyone is talking about is the election. CNN is a different animal overseas -- truly world news. And tonight it is all the US election all the time. It will be 5AM here when the polls close in the USA -- so we will go to bed and wake up (hopefully) to a clear cut victory.

But today at school it was all about poetry for the students of Cairo American College. I got to talk to the elementary in two assemblies today, watch a first grade class perform a reader's theater rap, wrote with some middle schoolers, and Michael and I put on a model poetry slam outside for the HS.



Only in an international school do I have the privilege to talk to kids in pre-school through HS all in the same day. A student who interviewed me for the yearbook asked me what I like about my job today and I answered THAT is it -- I love the variety.

After school the elementary librarian Anne took me out to do some shopping and then we kicked back for an hour before joining elementary principal Seamus Marriott and his staff for elegant snacks and cold drinks on his spacious balcony overlooking the lights of Cairo. As we have from the first day we arrived, the conductor orchestrating our visit has been Peter Duckett. It was simply a beautiful day.

Off the Books

Yesterday a big Yellow Freight delivery truck (way big) pulled up in front of the house and the nice delivery man wanted to drop off two pallets of books, (value $80,000). In fact, all I was supposed to receive were 3 text books. I’m not certain of the value of these books, but a fair market price would be $90, or about $30 a piece.

Wow. $80,000 worth of books. My neighbor is standing outside and says, “wahoo. garage sale.”

"Nah." I say. "I really only have rights to $90 in books."

But, my imagination takes off. She's so right. In fact, if you break these pallets of books up and sell them individually, a conservative estimate of the books’ value would be $112,000 (with the standard 40% mark up).

She leaves for work and I decide it wouldn’t be fair for me to actually sell the books, they aren’t mine. But I can act like the big boys, I can take a loan out against this asset I am holding just like the bank takes out loans on other people's savings accounts. That's not theirs either. Since I am holding the books on pallets in my driveway, I go to the local bank and take out a loan against this asset. The banker makes commissions on the size of the loan, not on my ability to pay the loan back so he says, “that’s a Class A asset, you have the books in your possession. When are you planning this garage sale?”

“Dunno.” I answer, honestly. "I don't actually own the books. I'm kind of book sitting."

“That’s okay,” says Mr. Banker. “If you did own the books, you think you can unload them in say 5 years?”

“Sure.” I answer, thinking five years is a long time and heck, it’s only 500 lbs of books. That’s only 100 lbs a year, that would be reasonable. If the books were mine. My neighbor would help and we'd all make out.

“Kewl,” says the banker. “Tell you what, I’m going to loan you $150,000 on those books because the price of books is going up and you’d probably be able to sell them for more than you are thinking. You just pay us a little every month on the interest.” Mr. Banker gets a healthy commission and I have $150,000 in my checking account. Meantime, by this time the shipper has realized its mistake and collected the books.

But I'm so excited, I pay bonus’ to my cats and dogs and still have lots left over. I go to Bank B. I say, look I'm rich. I have all this cash. I want to borrow money for a boat and a car and some new shoes. Bank B extends these loans to me by borrowing against my neighbor’s savings.

Meantime, Bank A takes my loan and places a mature value on the loan of $500,000 (asset plus interest for 5 years). Bank A bundles my loan with a bunch of other people’s loans on temporary assets sitting in driveways around town and wow, that adds up to say, $5 million. So, they take these dollars and buy stock in the company of my neighbor’s employer.

After they have purchased a lot of this stock, at first it drives up the price. Then people start to spread rumors that the stock really isn’t worth so much, so Bank A goes back into the market and bets that the stock will fall. Banks B and C see what Bank A is up to and even though they don’t really own any shares of this stock, they decide to bet that the stock will fall, too. The stock falls. The bets pay off. They pay big bonuses to the traders.

Time passes. I answer the phone and it’s the bank. “You know that loan?”

“Yup.”

“It’s time to pay up.”

“Mmmm. I spent the money. And I have all these other loans I took out using the money you gave me as collateral, and I’m a little over extended.”

“Uh oh. We're over extended, too. Oh, well, time for that garage sale. Just sell those books you used to secure the loan.”

“Well, I didn’t really OWN those books. I told you that. They were just parked in my driveway.”

“And?”

“And, they’re like, gone. You know. You want to take back the shoes?”

“Shoes are a depreciating asset. You owe us $500,000.”

“I thought I owed you $150,000.”

“That was before we sold the loan as a derivative asset for $500,000 to Bank B and they used that as collateral for this $5 million loan we took out to buy stock in your neighbor’s employer.”

So, my neighbor loses her job because her company can't make payroll. The banks have cut off the company’s credit because the stock fell. She goes to her savings account to take money out to pay her house payment, car payment and for her kid’s braces and her bank says, “not only can we not give you your money because we used it for collateral and loaned too much money to the lady with the books in her driveway. BTW, would you mind chipping in to pay for the losses on her books?”

My neighbor is a little annoyed but says, “$90? Sure, I’ll chip in. She’s good for it. Can I have my money now?”

“Not exactly,” says the bank. We need you to chip in at least $500,000 for her and we might as well clean up all this other debt, too. Can we have $5 million to recapitalize the bank? Come to think of it, we may need $6 million. All those bonus’ and commissions, you know. Don't ask me to explain how this happened, I don't understand it myself. Very complicated. Everybody's going to have to pitch in and if you don’t? This is a very fragile situation. You’ll never get another job or be able to pay for those braces for your kid.”

“Wait a minute!” My neighbor is extremely annoyed now. "You loaned her $500,000 on a $90 asset? Are you nuts?"

"She's irresponsible. What can we say. We actually only loaned her $150,000. But that's beside the point. That debt is now up to $500,000 and we need your help. It's too complicated for you to understand."

"Understand this. I’m unemployed. And you want me to pay $6 million dollars for an asset that’s worth $90? There ain't a garage sale in the world gonna make that kinda money.”

This entire scenario flashes through my mind as I explain to the Yellow Freight delivery guy that he has to take the books back.

My neighbor keeps guns in the house.

American Prayer

LOST EMAIL

What I want to do is blog about what a fab time I had at Granny Camp and visit with the Ohio Writing Project at Miami U (very cool), but first a bit of Grumpy business. I have been on hold with my email server for a total of 80 minutes today -- after the first 25, no you need to talk to the business server, no your email box is too small, we'll make it bigger, no you'll have to call back, no you need to talk to us when you are in front of your home computer, no, you need to talk to . . . oh, you get the picture.

Bottom line, all email I received or Kelly received at Kelly@saraholbrook.com, between Sunday June 22 and Thursday, June 26 has been lost in cyberspace and I am not happy about it. The server changed servers, or some such thing, and poof. All my email that was hung up out there has gone away.

Please, if you sent me an email and you read this, please resend.

What a pain!

The Globalization of Family

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — Enraged crowds rioted across Pakistan and hopes for democracy hung by a thread after Benazir Bhutto was gunned down Thursday as she waved to supporters from the sunroof of her armored vehicle.

The news came just as Michael and I were in cleaning mode -- Kelly, Brian and the kids would be here any time and CNN was on in the background. The story was updated -- the last photo before she was shot displayed -- appropriate experts were consulted (Guiliani???), I believed she was pro democracy and I'm not so sure that the corporate interests that support her incumbent opponent are. After all, Pakistan is a major go-to place for cheap labor for the war profiteers.

Meantime, the van full of Weists arrives. Excited hugs, stories about what Santa brought, how long the drive from D.C. and who gets the bathroom first. In between cold drinks and family talk, the Bhutto story stays on in the background. Even after CNN is replaced by the Wii for a couple of quick bowling games, the grownups continue to talk about the former prime minister's rise in power, who was most corrupt, the failure of the incumbent to provide protection. We watch as each pundit warns of new dangers in our neighborhoods on the flip side of the world due to her assassination. In my neighborhood? The only Pakistani I know I bought milk from that very morning and he seems a most pleasant man. Recent arrival. We laughed because neither of us could figure out the price of a pack of gum and I agreed to come back later, thereby negotiating an on the spot chewing gum deferment.

What news did people greet one another with before the news was globalized? Did we only have Aunt Mildred's operation and Cousin Jack's infidelities to jabber about as the guests settled in? Seasoned of course with pinches of weather and travel times. Instant access to global news has not only impacted how we do business, it's changed the way we welcome one another, "Did you hear . . .?"

It's possible such disconnected greetings may not be all bad -- being met with "Oh, I guess you really have put on weight," as my tactless father said to me one time reaching out to pat my belly and plummeting my precarious self esteem and 8 years of therapy to that scary place in the basement populated by dragons, where the furnace growls and the water tank spits fire. It took weeks and another full year of therapy to drag myself up from that darkness. And then there was the time he arrived apparently having bragged up my haphazard housekeeping to his fiance Baby Blue Betty for the whole trip. From Florida to Ohio, that's a long damned trip. Unfortunately his final climactic revelation was to be whipping open my front door to my home's usually chaos. But this visit coincided quite nicely with my introduction to Mighty Maids.

When Dad, who was a Grand Master of I Told You So, discovered there was no evidence to back up his case (the Mighty Maids had even sorted out my silverware drawer, a final disappointment), he shrunk down into my too soft sofa, glowering, without even taking off his hat, Baby Blue sitting beside him like a cheer leader at half time and me wondering if I could still find my spoons in those neat little stacks. Dad's planned conversation starter foiled, the three of us sat staring uncomfortably at the heightened patina of the freshly excavated coffee table. An assassination might have come in handy in that case, and it's entirely possible one or more was contemplated. It was 20 years ago, who remembers these things.

But this case is different. We all like each other. I want to know everything that is happening in their world, with the stuttered, word twists unique to 2-4-8 year olds. Then we can talk about the business of the rest of the planet.

So, two things to remember: I intend to become quicker on that red button on the remote when family pulls in the drive, I also have to be conscious that family news (Thomas' latest new word, Danny's domination in video bowling and Ben's latest achievements on his basketball team) gets its due. More than equal billing with the global news. Family always deserves premium space.

And an always reminder that in the midst of any crisis -- be that a remote tragedy as today's, a health crisis, or economic crisis - - it is the store of moments of undistracted joy we absorb through family connections that will steady us all.

The Story of Stuff

Last night Michael and I were up at the mall (again?) and he remarked, "isn't it amazing how this season just gets people to go out and buy stuff? Look at this place." And it is. I'm a victim myself. Stuff. Lots of it. Piled in the aisles, marked up and marked down. Shoppers elbow to elbow sniffing around for bargains. Occasionally and more recently, this is really beginning to nag at me. And I admit to being a lifelong shopper, a just in case, you never know what you'll find, store cruiser. But my visceral discomfort is disrupting my natural internal browser -- I can't even look around with guilt free pleasure any more.

I wrote a poem, Don't Bury Me on Brookpark Road, sometime in 2001 after the President told us to go shopping after 9/11. Excerpt:

When I’ve punched the snooze button for the last time,
I don’t want to wind up pew-wedged between the honk and wheeze
of Mr. Donut and Mr. Muffler, across from the pawn shop,
marooned at the crossroads of more. More billboards, more tacos,
more mattresses, nail shops and temporary stops on this path to the land fill for
rental cars, wastebaskets, and girls baring a** for more.
More cat beds, more tennis racket teddy bear welcome signs,
collectible designed for ease in obsolescence.

When the non-transferable terms on my desk drawer
of lifetime warranties run out, don’t plant me beside this
hurried stream of humanity, its pace accelerating frantically
as it tapers into the purchase of today at crazy low prices, guaranteed to satisfy
(for six months or ten thousand miles whichever is lower) . . .

Which is a pathetic place to be in life -- not buried on Brookpark Road, but walking around the mall mentally quoting myself from five years ago wondering why I haven't been heeding my own words. Which reminded me of this little 20 minute video that I stumbled across, that is so succinct and precise, it is a poem in and of itself.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

There are a lot of amazing observations in the video, but the one that smacked me the most firmly is how happiness goes down as advertising goes up. It is as if our entire media culture is producing generations of malcontents. I'm a poet, so I was born a malcontent, but I hate to see the rest of the planet pushed in the same direction. What fun is that?

Well, apparently, not much if the commercials for antidepressants are to be believed. They are almost as scary as their warning labels. Michael point out one drug advertisement to me the other day that lists "urge to gamble" as a possible side effect.

I think we all must have this affliction -- we are all gambling wildly with our futures every time we buy more of this stuff. The other day we walked into Walgreens to get a prescription and up and down aisles of stuff that no one needs. I mean no one. Plastic flowers, flashing greeting cards, synthetic garlands, all harvested from -- where? All going where?

My new year's resolution is going to be to think harder about purchasing stuff. I'm going to write that down and tuck it in the same pocket as my credit card. We'll see if that works better than just feeling guilty.

Democracy: the votes are in

Carolyn Bucey finished off her slimy opponent Bill Snow with a knock out punch of truth and we won. Not only that council seat, but two others, also. It was a sweep of local proportions.

A commenter on my last post suggested I name names, so here we go. Our neighborhood was unhappy with our councilman Bill Snow for failing to stand up for us against the over development of a former school property by Junior Properties, ltd. Junior's daddy, the Big Shot, Osborne, gave a pile of money to the financially crippled school district, earmarked solely for the football stadium. Period. No books, no AP teachers hired back, no computers or classroom remodels. Football. In exchange for this "contribution" he was gifted Center Street Elementary School and surrounding properties for development by good ol' Junior, who has proposed squeezing in 50-60-70 (depends what day you ask) condos onto the former playground.

Why is our council representative so important? It is council who will decide how many units go onto that land. In our minds, rubber stampers need not apply. And rubber stampers who have a whole lot of unexplained cash in their election campaign accounts should get lost.

Most people think the Osbornes bought Center Street School for the fire sale price of $700,000, but that's unclear. Nothing was ever recorded. Did the district gave it to them as swag for the gift to the football team? Who knows. Very fishy. And Mr. Snow and the rest of council just kept smiling and rubber stamping approvals. Keep in mind that this neighborhood is still reeling from 2003 when 63% of the town voted to stop developers from plugging a different development (Newell Creek) into our limited green space. The developers took the case to court and a judge OVERTURNED the popular vote. To say the neighborhood is a little skeptical of sincerity of developers is an understatement.

And now this new Junior Properties development at Center Street School threatens to overwhelm our ancient sewers, threaten our trees, and increase our population density and traffic flow at one of the busiest intersections in town beyond the point of safety. We've already sacrificed the playground I used to walk to with my grandkids and the ball diamond that throbbed with T ballers on any given summer evening. And guess what? Osborn also owns the bank that is doing the financing and owns the gas company which is also drilling (with council approval) at more and more sites in this semi-urban neighborhood. Could it be that Osborn rhymes with Halliburton?

Carolyn Bucey was party to a lawsuit against the Newell Creek developers and in fact she and her husband received a small settlement for loss of value to their home due to the Newell Creek development. So, wasn't it a surprise to all when a glossy, four color copy of her confidential settlement check was mailed first class to the entire Ward along with an implication that she was taking payoffs? How did Snow get a copy of that check? Who paid for the expense of mailing? Who would want such a person as Mr. Snow to represent them after he did such a thing?

Well, guess what. The majority of voters do NOT trust Mr. Snow to represent them anymore. Here's the best part about grass roots efforts, Bucey's committee was able to xerox a simple letter explaining that the copy of the check was obtained underhandedly, that the check was NOT a payoff but a perfectly legal settlement, and get that info hand delivered to the entire ward, 1/4 of Mentor inside of two days. The majority of voters decided.

And that is what democracy looks like.