Just Some Photos

On Mt. Rigi, Switzerland:



Promenade atop the ramparts surrounding Lucca, Italy:



East Ridge Trail, Redwood Park, Oakland, California:



Wild turkeys in our backyard, Oakland, California:




At the Farmers' Market, Florence, Italy:



House and copy, Hedingen, Switzerland:


Half-dome, afternoon and early evening, October:

Song of the Month or Week:

A flawless rocking CD from a Chilean band singing in English. They go by the name "RH+" and tried to tell the world that "RH" stood for "Rock Hudson" until the Rock Hudson estate took issue. This comes from the CD "Quintano Roo."

More music . . . coming.

Why I Don't Have a Facebook Account

I don't have Facebook account; I'm not on Facebook; I don't have Facebook. I really don't even know the idioms around the use of Facebook. However, more and more people in my generation are getting it. And, if teens and twentysomethings are any indication, then Facebook may soon replace e-mail as the standard form of Internet communication. I hope not for the teens and twentysomethings. On the one hand, Facebook is a remarkable, attractive social networking site -- and social networking strikes me as generally positive.

But Facebook should remain the province of twenty and thirty-somethings. Kind of like a bar for twentysomethings or a club featuring small, emerging bands. I have a former student, about 32 now, and she has started a band. She always tells us when they are going to play at some bar or small venue and we happily go. The band is good. I really like it. But our presence spikes up the average age of the place by a factor of about 1 geezerillion. We get questions about the paleolithic age. So I just feel like I'm ruining the buzz of whomever I'm standing next to. This is especially true if I start to move to the music even gently, ever so slightly. There is just something so wrong about this fiftysomething relic even just being here, but does he have to dance too? Does he need viagra to dance?

Similarly, with Facebook, I shouldn't be there seeing the communications of my goddaughters, the pictures they send to their friends, etc. And it would be so lame if I asked them to friend me. It would be so sad if they felt obligated to friend me. Clearly, Facebook is their world. And when they continue with it into their own dotage, their kids will network on something else.

Do Teachers Say You "Talk Too Much" in Class? Look Who's Talking!

This "talks too much" notion has got me thinking about how teachers deal with talk. So, all you students out there, do you think you "talk too much"? Yes? No? What are teachers talking about? Maybe the teacher is talking too much when she says you talk too much.

So here's a little talk about talk.

First of all, nobody talks more than teachers. We become teachers because we like to talk . . . AND we can make kids listen. How many times have you wondered when the teacher would EVER . . . STOP. . . TALKING!!!!!!!!

So when a teacher tells you you talk too much just say to yourself, "Look who's talking!"

Then, there's you. You have a highly energized, very effective, wonderfully fun little mind and it's very, very, very close to your mouth. Your mind and mouth made friends a long time ago. So they're constantly talking. Of course, when your mind talks, it's very quiet. But boy does it talk a lot. So whenever the teacher says you talk too much, just say, "On the contrary, my mouth says a lot less than my mind because my mind is quite a blabbermouth."

Your mind is constantly discovering ideas and figuring out how things work and how things can work even better. When you suddenly come across a cool idea or just a cool way of expressing an idea it's as if you'd suddenly found a gold coin under a flower. "LOOK HERE!" you say. "Look at what I've found!" That's how you are with ideas.

Our mouths help our minds point to things because the mind alone can't say much of anything except to you alone so it needs the mouth. By comparison, the mouth can blah, blah, blah all day long, but if it's not hooked up to the mind, then the poor mouth is . . . well . . . mindless. There's an old expression that goes like this: "His mind is on vacation and his mouth is working overtime." Mind and mouth have to go out into the world together or they are clueless.

Now, you like discovering ideas and what's the use of discovering things if you can't share them like gifts with friends?

Some teachers will understand that and they become teachers because of the energy and joy of minds like yours. I hope I'm one of those teachers. I've had kids in my class who talk more than the usual kid, but a lot of what they have to say is interesting and wonderful, so . . . I let them talk. Usually. Yeah, sometimes in a friendly, laughing way I have to say, "Barbara, will you please give it a REST!"

But . . . some teachers just gotta have quiet. It's as if they have a terrible headache all the time and the noise of children drives them over the edge. "Arrrrrrggggghhhhh!!!" they yell.

And some teachers just feel embarrassed by the joy and energy of a mind like yours. It makes them look sour by comparison. "What makes ____________ so happy today?" they ask.

So your job is to use that remarkable mind of yours to figure out what kind of teacher you have at any given moment. Do you have a teacher who wants to hear what you have to say, or are you in a class where the teacher wants silence? Does your teacher DESERVE to hear your voice. Then maybe you have to make some decisions about how your mind and mouth will work in a given class.

But trust me: Most teachers will want to hear what you have to say about things. I'm telling you, that's why we become teachers -- so we can have remarkable kids like you in our lives.

Takes a Village? The Village Will Take the Opportunity

I’m not sure if it takes a village to raise a child, although I suspect it does, and that we should be grateful for the help, if help it is, but I do know that the village has a stake in the upbringing of your child and so the village will strive to insinuate itself into the rearing of your child. And not every element of the village is benign.

In our dollar-driven world, there are villagers who have a stake in raising a child who will buy their wares. That’s their sole concern. And whether we like it or not, our children are listening to the messages of the village.

I don’t have to cite studies to know that advertising works: Brilliant people run those ad firms and their clients wouldn’t be tossing around billions of overhead money for a scheme that hasn’t effectively proven itself. It’s not like advertising is a new stratagem to get us to spend foolishly.

The Power of "Um"!!!

I wrote to my friend TK thinking she was in Ashland, Oregon. She wrote back:

"Um . . . I'm in San Francisco now."

Ah, don't you just love the power and expressiveness of that "Um"?

It says, benignly: I believe you're under the impression that X when, in fact, Y .

Or:

Forgive me if I've given you the impressison that Y is X when, in fact, Y is Y.

Or it says a bit less benignly: Y is Y, not X, and, uh, you should kinda' know that . . . like everyone else, i.e., the people who aren't as oblivious to Y as you apparently are.

Or:

Earth to You, Y is Y and has been Y for quite some time now. (This is often accompanied by a quizzical look that appears to combine incredulity, vexation, and the backing away from a bad odor or an inability to translate what sounds like gibberish.)

On Seeing and Observing

From Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien: “ . . . [O]bservation requires inward-looking, a study of the very machinery of observation -- the mirrors and filters and wiring and circuits of the observor. Insight, vision. What you remember is determined by what you see, and what you see depends on what you remember.... A cycle that has to be broken. And this requires a fierce concentration on the process itself.”

Why I Seldom Assign "Creative" Writing

I’m occasionally asked, imploringly, by parents considering my school “if there are creative writing opportunities” in my English class. Kids ask, too.

My flippant response used to be: “All writing is creative.” And then I’d go on to admit that my colleagues in the English department do assign creative writing responses despite the emphasis on the analytical essay. I’d go on to note that there’s also a literary journal. But then, with firm but quiet conviction I’d aver that in my class I tend to shy away from conventional creative writing assignments.

I should be more forthcoming....

I’d guess that nearly every high school English teacher, in nearly every class, has at least one conventional creative writing assignment. Some of us find that a creative writing assignment can respond to texts quite effectively.

I will admit that I am more hesitant than some to assign conventional creative writing, but my misgivings about assigning it are not founded in some overriding College Preparatory ethic. So why don't I assign more? Why doesn't the whole department assign more? For my part -- and this is from someone who has written plays, short stories, and poems -- I have found the following problems:

First, creative writing, done well, is much harder, and far more time consuming, than expository writing. Done well, it requires more revisions. Yet, kids often think their creative writing is easier and better simply because they like it more.

Secondly, while I can teach how to structure a story, a play, or a poem and I can help with revisions, I am not particularly competent at helping kids recognize and create their best creative work. Nor do I have the time in the curriculum. Indeed, the kids who are gifted in creative writing find that they spend far more time on it than they expected to and sometimes don't finish.

So, thirdly, it creates assessment problems. How do I assess a student's creative work? By what criteria? When I assign creative work, I have some guidelines and perhaps a prompt or two which must be addressed, but a bad story can meet the guidelines.

Fourth, the expository essay is a good in itself, not just as a preparation for college. It is countercultural in that it compels us to slow down and sit quietly while observing and unpeeling something for an extended period of time. Multitasking interferes with it. Hurry is its enemy. It's a way of discovering what we really think and how we are capable of thinking more deeply about anything. I tell kids, "We don't write what we think; we write in order to figure out what we think." Expository writing, done well, helps us to learn how to see, discern, and express greater depths. Finally, I very much believe that an essay can be beautiful. I think of Lewis Thomas' Lives of a Cell, Primo Levi's The Periodic Table, Anne Fadiman's essays, Montaigne's, Richard Rorty's, John Updike on art, Jamaica Kincaid on gardening.

If a student is moved to write poems, stories, plays, etc., she will find many willing mentors in most high schools and in the community. Despite my ambivalence about assigning creative writing, I have mentored budding playwrights and two budding poets. And I’m very involved with college essays which can and should be creative and revelatory.

Yes, the expository essay "looms large” in independent schools, as JH says, but not necessarily in its "traditional form" over all four years and not merely because of college prep expectations. We believe in it because capable people can learn to open the world and their own minds with them. It's a good exercise for anyone expecting to use her intellect in text dissection in the future. It is true that some people see the world better through a conventionally creative approach, but I'm quite confident that my school does not blast that out of them. It does require that analysis be mastered, but not that the Muse be dismissed.

Kids and parents point to the unfettered freedom of creative writing. I don't believe that the best creative work is ever "unfettered." I believe that mastering any art form begins with some fettering. Even James Joyce, Ezra Pound, William Faulkner, Ornette Coleman, Mondrian, Pollack, Serra, et al, first had to master the more traditional techniques. Then, even after breaking past traditional boundaries, they still had some self-imposed boundaries.

So if you want more creative writing – don’t wait for a teacher to assign it.

Write.