Mendolonium

A couple of months ago we (read:  Thomas) finished off the cherries we canned two years ago.  So this past weekend we trekked out to a wonderful local cherry orchard:  Big John’s to pick organic heirloom cherries.  With two kids to wrangle and us not quite all feeling well (we were all felled by a nasty bacteria the past few weeks) we picked only thirty pounds of cherries, but what wonderful cherries they are.  So since my last update we’ve:

Plant something (or take care of something you’ve planted):

• Tomato Seedling (Furry Yellow Hog, from seed)
• Basil Seedlings x4 (from seed)
• Round French Zucchini (from seed)

Harvest something:

• Bell Peppers!!!
• Carrots
• Leeks
• Blackberries (I am pretty sure the squirrels are helping me with these.)
• Raspberries
• Strawberries
• Sage
• Cherries (from Big John’s)

Preserve something:

• 22 pints cherries (canned, in extra light syrup)
• 7 half-pints of “Black Forest Preserves” – a cherry chocolate concoction (canned)
• 1 cup sage (dried)

Waste Not:

• Jeff has been gathering all the broken, ripped, and mangled toys, books, and puzzle pieces from the house and is slowing repairing them one-by-one.  We are diligent about buying sturdy items, but after two boys some things are starting to look a bit worse for wear.
• Broke a jar of canned blueberries so I just had to make lemon-blueberry muffins.  Couldn’t let those beautiful berries go to waste.

Want Not:

• Been using our memberships to Kidspace and The Huntington to entertain the kids rather than toys.  Who needs stuff when you have outdoor fun?

Eat the food:

• Baked a cherry pie.
• Baking (and eating) lots of bread.
• Tried a new recipe; a quinoa-butternut squash casserole from Sharon’s book.  It was excellent.  Theodore, in particular, gobbled it up.

Build community food systems:

• I am planning to start a very local urban farming group focusing on our neighborhood (or folks who live outside our neigbhorhood, but could walk/bike/public transport nearby).  I am envisioning that the group would exchange home grown produce/herbs/eggs/milk/seeds (example:  I’ll trade you one pound of carrots for one pound of tangerines) as well as share farming wisdom.  I would also like to ensure that there is a social and community aspect to the group through get together – perhaps a potluck every other month?  If you are local and have an interest send me a message.  Regardless of whether you are local or not I would love ideas and input.

Whether you’ve been following the live pictures of oil spewing out of the blown wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico or whether you have been getting news of the catastrophe through more pedestrian means such as reading the newspaper; the conclusion is the same:  what is likely to be considered the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history is unfolding before our eyes.  I say U.S. history, because environmental catastrophes of this magnitude are all too common in other regions of the world.  For example did you know Nigeria, which supplies 40% of the U.S. crude oil supply, is the oil spill capitol of the world; a dubious distinction it has “earned” with cumulative oil leaks  equivalent to the current Gulf spill every single year .  I didn’t know that until recently.  Why didn’t I know; because that disaster most directly affects people of color in a poor nation?  The Gulf spill is  playing out on the white, tourist friendly (or shall I say formerly tourist friendly) beaches of a rich, first world country and is thus receiving constant attention.  Oil leaking out into the environment is certainly most unwelcome regardless of location; but I do welcome increased scrutiny on oil:  how it is extracted, how it is used, and the consequences of that use.  I have heard inklings of the larger picture from the media, musings that “we need to reduce our dependence on oil”.  True enough, but musings from the media are not being translated into real change.  To be perfectly blunt:  we need to vastly reduce our energy usage and there is one obvious way to do so:  to stop driving our cars.  We don’t need to “Drill Baby Drill”…or new rallying cry should be to “Walk Baby Walk”.

Reform has to be far more sweeping than increased oversight of drilling operations, we need policies that dramatically curb the use of personal automobiles, and by extension oil, and we need them quickly.  While BP is certainly, to use a phrase my mother taught me, “guilty as sin” the United States government (both Republican and Democratic administrations) has crafted and implemented policies that effectively encourage the use of oil;  specifically the extensive of cars by individual citizens.  In order to dramatically reduce our use of fossil fuel and all its attendant negative consequences we need government policies that encourage us to hang up our car keys and put on our walking shoes.  President Obama has yet to solicit my opinion, but if he were to ask here is what I have in mind:

• Massive investment in public transportation infrastructure.  People cannot give up their cars if they cannot get to where they need to go without one.  Rural areas should have regional transport hubs; places where one can park their car and then take a train or bus to another regional transport hub…think someone trying to get from Fresno, California to Santa Barbara California or from Columbus, Nebraska to Grand Island, Nebraska.  Service needs to be predictable, efficient, and reasonably priced.  In urban areas it must be completely possible to get around without the use of a car at all.  Specifically, major schools, cultural centers, hospitals, airports, shopping districts, etc. all need to be able to accessed quickly and efficiently.  In Los Angeles, it is something of a joke that our light rail system does not go major destinations such as the airports, UCLA, the county museums, or the county hospitals.  Expensive infrastructure investments could be a difficult proposition given our increasing economic austerity; however such investments build something lasting that would provide us and future generations with a better life.  Last month’s jobs data reported that 411,000 government jobs were created as temporary census workers.  Can you imagine the positive economic and societal impact from 411,000 long-term, well-paying jobs that actually built something rather than just counted people.
• Disincentivise the use of gas through additional taxes on the oil industry and on gasoline itself.  This would not be politically popular, but it would be effective.  When gas spiked to nearly $5.00 per gallon, I heard countless, well-educated, upper middle class people say, “With gas so expensive, I am really thinking about how to minimize my driving” or “I figured out how to use the train/bus/bike to get to work”.  Now that the price of gas is down to a more “reasonable” $3.00 per gallon, where are the vast majority of those people…back in their cars.  Double the price of gas and I can guarantee you that people will think twice before driving.  You will also create a large new constituency to support public transportation.  You may argue that such an increase in prices will hurt people economically and I will wholeheartedly agree with you…that’s the point.  Is your concern for the poor and those struggling to get by?  Chances are those folks are already using public transport, walking, and limiting their driving – they’ve never been able to afford driving around in an SUV.  Is your concern for the middle class folks who are struggling with job losses, adjusting mortgages, and the like?  It was the price of housing, health care, and food that likely got those people to the edge of economic survival in the first place…why not raise the price of gas and help those folks out with healthcare or staying in their homes? Why the sudden concern for them over gas prices?  Are you concerned about small businesses? If your business model depends on large amounts of gasoline based transportation; then that is a heavily polluting business model that we need to think long and hard about maintaining. How might we help those people transform into sustainable business models?  The price of goods and services needs to accurately reflect their costs; the price of gasoline does not accurately reflect its devastating environmental cost; if it did we’d use a lot less.
• Making communities pedestrian, bike, and public transport friendly, while making them less hospitable to cars.  Some ideas:  safe bike corridors (perhaps by removing on street parking).  Any new building should allow pediatricians access without having to traipse through a parking lot.  Bike racks should be provided.  Parking should be limited and should be fee-based…no free parking.
• Improve the quality of and require students to attend neighborhood schools.  In Pasadena, “school choice” has resulted in some schools flourishing as involved parents from higher socio-economic backgrounds work to improve a school and then other similar parents subsequently improve the school resulting in a positive feedback loop.  The converse is also true; some schools are virtually abandoned by involved families and are left at the bottom of the heap.  The system results in thousands of students every day being driven to schools outside of walking distance from their home.  This scenario repeats itself over and over across America.  What a ridiculous waste of energy when nearly every home in Pasadena has at least two public elementary schools less than one mile away.  What if students were required to attend a neighborhood school and those neighborhoods schools were all high quality?  Why you would reduce gasoline consumption, desegregate schools, and improve education.
• Lead by example.  The government should be a model of energy conservation; Consideration should be given to silting facilities near public transportation.  Employees should be given incentives to use public transportation or walk/bike.

Note that some of these solutions are relatively inexpensive (a return to neighborhood schools) or neutral (parking restrictions incorporated during the design phase), and others may actually be revenue positive (increased gas taxes).  These thoughts are useful and important, but I honestly don’t hold for a top-down government solution.  In my opinion it is far more likely that real change will come from the bottom up:  quite literally by “voting with our feet”.

The effects of massive gasoline usage can be subtle; increased asthma rates in children due to breathing exhaust pollutants, decreased rainfall due to global warming; sea level rise flooding villages in Bangladesh.  While the human burning of fossil fuels has definitively caused great harm to our health and our climate the connection is sometimes difficult to make.  Now the connection is made plain to us in the images of the Gulf spill; one of oil’s many catastrophes:  black liquid chugging relentlessly out into the ocean, dead oil-soaked birds staring out at us vacantly; sobbing fishermen wondering how they will ever work again to feed their families.  At the same time we see the CEO of BP, Tony Hayward make stunningly selfish statements such as his now infamous “I’d like my life back”.   We see the oil industry for what it really is:  a profit generating machine; destroying lives and the environment for short-term gain. The gasoline that you pump into your tank didn’t magically appear at the gas station.  It was pumped from somewhere, and some of it was almost certainly spilled in the process.  The money that you pay for gasoline isn’t enriching the lives of the people from where it was pumped; it is lining the pockets of oil investors with billions of dollars per year.   I hear people asking, “What can I do?” about the oil spill in the Gulf, “How can I help?”  I saw recently that a program has been set up where you can automatically text a donation to the clean-up effort from your mobile phone; you get to feel good without getting your hands dirty, without effecting real change or doing real work.  If you want to donate, by all means do so.  But let’s be honest, neither BP nor we as concerned citizens can buy our way out of this problem.  You want to punish BP, you want to stop this from happening again and continuing to happen to people in places like the Niger delta?  It’s not about what you do…it’s about what you don’t do.

Don’t drive.

I know it isn’t easy to dramatically reduce our driving; to change our entire way of life.  I don’t wish to trivialize what we need to do.  But we have a choice.  Anyone who has access to a computer, how has the luxury of reading a blog; has choices.  You can choose to get in the car and burn the oil that was pumped out of the ground.  Or you can choose to walk.  What are you going to do?

Walk Baby Walk!

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

We are officially changing our baby’s name to Theodore Henry…

My last pregnancy was a difficult one; filled with a pervasive never-ending “morning” sickness, punctuated by anomalous test results.  When our baby boy was born unexpectedly and unnaturally a few weeks early I was at a loss as to what to name him.  Feeling as if I owed him a proper name at the very least we settled, somewhat uneasily, on the name Henry, the name we had most often discussed during my pregnancy.

What most people don’t know is that for a time, when he was a day or two old, we called him Theodore.  The idea of Theodore as a name was a relatively late addition to our pregnancy discussions and I was unsure about choosing a name for our baby that I thought I had not mulled over sufficiently.  I also didn’t want to be one of those families who named their children with names all beginning with the same initial.  Never mind that there was no rule that if I named our second child Theodore, that the third child would then be required to have a name beginning with T as well.  So Theodore was out and Henry was in.  And although his name read Henry William on his birth certificate, at night I sang Theodore to sleep and every so often I used the name Theodore in the light of day.

When I was pregnant with our baby I worried that I didn’t know him as well as I knew his brother.  This second child was more of an enigma; he moved less in utero, more deliberately, less frantically than his brother had.  I was distracted by the demands of caring for a toddler.   I longed to make a deeper connection to him and I hoped that it would come naturally after his birth.  About two hours after he was born, I rested in my hospital bed, the baby swaddled beside me, Jeff sleeping in a chair.  The baby began to fuss.  I tried nursing…pretty much my one infant calming trick.  No, he wasn’t interested.  “Now what?”, I thought considering waking Jeff, the baby soothing master.  I hadn’t slept properly in thirty-six hours and I was  suddenly overcome by a wave of exhaustion and a slight edge of panic.  What did he need?  I am his mother, I should know how to help him.   And then a thought came to my mind, “Pick him up and hold him up against your chest.  Rub his back.  He will like that.”  I did so and he instantly calmed down and contentedly fell asleep.  It was like magic; completely out of the blue…I had never held Thomas like that, to this day Thomas is not particularly fond of being touched much less massaged.  But somehow, somewhat inexplicably,  I knew this new little baby, I knew that he would like being held just like that.  I leaned back with my perfect new baby against me, the morning sunlight streaming through the window onto us and I thought, “I know you…”.

I did know him and I should have trusted my instincts about him and his name.  He is not Henry William.  He is Theodore Henry and he knows it.  And when I call him Theodore he comes smiling.

This post continues my series of write-ups describing my tours of Pasadena elementary schools.   I recently had the opportunity to tour Webster Elementary School.  Webster is a moderately sized (~400 students), ethnically diverse, pre-K through 5th grade* elementary school, located in northeast Pasadena.  It is a large school with classrooms on two floors  and a separate  much newer, smaller building.  The school was clean, organized, and in good repair.  The school is an excellent example of the collegiate Gothic style and the exterior is quite stunning.  Much like Longfellow Elementary, just over a mile down the street, I can only imagine that Webster would really shine if given a historic face lift.

Pros:

• Within walking or biking distance of our house, 1.8 miles; about a 40 minute walk.
• The principal personally led the tour.  She was open and honest, sharing with us the latest information on class sizes and furloughs**.  She is the most experienced elementary school principal in the district and has been at Webster for nearly two decades.
• The school was literally thick with parents.  I saw parents in the front office, parents in the hall, parents on the playground.  During our tour we spoke with a group of mothers working in the school’s parent volunteer room.  They sang the praises of Webster.   The level of parent involvement was very reassuring in an environment of increasing budget cuts.  I got the impression that the parents would put in their own time and money to continue to ensure that the school was an excellent place for their children in spite of the budget cuts.
• Webster is a model inclusion school meaning that in each classroom there are 2 – 3 children with special needs mainstreamed into the regular classroom.  In recognition that these students need additional attention, the school district provides an aide for every classroom in the school for a minimum of four hours per day.  The aide works, not only with the special needs children, but with the rest of the class as well.  I also liked that, given the presence of so many special needs children, the teachers and school administration are more comfortable and familiar with kids who might be a bit quirky; i.e., be challenged by over stimulation and transitions.  Thomas often has some difficulties in large groups of children and it would be a relief for him to be in an environment where teachers were used to seeing that and knew how to handle it constructively.
• The kindergarten classrooms were much more in line with what I remember kindergarten looking like.  One classroom had a piano and a teacher that used music in her classroom.  Another classroom had a turtle and a bunny.  In every classroom I could see evidence of play such as blocks and Legos in bins.    Most striking was the absence of desks in the classroom.  The principal stated that she does not believe in desks for kindergartners; a statement which made me sigh with relief.  We toured all three kindergarten classrooms and as we were leaving one of the classrooms asked to serenade us with their rendition of “These are a Few of My Favorite Things” from the Sound of Music.  It was ridiculously charming.
• During this upcoming summer two enrichment rooms will be created.  One room will be an art room.  It will be painted and furnished by parents.  One intrepid father is, with funding from the PTA, building 30 easels for use in the room.  The second room will be a math and science discovery room.  Again, the room will be painted and equipped by the parents.  While the school does not have funding for a dedicated teacher for either room, both rooms will be available for any class whose teacher who wishes to take them to the room for enrichment opportunities.
• The principal is working on a plan to provide elective courses to the students.  She hopes that the plan will be implemented for the 2011 – 2012 school year.  Under the plan students would select from an array of electives (e.g., cooking, art, drama, instrumental music, science) every quarter and would then spend 1 – 2 hours every week during elective time pursuing those activities in a multi-age environment with the other students who chose that elective.  The classes would be led by teachers and parent volunteers.
• The school has a working garden where each class is given a raised bed to work in.  It is a peaceful space and definitely an area I could see myself volunteering in should out children attend the school.
• The students are required to wear a uniform.
• The cafeteria was recently renovated by the parents and principal.  What could be a dreary space has been transformed into a colorful and inviting place to eat.  I will note that I think it is sad that the principal and parents had to do it themselves with the PTA providing the money for new tables.   Basic school renovations should certainly be something that the school district pays for.
• The school had a lovely inviting library, staffed (even with next year’s budget cuts) 6 hours a day by a dedicated librarian.  The library is open at lunch and recess for students to enjoy.
• The school is very diverse ethnically and socioeconomically.

Cons:

• The nominal school day (Tuesdays – Fridays) is 7:40 am – 2:15 pm.
• On Mondays school is shortened to 7:45 am – 12:15 pm.  This is a Pasadena-wide policy.
• The class sizes are large and are likely to continue to increase.  K is slated to have a 1:27 ratio next year.  Given the class size constraints and a limited number of teachers and classrooms the school will likely be forced to have more “combo” classes that combine two grades in a single classroom with a single teacher.  I don’t necessarily think that combo classes are bad.  In fact, for advanced students I think that they can be advantageous.  They do, however, require a very skilled teacher to manage.
• The school has a corporate sponsor and its name and brand are prominently displayed in the school library.  I believe that this type of corporate partnering is quite common in public schools now, however, I find the practice detestable.  The only “sponsorship” of a public school should be by the government (taxes) or personal contributions.  Allowing corporations to contribute to schools breeds inequality between schools (who has the “better” corporate sponsor?), introduces corporate influence into education (are there strings attached to those donations?), and allows society to continue to underfund public education by creating the expectation that schools should go out and find their own sources of funding.   Particularly troubling  is that the corporate sponsor for Webster is Nestle, a company that has come under sharp criticism for its infant formula marketing practices; that have been linked to thousands of infant deaths; particularly in the developing world.  These practices have led to a large scale boycott of Nestle.  Given that I refuse to buy Nestle products I certainly don’t like the idea of my children attending a school sponsored by them.
• The school uses the accelerated reader (AR) program.  While this is a pro for many parents, I did some  investigation into the program after I heard about it six months ago.   The AR program is designed to encourage and evaluate reading comprehension.  A student reads a book from the AR list (on which there are thousands of books) and then takes a computer based, multiple choice test on the content of the book.  The school pays a fee for access to the tests.   As a student completes the testing they earn points (longer, more complicated books earn more points).  In exchange for points, the students move up in reading levels and are also motivated by a charm that they receive.  Sounds good initially until you start to think about the implications for censorship, access to diverse reading material, the shaping of student’s interests, and the relationship of the student to reading.  While participating in the AR program does not explicitly preclude my children reading whatever books they would like, might they be more likely to eschew a book not on the AR list for an AR approved book so that they can get to the next level?  I want my children to read for the love of stories and the gain of knowledge – not to be motivated by cheap trinkets.  I want their comprehension assessed by discussion, book reports, and testing that involves a human being.  This may seem like a small issue, but this is an area that gives me significant pause.   I can see how participation in this program might shape my child’s interests and thoughts and I find that highly disturbing.  Note:  in the interest of fairness I should mention that I did not ask about the AR program at Longfellow and do not know if it is used there or not.  I will ask about the program on future school tours.
• The playground areas were in need of maintenance and updating.  While they were clean, there was a general air of neglect to them with cracked asphalted, very limited play equipment, and minimal shade.  They did not look fun or inviting to me.  The principal noted that the pre-K playground would be renovated this upcoming summer with measure TT bond funds.
• The school day ended while we were taking the tour which afforded us the opportunity to briefly observe the Pasadena Learns after school program.  I was very disappointed in what I saw.  All the student in the program were sitting in the cafeteria eating a snack (which partially consisted of chocolate milk in a plastic bag – not even sure how I would drink out of a flimsy bag).  The scene was loud and chaotic and the “instructors” for the program appeared just older than high school age and somewhat overwhelmed.   I wish that there was a good after school option offered by the city or the school district, however, that does not appear to be the case in Pasadena.  When it comes time I imagine that I will likely find another family to trade care with after school.

As soon as I became pregnant friends and colleagues began to ask me, “What are you going to do about school?”.   I received many dire warnings about the abysmal state of the Pasadena Public schools, however, these tours have shown me that those warnings were inaccurate;  the elementary schools are in Pasadena can be “good” schools.  Overall, I have seen many things I like:  diversity, an attempt to challenge the students without becoming hyper-competitive, a true sense of pride in the schools and the students.  That said, I have also seen many things that give me pause:  a schedule with a relatively short and early instructional day, large class sizes that will almost certainly be getting even more crowded, the infiltration of corporations, fund raising, and excessive “standards”, into the educational process.  These two tours have shown me that the difficult debate I will be struggling with for my children’s education will not be which public school to attend but more likely; will they be attending a public school at all?   The problems of competition, excessive focus on standards, corporatization, and lack of meeting individual needs are endemic public school problems in Southern California; moving to a “good” school or district will not entirely solve them.   For us the trade is more likely to be public school vs. alternative small private school vs. homeschool.  Like in medicine, my first order of business in choosing a school for our children is to first do no harm.  I have to figure out if the benefits of the public schools outweigh their potential harms.  Perhaps we can mitigate some of those potential harms at home or will we be driven to a more radical option?

* This is not technically accurate as Webster was, up until this year a pre-K through 8th grade school.  Longfellow, discussed in my previous post was a pre-K through 6th grade school.  The school board has made the decision to place all 6th – 8th grades in middle school beginning next year except for two schools, the Mc Kinley School and Norma Coombs Alternative.

** The furloughs have resulted in five school days being removed from instruction for each of the 2010 – 2011 and 2011 – 2012 school years.