Being Jew-ish

Posted on October 4, 2011 by sheilawill

No High Holiday services for me but here’s what I did in addition to having days off from work. Dipped pieces of apple in honey to assure a sweet new year, took a morning for reflection and writing with my Gemini pal Julie, walked by Temple Emanu-El’s mobbed parking lot and felt guilty.

Why are people deeply entrenched in religion? I’m optimistic, have faith in the goodness of the vast majority of people, but I believe it’s who we are as human beings, not about religion.

Is religion meant to stop people from doing weird things? Weird stuff happens no matter what we do.

Stephen King calls “The Leftovers” by Tom Perrotta “the best Twilight Zone episode you never saw” in a recent New York Times book review. Spooky. On Oct. 14 (it’s coming up!) people all over the planet are swooped up, very much like the born-again Christian version of “The Rapture,” except Perrotta’s characters aren’t necessarily believers. They just randomly disappear.

In the book, a cult develops with adherents donning white robes, taking a vow of silence — cigarettes dangling from their mouths (it’s a look). They follow people around, transmitting important lessons through an insistent gaze.

I’m about halfway through the book so I don’t know how or if the situation resolves.

“Higher Ground,” which was directed by and stars the lovely, talented Vera Farmiga, was more down-to-earth than “The Leftovers.” The movie takes a young girl from the scary “Do you take Jesus as your savior?” question when she raises her hand in church, to her grown-up married self living in a strict Christian community. Farmiga’s character Corinne Walker comes full circle.

Corinne has always read a lot — a rebellious practice — and there’s no way she can believe everything that she’s told, especially how a woman should adhere to her husband’s wishes.

While a Rotten Tomatoes review says the Irish postman reading a Yeats poem aloud doesn’t ring true, I’d say the scene with dogs surrounding Corinne is totally unnecessary. See the movie; let me know what you think.

Meanwhile, we’re in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the day when we’re hopefully inscribed in the Book of Life. I want everyone I love to be inscribed in the Book of Life. Like Farmiga’s Corinne, I empathize with the religious beliefs that are part of me. I just don’t buy them.

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If you’re happy and you know it…

Posted on September 27, 2011 by sheilawill

Clap your hands! Exactly what moviegoers did after viewing “Happy” at the Loft Cinema yesterday. Even though it can get mushy, I’m glad — even happy — that psychologists are studying the ever-popular emotion.

Here’s what I found out: Fifty percent of being happy is based on genetics; 10 percent is based on circumstances, which includes financial status, job, relationship.

And here’s the biggie: Forty percent of what makes us happy is up for grabs/intentional activities, our life choices.

I’ve often wondered why some people who’ve had rough childhoods turn out to be happy, confident, involved grown-ups, while others go down the tubes?

The kind word, the caring teacher, the influential book can make a huge difference.

A University of Illinois psychologist who appeared in “Happy” said he’s studied happiness for 25 years. When he first started, his colleagues chided him for pursuing such a “flaky” subject. They’d been studying depression all those years. (Dan pointed out that’s the medical model, look for what’s wrong).

It’s so cool that current neuroscience research can show how our brains respond to exercise or to cooperating with others or feeling connected to friends and family, all components of happiness, say the psychologists.

We can decide to become happier, read books like — and take on — “The Happiness Project.” (Gretchen Rubin is a Yale Law School grad who spent a year focusing on what made her happy). I haven’t read “Stumbling Upon Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert, but I like the title.

Did I stumble upon happiness? I made choices like moving away from ice and snow to sunny Tucson, leaving the stress of teaching. But I’m also post-menopausal and don’t have the same bouts of anxiety. I was lucky enough to meet Dan. If my grown-up children are doing well all is right with the world (although it’s clearly not).

Driving home from work today I was listening to NPR. Commentator Andrei Codrescu said, “It’s been a year like a ride in hell’s Disney World.”

Are we in for “impending doom?” I don’t know. Researchers have found that having a purpose in the world is also a component of happiness. I’ve learned over the years that it’s best to do what I can — and not take myself too seriously. I’m happy.

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34 years ago

Posted on September 24, 2011 by sheilawill

It was 94 degrees in Tucson when we finished but I was determined. Thirty-one miles riding my bike (longest ride ever) to honor what I was doing 34 years ago today: I was in labor.

Brook Wilensky-Lanford was born Sept. 25, 1977 at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Who knew where life would take us?

No surprise that my amazingly talented daughter would write a superb book. She’s always been the most perceptive person I know, and a brilliant writer since she wrote a play at age 11 that questioned democracy.

I was 31 when she was born, and had never ridden a bike more than 10 miles. We had a big vegetable garden in a makeshift field by Hartford High School in White River Jct., Vermont, where I taught social studies, what I thought would be my life’s work. (Maybe it was,  I put enough blood, sweat and tears into it at the time.)

While I was hugely pregnant I watched sugar snap peas sprouting from the earth. Back then, we didn’t know which sex babies were until we held them. It was all so f***ing amazing. Both emerging peas and babies.

I soon became Mother Earth, nursing and/or pregnant for five straight years…Ethan arrived in 1981 and nursed until he was 2, when the rocking chair we sat on every evening broke.

I haven’t planted a real garden in years. But I’ve grown. More important, I’ve watched my children grow into spectacular adults — compassionate, empathetic, articulate, bright human beings — contributing to the world.

I’m so proud of all of us.

 

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They’re all wacky

Posted on September 23, 2011 by sheilawill

When asked about my position on the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, my mantra was always, “they’re all crazy.” Done. It offered a way to avoid getting mired in a complex discussion. Nowadays, I say the same thing about our tiresome political stalemate. Nothing gets done, there’s no respect, and instead of the old talk about “the evil ones” by mad-dog Cheney, referring to the fear of omnipresent terrorists, too many people are just plain mean.

No wonder more people have pets than ever before. Dogs and cats smile at them. When my kids were little back in Maine we had two big white fluffy Samoyed dogs in a row; that’s the breed that the doggie guidebooks say “have the Christmas spirit in their hearts all year round.” Both dogs were named “Friend.” As a toddler Brook would sit on the floor with her giant “Friend” and stick her tiny hand in his mouth. (I guess it tickled because she always giggled.)

Would it be better if people didn’t talk so much? It used to be — back in the good old days — that we all kept a lower profile in public. If you didn’t think a young person with a disease who chose not to purchase health insurance should shrivel up and die, you didn’t yell “let him die” en masse at a nationally televised political debate. The League of Women Voters wouldn’t have allowed it.

What happened to them anyway? Have they gone the way of  many bipartisan organizations?

The other thing I don’t get is why parents allow screaming children to stay in a restaurant while other folks are dining out for the evening. We would always whisk a screaming child outdoors, telling her or him to use their indoor voice. There was no other way to return to the happening-place.

And my one complaint about Tucson — maybe the extreme summer heat gets to me occasionally — is talkative people in movie theaters. It always happens, I’m not kidding.

Venting is good.

 

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Sunday in Tucson

Posted on September 20, 2011 by sheilawill

Every day in Tucson begins with sunshine. But when it’s 70 degrees at 8 a.m. that’s cause to celebrate. When the light makes everything look crisper, more shaded along the edges, clearer than the summer haze, well, that’s September.

And curiously, the light is the same here as it is during a Maine September. For a new Englander, a former teacher — and a mother — September is always the beginning. Not just the incomparable MacIntosh apple-picking days or the start of school, this is the beginning of Brook’s birthday week. She’ll be 34 on Sept 25.

Yesterday was the beginning of the most beautiful season in Tucson, when you can hike after 6 a.m. without melting in 100-degree heat. At around 9:30 I headed for Finger Rock north on Campbell, winding from the center of Tucson into the Foothills where the expensive, enormous houses practically hug the magnificent Santa Catalina Mountains, at least 8,000 feet high. The trail I was taking is noted for a rocky digit pointing toward the sky. I’ve never been to the top.

There’s a favorite stopping place along the way where I’ve taken my grown-up kids to picnic and read the Sunday New York Times when they both visited last. Yesterday I wanted to see desert flowers blooming after all the rain we had last week. Yup, there were fish-hook cacti with yellow flowers, their soft centers attracting insects. The Ocotillo stalks were all greened up with leaves but no grape-like sprigs of  orange blossoms.

My Sunday Times awaited on the front seat of my car. But for a short time I didn’t want to think about the world’s troubles. I wanted only to report on flowers.

It got warmer as I descended the trail. Next stop the Apple Store; I needed a MacBook Air superdrive, had to have one so I could watch movies and listen to music on my new computer, which I’ll admit, I bought because it’s so damn gorgeous.

La Encantada is the fanciest mall in Tucson. The Apple Store was mobbed, no shortage of dollars in that small space. So I proudly swung my small high-tech purchase in its bag on my wrist. I was one of the fortunate ones. I headed over to AJ’s Fine Foods. It was mobbed too. Shelf after well-stocked shelf gleamed with beautiful products for beautiful, or at least rich, people.

A colleague often gets coffee and a muffin at AJ’s on her way to work. I’ve noticed their bag on her desk and wondered how expensive the goodies were. Really not bad, I discovered, the only affordable edibles in the store (I had checked it out after AJ’s opened. When I found a “special” of lobster tails from new Zealand for $49.95 a pound I never returned.)

After chomping down an all-fruit low-fat muffin and a creme brulee decaf iced coffee on my short drive home, I was ready to tackle the Sunday Times. Or so I thought. Afterwards I was planning to see “Happy,” a documentary at our artsy Loft Cinema. (Not for Dan, besides he was resting after his morning bike ride).

Reading the Times, I marked a de Kooning exhibit at MoMa, a Stieglitz exhibit and new galleries on Central Asia at the Met I wanted to see in New York over my Thanksgiving visit. Then came the hard part: Maureen Dowd’s Op-Ed on why Republicans disdain smart people while milking the poor, or yell about “class warfare” as a way for millionaires to pay less taxes. I read about millionaires living on enormous investment income are taxed at 15 percent while most of us are taxed at 35 percent.

I didn’t go see “Happy” and I had a short unhappy glitch last night. But my life is good. It would be nice for everyone to have a chance to smell the roses.

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A tiny taste of paranoia

Posted on September 15, 2011 by sheilawill

A salted caramel mocha iced frappe at Starbucks sounded so yummy. When Julie and I go for our twice weekly early morning power walks we both always have the same thing — a grande iced coffee with soy milk, unsweetened please. Maybe it was time to shake things up a bit?

Salted caramel is the new heath bar crunch. It’s everywhere. I’m happy to report that BTO Yogurt even has the hip new flavor. The onslaught of college girls must like it too. But I digress.

The “new” combo of three of the tastiest flavors on Earth was four bucks. Waiting in line I was tempted. When it was my turn to order I quickly changed my mind, reverting to the usual. But I didn’t keep it to myself.

“Gee, that salted caramel espresso drink really sounds good,” I said to Julie. “But I’ll just have my iced coffee,” I announced, smiling at the cashier.

The Starbucks ingenue had a scrunched-up face, a ponytail pulled too tight and wore glasses (I have nothing against glasses). Instead of telling the mixer-upper guy what I wanted, she left the line of customers and walked over to him. Even more curious, she whispered in his ear. I don’t think he was her boyfriend.

“Why’d she go over there to tell him what I ordered?” I asked Julie, who shrugged. Hmm…this was curious. Was I so bad that she told him about me?

“See that woman who’s complaining about the price of our wowy-wow new salted caramel frappe? Pour a bunch of sugar in her iced coffee although she requested no sweetener,” I imagined her saying. Julie and I walked over to the pick-up counter to get our drinks.

“I’m making you a sample of our new salted caramel mocha espresso frappe,” the young man told us. “I’ll split it in half so you can both have some. How does that sound?”

“Sure,” Julie nodded politely.

“Thanks,” I blurted, waving feebly to the cashier.

“Have an awesome day!” she beseeched us.

Julie and I each walked out with both our hands full. An icy thick coffee drink half filled with whipped cream, drizzled with caramel, in one hand — something totally new — and our usual stimulant in the other hand.

I was flummoxed. What to do with two drinks? We had to stop walking and concentrate. I hadn’t planned to slurp the whipped cream, but I did, every drop of super-caloried goodness.

We resumed our typical fast-paced walktalk. “Did you get brain freeze?” Julie asked. “Yup,” I told her, “I did. This sure is a different kind of day.”

 

 

 

Posted in Bopping Around Tucson, Food/happy hours, Neuroscience needs me | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Desert rain

Posted on September 11, 2011 by sheilawill

So refreshing. Sixty-seven degrees last night with the windows wide open! Riding our bikes head on into puddle dips this morning. Wheeee who! I turned around and did it again. Like the 65-year-old kid that I am. “This is why I live in Tucson,” I yelled to Dan.

We’re verging on the glorious fall/winter weather here when through my entire previous life this would be the time of foreboding. September, the most beautiful month on Mt. Desert Island, where I lived year-round for 25 years, the month of Brook’s birth. I drove into Tucson on Sept. 25 at dusk on her 25th birthday, nine years ago.

“I did it,” sighing to myself, staring at the pinkish-purple-salmon sunset. “Don’t know what I’m going to do now but I did it.”  During these nine years I’ve gone from substitute teaching to teaching Kripalu Danskinetics to transcribing a biography of Khrushchev to full-time teaching at wacky school, to freelance writing and editing, which I still do since my once full-time job as assistant editor of the Arizona Jewish Post was cut to four days a week.

For 11 months out of the year I’m busy living in the Sonora Desert and don’t think much about water. But it’s funny, about a month before returning to my home in Southwest Harbor every July, I begin to long for the ocean. The pull is there, always will be.

We’re considering a trip to San Diego at the end of the month to see old friends and to gaze at the Pacific. “Powerful wet stuff” was a favorite line that my kids and I frequently repeated when they were little, which came from “Voyage of the Dawn treader,” the classic Chronicles of Narnia title by C.S. Lewis.

I hear that the Rillito River is flowing after huge thunderstorms last night. Years ago I watched daredevils in rubber boats and canoes rushing down the usual dry river bed. Crazy young people bitten by the water bug. At any time the water could have disappeared, throwing them for a dangerous loop.

Guess they were taking a chance (there’s always the question, how big a chance do you take?). I’m reminded of the NYC boat captain in the short documentary “Boatlift” I posted on Facebook yesterday from the Teaching Tolerance website. He knew he had to take his boat from the safety of New Jersey to Manhattan on 9/11.

He couldn’t let people suffer if there was anything he could do to stop it, he said. His wife called him a “maniac.” But he had no choice. Don’t look back over your life lamenting that “I should have done this,” the captain said.  “That’s what I tell my children. Do it.”

We make choices moment by moment. I could hop in my car and drive to the rushing Rillito or jump in the pool next door. Whatever else I do, I’ll continue to commemorate the innocent 3,000 who perished on 9/11. I’ll read about them in today’s NYT special section. For today, that’s my choice. Yesterday I read the entire Sept. 12 New Yorker, and was especially struck by George Packer’s “Coming Apart.” No surprise about his theory — reality — that “after 9/11 transfixed America, the country’s problems were left to rot.”

George Bush, with his deer-in-the-headlights lack of insight couldn’t see beyond telling the American people to “go out and shop.” Ten years later, we’re in big trouble because choices were avoided.

To maintain our sanity — at least my own — I take breaks from thinking about the rubble we’re left with. I choose the comfort of water, again and again, the ocean, the waterfalls by the names of the 3,000 at the NYC memorial that opened today, the Rillito River and the pool. Lucky me.

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Long ago and far away: Sept. 11, 2001

Posted on September 10, 2011 by sheilawill

How can I not write about 9/11? My New Yorker magazine arrived in the mail yesterday with its solemn but lovely cover commemorating the tragedy. More security is evident in NYC than any time in the past 10 years. I’m going to spend Thanksgiving with Brook and Gianmarco across the river from NYC, and I’ll probably venture into the city to see the new memorial with its hundred of live oak trees, and one pear tree in the center that was saved from the inferno (sort of like Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree,” which I always disliked).

How can I forget that morning? Here’s my little story for posterity: I was teaching journalism at Mt. Desert Island High School in Maine. I sent a student to do some xeroxing in the library, where the TV was on verifying the recording of a high school basketball game. Ron came running back to class, telling us “there’s been an accident, a plane flew into the World Trade Center!”

“That’s no accident,” I said. “Let’s go.” The 12 of us were the first ones to descend on the library. We stood frozen in front of the television screen. The second plane had just hit, and the commentator was talking about an all-out attack on the White House, the Capital, and who knew where else.

Other students and teachers streamed into the library for what turned out to be an all-day vigil. Then it hit me. Is Brook okay? She worked in Manhattan. It took her around three hours to get to a pay phone (cell phones weren’t working) after standing in a long line. “I’m alright mom, I’m alright,” she gushed.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani got on TV to exhort everyone to leave the city. Brook and her boyfriend walked the 10 miles or so to Astoria, Queens. Across bridges out of the city, others joined the throng leaving the city. Many were covered with dust, or ashes I guess, from the explosion.

Brook told me about shoe stores making sneakers available to women walking in heels, shop owner not letting her pay for coffee. If I recall correctly, her subway was just coming above ground as the second plane hit, and a preacher in her car became hysterical, along with others.

Today, 10 years later less a day, we passed about 150 bikers decked out in American flags getting ready to parade around Tucson. We were on our way back from sharing a humungous cinnamon roll at Gus Balon’s (although I’ve lived in Tucson for nine years I’d never been there, which I can’t believe).

It’s a third-generation-run Tucson establishment. Besides the prompt and friendly service, cleanliness of the place, eggs that tasted like they were just hatched in the backyard, I was impressed by how the owners treat their employees. They get a three-day weekend every six weeks, the month of July off and two weeks at Christmas, four days at Thanksgiving as well as all the major holidays, plus the restaurant is closed on Sundays. No milking every last ounce out of people. A wonderful example of sharing the business’s success.

I’ll never forget seeing the giant abyss in NYC in October 2001, which was once the World Trade Center. The fearful aftermath of that horrendous event shaped the next decade in this country. Fear, unnecessary wars, fear, economic disaster, and more fear.

But today, I chose to eat a giant cinnamon roll, appreciate biker guys who held the door open for us at Gus Balon’s, chat with the cheerful wait staff who kept filling our coffee cups. Now that’s an American story that needs to be retold.

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Teach your children well

Posted on September 5, 2011 by sheilawill

I just couldn’t do it. Teaching seems like the job from hell these days. Bullying, test scores, no child left a dime, school prayer, and now technology as GOD. And I’m not a luddite.

It all seems so sensible, smaller classes make a big difference. But what school district has any money, especially in Arizona, where the way to trim budgets is to cut education, get rid of teachers. Some districts are putting everything they have into technology.

According to “In Classroom of Future, High Technology but Stagnant Grades” (see link above), many studies found that “technology has helped individual classrooms, schools or districts.” Writing scores improved for eighth-graders in Maine after they were all issued laptops. But the statistics are far from conclusive.

To me, it’s all about recognizing every student’s learning styles and strengths. I recall some years ago when the whole language/phonics debate raged. My sister-in-law, Sandra Wilensky, a terrific first grade teacher and later a tireless principal in Acton, Mass., told me she could teach any child to read. The key, she said, was to use whatever techniques, or combination thereof, worked for each child.

The same is true today for technology vs. paper and pencil learning. Do what works for each student. I remember having 100 students in my five high school U.S. history classes, and that’s a downright luxury compared to classes with 40 kids in them these days.

When I was a young, enthusiastic teacher back in the late ’70s, I gave my students writing assignments, which was unheard of at the time. They complained: “This isn’t English class, you know.”

I gave fewer and fewer written assignments as I got older, as I had two children,  because I didn’t want to stay up till 3 a.m. grading papers. How can teachers today engage students in real education when they have such overloaded classrooms? Rote memorization for meaningless test scores — not for understanding — is about all they can do.

Larry Cuban, an education professor emeritus at Stanford, says that “research showed that student performance did not improve significantly until classes fell under roughly 15 students, and did not get much worse unless they rose above 30.”

Maybe school administrators magically believe that technology will help teachers deal with unwieldy class size. In Chandler, Arizona, The Kyrene School District has spent a fortune on laptops. Maybe it’ll help and maybe it won’t. I’ll admit that for the most part the jury is still out.

Amy Furman, a teacher at Aprende Middle School in the Kyrene district, says, “I start with pens and pencils” but computers help students with the editing process. And many students prefer working  on laptops. For one thing, it’s what they’re used to in everyday life.

I can’t help feeling sympathetic toward Erin Kirchoff, president of the Kyrene teachers’ association. Teachers in Arizona must purchase their own tissues, pencils and paper, on top of traditional personal spending on supplementary books.

Questioning the large technology expenditures in her district, Kirchoff’s plea is, “Give me Kleenex, Kleenex, Kleenex!”

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Imagine “Another Earth”

Posted on September 3, 2011 by sheilawill

Last night we were pleased to see an original movie, not the same old chasing around to see if the couple stays together in the end.  Here’s the deal — Earth 2 is a mirror-image planet inhabited by all the same people as our Earth, living better or worse lives than those of us on Earth 1 (or Earth 2 to the other mirror-image earthlings). You get the picture, right?

I always check out reviews on Rottentomatoes.com before heading over to the El Con Cinemas. Ratings weren’t incredibly high for “Another Earth,” which opened nationwide on Wednesday, but they were a lot higher than for “Spy Kids 4” or even the perennial romance offering of “One Day.” I’ll confess to having different tastes than mainstream moviegoers (thank the universe). I’m a bit of a movie whore and will go to anything that isn’t poopy-joke stupid or boringly violent. Dan won’t see bio-pics (he walked to the Loft for a 10 p.m. showing of “Troll Hunter” a few weeks ago).

In a review of “Another Earth” the Houston Chronicle writer pondered this question: If there were two Earths how were the tides affected? A valid question. But in this case thinking may be harmful.

Suspend belief! “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” or some facsimile thereof, said Albert Einstein.  I recall nervous parents of 10-year-olds coming into my children’s bookstore, Oz Books, to discuss their kids’ overriding interest in fantasy or sci-fi genres.

“Will they ever learn anything if they never read nonfiction?” parents fearfully asked. I quoted Einsten and tried to explain that it’s imaginative thinking that raises entrepreneurs (what did Steve Jobs read as a kid, anybody know?), scientists, interesting people. Not facts, at in my book. Facts come from research, another valuable tool, but save it for grad school or later (I’m being a little facetious.)

Back to “Another Earth.” I was enthralled. Everywhere that gorgeous, blonde Rhoda went she saw Earth 2 overhead. In fact, it got her into a whole lot of trouble as a teen preparing to go to MIT. Not only Rhoda, but everything about the film was lovely to watch. I liked the music by a group called Fall on Your Sword. (Anybody ever heard of them?)

The New Yorker reviewer, I think it was David Denby, wrote that if you could figure out the ending of “Another Earth” “you should get a refund.” Oh comon’ David. Contemplating the options makes for more fun.

For yet more fun, check out Whatever…, science fiction writer John Scalzi’s blog. Meanwhile, consider this: There’s a time for thinking and a time for imagining.

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