A sobering video, made by the brother of the assistant camp director I worked with this past summer:


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3669658201853703248&hl=en


I went back up to the New York area for a visit this past weekend, and realized that no one I talked with can truly wrap their head around the scale of the neglect and the blight of once-full homes and local businesses. Telling a New Yorker to imagine Manhattan laid to waste, except for the lower tip of the island, just doesn't cut it.

A good friend of mine who relocated to Astoria after a long hard road following the evacuation of her home on Magazine Street here heard me talking about all the paradoxes involved in living down here now and asked me about the extent of my depression. I told her it was also tied up in discovering an identity for myself outside of raising my son full-time now that he is attending school for most of the day (it's week three and he seems to be enjoying himself much better). The struggle is ongoing (see previous posts), and all it means is that I will be figuring it all out in time, like I always have. There's a wonderful magnet my in-laws have on their fridge of a fellow on the tracks squashed beneath a moving train with the caption, "This Too Shall Pass".

I may have to prop up my hope with a two-by-four right now, but I always keep that magnet in mind.

For this month’s Blogging for Books, write about a time when you either:
learned a harsh life lesson, got punk’d, or simply had someone make an ass of you;
gained a spectacular new insight into life; or
decided to educate yourself about something.

(Because it has been going around in my head quite a bit, this whole education and possible re-education thing I've been grappling with career-wise and kid-wise (this morning, the little guy went bad-crazy when he realized we were headed to the "work school" again. Ding, Ding, ready for week two...), I decided to weigh in on the above Blogging for Books question, the education one in particular. I'm ready for my gift certificate, Mr. DeMille...uh...Allen!)

My dad dates it to when we began to kibitz with some biker dude in standstill traffic, waiting for the blast crews working on the highway to give the all-clear. The dude revealed within the course of our conversation that he was a glassblower. "Or, perhaps it was all those times we took you with us to the Houston Festival," Dad says sometimes, implying I might have been bit by the glass bug through craft-show osmosis.

I myself date it to art history in college.

Plus, the fact that I'm a Sagittarius. And every glassblower does have a bit of a pyromaniac lurking within his/her heart of hearts. Folks born under a fire sign, take heart. Parents of the aforementioned folks, beware.

I hunted down the head of the glass department midway through my first semester of art school, pinned him down and told him the preliminary meeting for the beginning hot glass course held between the two semesters would exclude the entire freshman class, since it was scheduled to be right in the middle of the art history survey course. So the situation was remedied quickly, because the department head needed fresh bodies for the continued operations of the undergraduate program. Not quickly enough, as it turned out, because half of the expected people clamoring for spots in the class showed up and were signed up on the spot, myself among them.

I learned, in six weeks of working with hot glass, how to gather it out of a 2000 degree furnace on the end of a steel pipe without frying my hands. I learned never to touch any glass in the hot shop with my bare hands - I figured out the hard way that even though it may not look hot, it can be hot. I learned to constantly turn the hot glass on the end of a pipe, or else it would fall right off. I learned how to grind and polish glass with diamond tools, silicon grits, grinding belts, and loads of water. I learned, after accidentally setting myself on fire, where the fire blanket was. An instructor later joked that it was because of me that the hot shop finally received a shower, and that my name would be engraved on it.

After six weeks, I learned that six weeks wasn't enough for me. I sneaked into the hot shop whenever I could, with a fellow beginning class alumnus in tow. We took hold of open glassblowing slots and made the most of them. When the time came, I declared glass as my major.

I loved my experiences up on the fourth floor of the industrial building in which the glass department was housed. The set-up of the whole program was communal, encouraging a closeness between graduates and undergraduates. I had the perfect glass blowing partner for a couple of years and was somewhat depressed when she graduated the year before I did. I got a kick out of the visiting artists that paraded through the halls like the art stars half of them were. I even attended some summer programs.

And then, in my last year, a certain decline occurred. I received a fellowship to a glass studio in New Jersey for three months, but the only time they could have me come was in my final semester of college. I cried at the injustice of the timing and stayed in school to get my degree. Partner-less, and expected to develop a vision that would lead to the start of a strong portfolio that could well catapult me to an art glass career, I stumbled a bit towards the glass goal, suddenly realizing there was more to life than glass. It took another six years after graduation for that realization to sink in.

I date the beginning of the end to my failure to get into a graduate-level glass program. I set myself up for it - I only applied to two schools. A graduate-student friend said to me, "Oh, but life gets in the way if you put off graduate school. You should have applied to more schools." I realized, when she said that, that I wanted life to get in the way.

So I have that piece of paper, that degree. I have my college memories and my struggles afterward with the real world and trying to fit glasswork into it somehow. I have my glass tools, my blowpipes, and many things around the house that are packed away so that my preschool-age son doesn't get to them. But I also have this final thing that I have learned.

Glass never loved me back. And I gave a lot of my life to it. I just wasn't cut out to be married to it, I guess. What I really loved were the people I met, the experiences surrounding the atmosphere of the excellent program that was set up at the art school I attended. It was all a great glorious rush, and it seems to have had its day.

Funny how such a thing helped teach me so much about life and the people in it.

So how did I observe the Katrina Yahrzeit?

I did my best to avoid any formal ceremonies, opting to take my son to school (he started on Monday, and he's still not sure about the whole Montessori thing. I could see him on the first day wandering through the classroom and looking for the cars and trucks that weren't there. He then asked me on Tuesday morning why we were going to the "work school".) and then walking my dog with Edie and her two dogs on the streetcar tracks near her house. Since the tracks will be devoid of streetcars until sometime next year, walking the dogs on the wide neutral ground (N'awlins for "median" for those not in the know) is a good activity and a good exercise opportunity.

As it happened, we found the ceremonies anyway, at the foot of Carrollton Avenue. A Katrina memorial fountain was being dedicated, something of an aptly twisted thing of European beauty sitting right near a city bus turnaround. An all-black metallic fountain, the topper was an urn with three faces. Just what this city needs - a water feature in remembrance of a flood. A Janus-headed urn trying to catch the overflow and failing, not unlike all levels of government involved in the whole fiasco that has been this past year since the storm blew through.

And then we were all keeping an eye out for Ernesto and willing it not to come this way. It better not, was the general consensus. It wouldn't dare. Hell, our mayor still doesn't have a recovery plan in effect. There can't be another major storm here unless that happens.

Our plans are to head to Baton Rouge, since Dan's workplace is there. We half-joked that if the storm were to head our way, the Labor Day road trip we have in the works would simply be an evacuation vacation with both our cars on the road and our pets as passengers as well. I told Dan about a T-shirt I'd seen recently - a big hurricane is bordered by the slogan "Go With the Contraflow!" He said we'd take the West Bank Expressway instead of I-10, effectively going south and west to go west-northwest. Whatever will get us out of the city quicker.

The anniversary reared its head in other ways. A father picking up his child from school told me his daughter had been afraid to go this year, because this time last year, there was school in session for a week, and then the storm and its aftermath came. See what can happen if you go to school, kids? A year later and everyone still needs a sanity check in one way or another.

The night of the 29th, I called my parents to wish them a happy belated wedding anniversary, since the 27th had come and gone. Of course my mom brought up that the 29th was a different sort of anniversary! I thought of the dinner plans I had tried to make at any one of the restaurants participating in the Restaurants for Relief program, only to find that most of them were booked. I caught a teeny bit of a Katrina program later that night only because it featured Leah Chase in one segment. Dan and I had been curious about why Dooky Chase's restaurant on Orleans Avenue hadn't reopened by midsummer as was promised by Leah herself at the JazzFest. We tried to make reservations there last week and found that it hadn't reopened yet. Turns out the building had only recently been cleared for mold remediation services, so the renovations were now moving forward. Now that's uplifting news.

I popped into my nearby needlework shop the next day and overheard the shop ladies chewing the fat on Spike Lee's Katrina documentary - specifically, Barbara Bush's crass comments about the evacuees that were moved to Houston's Astrodome after their Superdome ordeal, among other ordeals. It made me so glad they shut off our cable recently.

As far as this yahrzeit being a media event, I have to credit Andrei Codrescu for articulating what I'm feeling way better than I even knew:

One year after Katrina, we are no longer photogenic. The cameras focus on narrow slices of rebuilding, which is all that fits within the lens. If you've been looking at the city for a year, things look better. Most of the flooded cars packed in the neutral grounds and under freeway overpasses are gone. There is no debris in places most visible to motorists. There are trailers and gutted houses in every wasted neighborhood. If you look only at the swarms of life in isolated spots, you might feel optimism, but if you look at what's around these spots, you might feel dread instead. Yes, there is a recovery going on, but there is also a pervasive depression. The media isn't equipped to deal with both hope and despair; it can only show and tell one story at a time. The Gray Zone where we live is beyond its power.

In New Orleans, nothing is what it seems. People believe things they don't say and say things they don't believe. To the media, we are recovering. To ourselves, we are sinking. Our heavily mediated and heavily medicated city is generating paradoxes, not certainties.

I wanted to have a part of this blog be a photographic response to recovery. That explains "The Line" part of my title. The idea was to go straight to the edges of the floodwater lines, from the levee breaches to the neighborhoods that got a foot or so. What I saw my first day here, and what I continue to catch glimpses of when I drive about town, are the neighborhoods that still look like hell after all this time. These wide swaths of abandoned homes and buildings still scare me and sadden me in my heart of hearts. I agree with Codrescu: how can a camera lens capture all of this madness? A picture is something one can walk away from very easily - but there is a deeper feeling of exhaustion and depression that cannot envelop the viewer through a photograph. I find it a tad easier to write about it, but I know eventually I will have to face what I fear. It is so much easier to think in the abstract that a roof and material possessions are not very important, but there is still a certain mourning for them, too, when they actually are lost to the elements. It takes a very long time to get over that.

The lessons of this whole debacle are being learned the hard way. Really, if all of us in this country truly learned anything, we would be talking about restoring the wetlands right now instead of kvetching over nonexistent rebuilding master plans. No one in a position to do so wants to make the hard decisions concerning the fate of this place.

We are in limbo. A bad kind of limbo. Dante would have called it purgatory.

It's the little things that can get to you sometimes.

Driving down the street yesterday, I took a good look around and thought about all the businesses that are gone and the ones that sprouted up in their places, and about all the places that have hung on by their fingernails or have thrived for many years. Places where, ten years ago, there were thrift stores, there are now renovated malls or simply properties that have been superficially spruced up and are waiting for someone to sign a lease. Just the usual stuff that happens on any retail street in this country.

I stopped at a traffic light and checked out the city bus that was waiting at the opposite corner for the light to change. It wasn't a New Orleans RTA bus, it was a SEPTA bus from Philadelphia. The symbols of its former city were wiped out as much as they could be on short notice, but the destination on the bus' marquee was one for the northeastern part of the country. Guess it couldn't be reprogrammed for this city. Oh, well, it's still taking people from place to place here...something that this town still needs.

I thought about a former coworker and acquaintance I ran into at the grocery store the other day, a fellow who I would have loved to talk to more, but my son's insistence that we drive the shopping cart truck around trumped that impulse. The guy had been a bit aimless when I last worked with him four years ago, except for the burning need he had to finish college. Right now, he's got a master's under his belt and is currently working with someone I had some conflicts with when I first came down here to work. I found myself wishing that with all the therapy I've had over the years, I wish someone had really taught me how best to forgive. My thoughts about past slights on me, real and imagined, might well have colored my conversation with this acquaintance when I heard who he was working with now. It startled me, as it always does, to think that some feelings can burn for decades, usually the bad ones.

I'm really happy for my former coworker, though. He put in the hard work and made it!

Which is what we all need to do down here, despite the way in which our mayor runs his mouth. Bashing the reconstructions and reimaginings of Ground Zero isn't going to help rebuild this city any faster or better. And picking at all the ways in which this city isn't measuring up to anyone's nostalgic or futuristic visions won't help, either. The past always looks better in hindsight, and it's so much better to be working away towards a better future with hands and heart rather than sitting around and speculating with one's brain - at least, not too much speculating!

Of course, this is always so much better to say than to do. I have to catch myself from looking at the little things and judging by those, case in point being a brochure that Tulane University sent out recently. The whole thing touts Tulane's and New Orleans' recovery and resurgence, and features an aerial shot just inside the brochure's cover of Tulane's main buildings on St Charles Avenue. The picture reveals some grand old buildings situated on a green lawn, typical of most college campuses that have been around since the nineteenth century, truly a reassuring vision. I have to constantly restrain myself from looking for the details that signify hurricane damage, however: roof slates/tiles/shingles missing, windows broken on the upper floors of buildings, missing trees or shrubs. Despite some flooding in the university area (and it was well known locally as a floodplain in any kind of substantial rain), the place is still there, and students are coming back.

A common problem amongst the New Orleans based universities now is the difficulty in recruiting students, especially for the NCAA sports teams. Coaches' complaints are that the city is coming back, but all the parents have to see is one report on CNN or the national news about the slow pace of recovery and the potential student passes on coming down. The numbers have gone down for registration of kids at the religious school where I will be teaching once a week, to the point where there is some speculation into combining some grade levels, a move no one wants to take. It's miraculous that the religious school is in session, period.

But it is one little thing that got to me the most. I was able to attend Friday night services at a local synagogue, and the rabbi there addressed the fact that Katrina's anniversary, a yahrzeit (day of remembrance), was coming up. Instead of sermonizing about it, he opened up discussion to us all in assembly as to what good had come out of the storm and its aftermath. People talked of stronger connections with neighbors who had decided to stay and rebuild. One man said not only did he get a brand new downstairs in his house (!), he was also heartened by the out- pouring of support and tzedakah (charity) from all levels of the national and international Jewish community towards Katrina survivors and evacuees. People seemed to reconnect with others from being housed elsewhere when their properties and lives were flooded out or otherwise destroyed. I recalled how many people up in New York were concerned about Dan and I and our connections here: they had a need to help in whatever way they could.

I then realized that I've been in mourning all this past year, since the storm hit. This is the one place I have always considered to be my home, the place where I first started to live life truly apart from my parents. In a sense, around this time last year, I went through about a week of intense sorrow for the city and our friends here, culminating in my refusal to watch, see, or read any more about the tragic goings-on. Things have been tougher and easier since then, as I guess all mourning periods are. Which is why it is fitting for me seeing the large memorial stone that has been erected in the Ninth Ward for Katrina's victims. It's not an end, but a beginning.

The twenty-ninth is coming, complete with a bell-ringing ceremony and a memorial visit from our president. I have to sit on my hands so that I won't type what I really think about his presence here... but for all of us to move on, we need to let that kind of thinking go.

Maybe my forgiveness of others is beginning as well.

I hope so.

Summertime is winding down, though it certainly doesn't feel like it in this area.

I've returned home from some hot but dry days out in No-Cal to muggy and sweaty days here at the mouth of the Mississippi. My son complained for the first few days that he was hot and could we visit the doctor, please? In New York, I have experienced days when it was too cold to take my little guy out, and here, now, there are days when it is too hot to go out... unless you do it at the crack of dawn. Even at night, though, it can be hot. We got in from California late at night and it was eighty degrees and muggy out. At least the humidity is supposed to be good for the skin.

According to the EPA (at least, as reported on the front page of the Times-Pic), environmentally speaking, the greater NOLA area is fine as well. No ill-effects from toxic floodwaters or, say, the oil spill from tanks in St Bernard parish are to be expected in the short or long run. According to a recent court ruling, no payments from insurance companies related to damages incurred from storm surges can be expected, either. All I could think of with the court ruling was an anecdote from an essay by columnist Chris Rose about the dejection and sudden elation of some local homeowners:

Some friends of mine were clearing out their belongings from their home in the Fontainebleau area and were going through the muddle of despair that attends the realization that you were insured out the wazoo for a hurricane, but all you got was flood damage... As they pondered this dismal circumstance in the street, their roof collapsed. Just like that. It must have suffered some sort of structural or rain-related stress from the storm and then, two weeks later, it manifested itself in total collapse...realizing their home now qualified for a homeowner's claim, they jumped up and down and high-fived each other and yelled:"The roof collapsed! The roof collapsed!"

Our home is destroyed. Oh, happy day. I submit there's something not right there.

I say, Damn Right, Mr Rose. I traveled away from the insanity for a week and a half, and here I am back in the middle. Actually, I got thrust right back into it at the San Jose airport, when the woman at the ticket counter took one look at my address and saw I was going back to the city where she was raised and still considered it to be home, though she lives in Burlingame. She took her son back to the city for this past Mardi Gras, and we chatted about that a bit, and about a relative of hers having to dock his boat on his roof when he checked out what was left of his property.

I picked up a copy of Texas Monthly at the Houston airport where I made our connecting flight and read an interview with Joe Allbaugh, former Dubya campaign manager from his governor and early presidential days and FEMA director from 2001-2003. The man had advocated keeping FEMA separate from the Department of Homeland Security for some big reasons:

1) The need for direct dialogue with the commander-in-chief, which is what Michael "Brownie" Brown didn't have.
2) The need for one person, and only one, to be accountable, rather than the roving circus of administrators and military personnel that kept proclaiming reponsibility and then attempting to do something. Allbaugh partially blames Congress for sticking FEMA in with Homeland Security.

And (drum roll, please) the ones that bear the biggest responsibility in rebuilding after Katrina and Rita are - SURPRISE - the locals...

I think there are too many parochial interests getting in the way of the global picture. Neither New Orleans nor the state of Louisiana has crafted a plan. It shouldn't have been a surprise that the levees were going to fail. Everyone knew they were only built to (sustain) a category 3 (storm). James Lee Witt had tried to engage New Orleans in an exercise (to test the city's disaster preparedness). I tried to engage New Orleans in an exercise. It was all blown off. City officials just weren't interested...Everyone has a piece of that pie. Citizens even have some responsibility. It's too easy to hope that the state, local, and federal governments are going to solve every problem out there. That's not realistic. We have to do a better job as individuals to be prepared for the unexpected. We haven't done a very good job of it in this country.

And yet, a recent survey said that one out of every four people living in a high-risk area for hurricanes would choose to stay behind in the event of an evacuation situation. The local government balked at a plan that would accept federal government aid for the city provided everyone in the city who is rebuilding complies with government guidelines for elevating the homes in which they will reside; it was described by local officials as being "blackmail" on the part of the federal government towards New Orleans. That same attitude prevailed months ago when I attended the Andres Duany meeting in Chalmette concerning possible plans for St Bernard, plans that condemned slab housing and caused most of the assembled audience to groan in frustration. How dare anyone outside of this area tell someone who has lost everything how to rebuild? Fix the levees first! Bring back the wetlands! Then we can rebuild any old way we damn please! That's where this whole area needs the help in order to weather a really Big One that might be coming our way, right?

God, did I need a break from all this.

I will be heading into another school year courtesy of my son's beginning Montessori pre-K, however, and I am looking to get involved some. There is a building shuffle going on, as certain grades are now being sent to different school campuses that housed, in some cases, completely different Orleans parish schools before the storm. Parents are sorely needed to help with the move, and I hope to help out a bit with it tomorrow. In talking with more parents at yet another birthday party for a friend of my son's, the general attitude about the remnants of the parish school system is still that of "wait-and-see". Most parents are sticking with the private schools; if it ain't broke, and the kids are doing well, why try to fix or change it? I seem to be a bit of the maverick who's willing to take a chance. What the hell, huh?

I returned to the local park to walk my dog, and the fountain was up and operating, which wasn't too much of a surprise, since that had happened before I left for the Left Coast. The pleasant change this time, though, was that the grass was finally mowed after a couple of months of seeing some dogs disappear into the long, scraggly-looking grass. New beginnings, maybe. Room for things to grow.

Yeah, maybe Allbaugh is a little bit right. It is all, ultimately, up to the locals as to whether this place lives or dies. I vote for the life support.

I also vote for eating out on August 29, that fateful day when the storm made landfall. Check out www.strength.org for a restaurant participating in Restaurants for Relief in your area, make your reservations ASAP and help contribute to Gulf Coast relief. It's a better way to mark such a day than to sit on your butt and watch all the innumerable programs that will be trotted out for the anniversary. Plus, you can do it with friends!

Bon appetit!

Why, oh why does stuff happen when I come out to visit the in-laws?

One of the last times my son and I were out here on the Left Coast, the big Northeast blackout happened out in...well, the northeast, forcing my husband to walk all the way home to central Queens from the Madison Square Park area in Manhattan. Another time, when I was out here, my husband seriously underestimated how much stuff we had when we moved down the road from one apartment to another, and ended up taking the rest of a work week off to pack and move all the smaller stuff back and forth in our car all by himself.

And now these terrorist yutzes who were just days away from blowing up a number of airplanes using basic household chemistry (the Anarchist Cookbook, anyone? Or maybe Die Hard With A Vengeance...). They have now become instrumental in a new sort of prohibition, one that might have made Carry Nation proud. No liquids or gels allowed in airports past security checkpoints. That means I've got to leave the big bottle of Garnier Fructis I got recently with my in-laws, probably. For whatever reason, I find it tough to locate a bottle of that particular type of shampoo in New Orleans. Maybe I'm just going to the wrong places to get it, but the family size of shampoo would have lasted me a while.

The only other thought that comes to mind is a plot from Jack Nicholson's Joker in Batman - a combination of beauty products that, when used all together, cause people to drop dead from the effects of Smilex. Wouldn't it be lovely to see supermodels and celebrities scared right out of their makeup? It might be funny if it weren't so frightening.

And so I continue on out here in Northern California, as ambassador for the main attraction: my three year old son. My duties as ambassador are as follows:

- I must be present so that the grandparents of said son can hand him over to me if he is getting difficult. Difficult is defined as a number of things: poopy pants that need to be changed, frustrations over said son's lack of appetite, frustrations over the young 'un's reluctance to conform to a planned day's activities, and grandparental reluctance to deal with the kid when he wakes up at the crack of dawn.

- I must accompany said son on airline flights to and from the grandparents' domain, braving all airport security checkpoints and the screeners who may call the toxicity of my son's Pull-Up pants' contents into question as a security risk, yanking the child through all airport hurdles while waiting on a connecting flight, and, above all, I should NEVER, at any time, expect the kid to fall asleep on the plane. People think I'm kidding when I say this. After three-plus years of travel with a young infant/toddler, any rest from him is a cherished gift.

- I must leave any normal ideas of vacationing far behind me. My husband has quit saying, "Enjoy your vacation," to me when I embark on these trips, and wisely so. The only vacation I have here is when I don't have to walk my dog or clean out my cats' litter boxes. Anything else is a bonus. Dan usually has to work, so he can't accompany me on these trips. I also get the feeling he doesn't want to come, after having grown up with his parents for eighteen-plus years. His parents are sweethearts, but we also have to brave their blatant hints that sure, my husband can find a long-term job in Silicon Valley that can support us, too... and then we can all live close by! All I picture from here on out with that scenario is my mother-in-law as Marie Barone, letting herself in our place whenever she feels like. Much as I love my in-laws, it's also nice to have extended breaks from them- namely, our lives, such as they are.

And so I travel here fairly regularly and brave the comments, the kvetching about everything under the sun, and all other family quirks because they do love us and want to see their grandson. Plus, it is fun, overall. There is great effort put into finding places for the little guy to go - local parenting magazines are searched for daily kid-friendly activities, a selection of toys is put out for the little guy, videos are borrowed from the library for his viewing pleasure, and standby attractions are always good places to go. And my son gets to get with Grandma and Grandpa for up to two weeks.

Sure, the stuff will happen while I'm out here, because the rest of the world doesn't take a chill pill whenever I go off, although the camp where I worked did end for this summer. But what if there were at least one week when everybody took a break? Among the possible happenings:

- The NOPD and the Louisiana National Guard could let down their guard for a few days, as all criminal activity will have ceased.

- All these terrorist organizations will use their Rare Flyer miles to head for, say, someplace in Polynesia, have a grand old time, and actually return from their vacations without hurting another person in any way.

- My in-laws' talk about the terrorist doings will cease to be, and my son won't get upset about the "bad news", as he calls it.

It is nice to take a break from a mostly ruined city, from all the talk of rebirth and the ways in which the actions fall short of that talk. Ever the optimist, my mother-in-law has said that the city may well be waiting for the right moment to declare eminent domain over large unclaimed flooded parts of the city, and then to redevelop those sites as the city sees fit. I hope she's wrong, but chances are, she's on the mark. I still have to laugh at the concept of building some high rise condos in the Broadmoor, Gentilly, or Ninth Ward neighborhoods, though. If Louisiana's coastline continues to erode at an unchecked pace, those high-rises will be surrounded by waterfront property that will also be in the lower floors of the buildings. Prime real estate, indeed.

As it is, I get so angry trying to discuss the political and law enforcement situation to my in-laws. I hear what is coming out of my mouth and I sound as though I am insane. Describing an ineffectual court system and a bevy of opportunistic politicos that have not changed their ways - and then trying to hold my head up high and say that this is my home - well, it is to laugh and to cry all at once. I hate that this summer has had the aura of New Orleanians feeling they can make it through all the problems if the area emerges from this hurricane season unscathed. The people who care about this city, whose lives as they know it would not exist without it, need to just get off their duffs or move on. Granted, there is a natural inertia that comes with sweltering NOLA heat, but come on.

Must stop on this train of thought before I really bust a gut.

Know what helps? Cross-stitching and making stuff in the kitchen. I've been cross-stitching fleurs-de-lis in loads of colors, all from a pattern I purchased at a place down the street and around the corner a bit from my home. Easy to carry along with me in my purse and whip out whenever I have the time. As for the cooking, I have a nice slice of a blackberry-strawberry crumb tart waiting for me, and I'd better get to it.

God, I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be so stereotypically womanly and domestic.

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.
-Edward R. Murrow

I was watching Good Night, and Good Luck last night (God bless Netflix), and I started to put two and two together as far as the inner workings of my brain (yeah, yeah, egotistical, I know...but I do draw the line at contemplating my navel.). It seems to take longer to do so as I get older, but anyhoo...

I guess I got to the heart of my ambivalent feelings towards becoming a teacher in the past week or so. The ban on ghost stories came flying back into my face once Maccabiah week began at camp. The camp director said in a staff meeting some things to the effect that kids must get used to the idea that we can't win 'em all in this life, and that the games all the campers would play over the next few days were about fun and good sportsmanship rather than life or death. I mentioned to a fellow counselor that we can't scare the kids with ghost stories, but we can expose them to the agony of defeat. It occurred to me then that the reason for ghost stories is to present us all with a warm-up for a truly subversive activity - that of facing our fears and, in so doing, overcoming them. To present our kids with competitive situations minus that sense of fear, the readiness for it, the strategies that allow us to live and even thrive another day once the fears and the losses are faced...well, it makes the defeats that inevitably happen so much more distressing and tougher to overcome.

Which is why Ed Murrow's willingness to face McCarthy's Communist witch hunting head-on, and the behind-the-scenes support he received, really spoke to me in the movie. At a time when any "red" activities in anyone's background could break their lives, even through association with relatives or friends who might have had any Communist sympathies, no matter how miniscule, one man risked government persecution and corporate sponsorship to examine with microscopic, eloquent clarity how one man's claims and lust for power could wield such power over the American public. Good Night does a fantastic job of showing in subtle and overt ways the pressure cooker Murrow, producer Fred Friendly, and the others who worked with them were stuck in.

What makes that pressure cooker in any way relevant to me? Kids, by their very natures, are inquisitive, experimenting beings. It's the way they learn about the world. Parents, caregivers, and teachers are charged with channeling such questioning and experimentation in socially acceptable ways - it's okay to ask, so long as it is of relevance to the tasks at hand; it's okay to experiment in a controlled environment; it's all right to compete and to aspire, so long as the rules are understood.

The question for me, if I choose the teaching path, is, is it acceptable to me to live with a certain amount of what on good days is a paradox, and on bad days is hypocrisy? I qualify the controlled exploration contradiction with positive and negative connotations simply because in the past seven weeks of camp, I have had great days and days when I want the good Lord to stop the world because I want to get off it in a mad hurry. I have had days when I think the people I work with and the supervision I have is great and days when I could give them all a kick in the pants for one reason or another. A recent book I read by Esme Raji Codell, entitled Educating Esme, recounts her first year teaching in diary entries that don't hold much back. She struggled, too, with kids in her class while doing one heck of a job in getting them interested in learning about basic subjects in school and life outside of the classroom ( for more on her continuing life and ideas, check out www.planetesme.com - I highly recommend it), and, at the same time, tussling with the administrators at her school over big and small matters. Some of the administrative struggles were truly ludicrous, such as the one over why the kids called her Madame Esme rather than Ms Codell. Like that is really going to mess with kids' minds.

What messes with my mind now more than ever is that if I choose the teaching path, the stakes are higher. Working as a glassblower before all this... well, it was about manipulating the material over and over again in the same way, and then selling the product and managing the day to day stuff that came with that. I wonder now how I could ever have taken that so seriously, other than that I was determined to make it a go of making a living doing glasswork. Teaching these days is more of a calling now than ever before, largely because the pay is godawful, for the most part. The particular circumstances of my geographical surroundings also require that those taking on a teaching position down here must have a certain amount of missionary zeal (not necessarily "I'm going to teach these kids if it kills us all"; more like, "I'm going to teach as though what happened last August has made us all stronger and more respectful of nature.") and the strength to bear with an organization or two or three or four or six or twenty-some-odd or more in chaos. If you take the job and then decide to shove it, that is one tough mother of a decision you have just made. Have you opted out for a better job situation, or have you abandoned a struggling school system to a lesser fate... in effect, have you left needy children behind?

Woo-hah. Welcome to the rock and a hard place that is now the teaching profession. Post-Katrina greater New Orleans has simply added recovery trials and tribulations to the huge pyre that represents a national problem that has to be addressed, and soon. Our little ruined corner of the world gets attention on this front simply because it is perceived as having a clean slate on which to inscribe a new and better educational model. And, as I have detailed in previous posts, three different organizations/business models in charge of a system that was in trouble well before the storm adds up to my two cents on that supposed clean slate: Yeah, Right.

And I am thinking about all this because, though I have had plenty of days where I can truly understand why some animals eat their young, I must say that, overall, I've enjoyed the camp counselor thing enough to where I am seriously considering full-time teaching. I've been so immersed in the kid universe that hearing information about a kid and his wedgie from the kid's mouth doesn't faze me much at all. With some exceptions, the majority of the kids I've worked with come in with an open mind and a willingness to take on most anything. Most would argue that we had a really tough group of kids behaviorally throughout the whole summer, but things actually got better as we went along.

And after three-plus years of rearing a young 'un to the entry point of his formal learning years, it might be time for a different challenge for me. My bone to pick, that whole horror and humiliation juggling thing, might well be a good starting point. And one of many things I've learned myself, working with such characters, is that you never know what their brains will absorb and how a teaching will manifest itself in a child's life.

Now if only that money thing could be adequately and effectively addressed. Teacher's unions don't really seem to be cutting it. Concern for the kids is holding many teachers hostage, using their goodwill against them, and it is at cross-purposes to formal education as a whole. Yeah, kids will suffer if there aren't good teachers for them. Kids will also suffer if the good teachers and their resources are stretched beyond their means.

Whoo, I'm seriously thinking about getting into the middle of this?

Well, I moved back to New Orleans, didn't I? Talk about stretching the good and the resourceful.....

A few weeks ago, I started to write a post, which appears below:


Week Four of counselor-ing has begun, and... I couldn't be there for the first day. My son has received a nice sick jolt in the form of a stomach bug, puking approx. 3-4 times just for my husband's homecoming benefit. C'est la vie, as I am wont to say these days. Fellow counselors didn't anticipate many kids showing up, due to the probability of parents taking advantage of a long weekend presented by the Fourth of July being on a Tuesday. Still and all, I felt bad about having to miss it. A large part of it is missing what the kids will do next - the ones that are my fellow counselors and the group I supervise. Another part of it represents an escape from the grimness of our surroundings.

I find myself very happy that I am not dwelling on the newspaper articles presented daily by the Times-Picayune too much, because the local news has had some unifying themes lately, and not all of them good. The National Guard being called in didn't prevent two more murders from happening not far from where the massacre of the five teenagers occurred, the final straw that caused the Guard to arrive here in the first place. A nearby church burned down, causing the preservationists to have more palpitations about the city's historical structures succumbing to destruction on top of all the other things that happened to the city thus far.

Seeing what I wrote now, I am struck by what hasn't changed, although I am feeling better, thank you. My preservationist palpitation comment was to begin a comment about the double-edged sword that is preservationism. It's all well and good to avoid disasters such as the demolition of places like the old Penn Station, but the other side of the coin is that having a landmark house or owning one in a preservation district means that any improvements or renovations to what you think is your home are decisions that are out of your hands. A fantastic home not far from us on St Charles Avenue is now being demolished, and not because of the storm, but because anyone who has tried to do anything with the house has come under the intense scrutiny of the preservation societies, the little parrot on one's shoulder that carries the real power in what you can say or do about your property. The church that burned had apparently had its parishioners petition the preservationists to have it condemned, and the building itself was not being used much. To be sure, I myself am not sure why the church burned, but I can tell you, seeing that house on St Charles in ruins is awful.

Yes, nobody wants to be told what to do. Good numbers of kids in my camp group are not enthused about being told to quit goofing off. A junior counselor for my group was not enthused about being told to shape up with regards to the kids. I was less than thrilled about having to fill out evaluations for my other counselors' performances, and I'm really not happy that I will most likely be evaluated, too. It all almost makes me want to crawl right back home and retreat into being just mommy once again.

Heck, I still go back and forth internally about whether or not ghost stories are really forms of child abuse. Not that I'm going to run around and tell those stories to all the kids just to stick it to authority, but most of the ghost stories I heard when I was at the age of the oldest campers at the camp where I work were stupid. Anything of that nature nowadays is perceived as child abuse because it could cause the kids to be afraid of going to sleep, afraid of the dark, afraid of enclosed places...and yet I'm counselor to kids who are already aware of kid horror writers such as R.L. Stine, who read Harry Potter novels, and are watching cartoons such as The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Naruto, cartoons that have more scary situations and violence in them than any Monkey's Paw story could ever contain. And I'm not even mentioning the ruined neighborhoods around and about this city. I guess it comes down to a question of parental control. Most parents find it easier to lambaste an educator, counselor, or camp director on these issues than to monitor their own child's TV or book choices. The issue here isn't the kids, but the supervisory accountability.

Which makes me hesitant about going so far as to teach in the schools here. They do need teachers, and my husband has brought up the fact that they would be in the market for an art teacher with a background like mine. I cringe at the politics involved on the administrative level, however, and at the added pressures of parents who decide to involve themselves to a point where they might as well teach the class themselves. With three different operational models in play down here (state recovery, Orleans parish schools, and charter schools) seems to come a whole new rats' nest of politics as usual, on top of it all. All I can say is UGH.

My friend Justine commented on how politics as usual is coming into play in local government here, too. A recent public meeting with her city council representative also featured a lawyer that has been prominent in city politics, a man who called on everyone at the meeting to attend civil and criminal court proceedings and observe the judges at work so that the judges will know they are accountable to the public at all times on the job. Granted, the judges and the nice breaks they have been taking for classes they barely attend or have already received credit for at conferences in places like Jamaica have been in the news, but boy, it all adds up to how little things have changed in the political landscape here. Our esteemed mayor has spent very little time in the city since he was elected, too. Maybe he wants to get away from it all. If he really wanted to do that, though, he should have dropped out of the elections. Eventually he will have to return and to do some work in the public eye.

Eventually I will have to as well... beyond this summer, that is. Get a job. Do something outside of my house and my family, much as I love 'em all. If accountability is the price I have to pay, well, so be it. Jury's still out on whether or not it is worth it for me to be accountable to higher-ups in the face of my audience of young campers, though. Campers that make it a point to guess my age and then tell me I look way younger than their parents, though I am that age. Who love, love, love some of the projects I give 'em. Who hug me just to hug me. Who think it's cool that I know their Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon shows they like to watch, too.

It makes accountability so much harder when you care...

Near the end of week two, and things are better. I'm enjoying myself a little more, and the kids seem to be doing good, too. The needy kid, however, is still a problem. The camp director still keeps giving him chances, and I'm a little afraid for the campers with each chance she gives this kid. He was involved in several camp altercations, and we finally hit on a solution to the management of this kid - he needs a shadow. He had a counselor there with him on a field trip, who was there just for him, and once she was gone in the afternoon, the problems cropped up again.

I wish, in a way, there had been this kind of support for me when I was doing the things this kid was doing. I took every joking gesture, every stray comment, as some sort of insult, and my first response, rather than asking the person to stop or going to teachers or counselors, was to lash out as well, just like this kid. Because of my personal experiences, however, I feel that the camp director is walking a major tightrope over a canyon with nothing to break her fall, and she could well take us all with her. I hope her gestures regarding this kid are right.

My enjoyment of camp is helped greatly by the staff I am surrounded by, an active involved bunch who seem to take things in stride and with a good sense of humor. A recent circle game that the director was teaching us elicited a comment from a counselor that had me laughing off and on for the rest of the day. We had to pass an object around the circle, saying to the person next to us, "This is a plate (for instance)."

The person says, "A what?"

We say, "A plate."

Person says, "A what?"

We say, "A plate."

The person says, "Oh, a plate."

And everyone keeps passing objects around like so, until it becomes one major chorus of "A whats?" and "A (fill in the blank)."

The comment? "I'd love to see this game played with the elderly sometime!" All I could think about were my campers eighty to ninety years later trying to play the game. What a hoot!

Another funny was an art activity mishap involving my son. He was running a Matchbox car through some paint on a piece of paper, and he did what he always does with toys on wheels: he lay down on the floor to watch the wheels turning. Only problem was, he laid his head into a paper plate of paint and came up with it covering half his hair and face. I saw him later that same day, after he had been cleaned up, and I saw his hair in the sun, gleaming with some streaks in it, and my first thought, without being told anything, was that he'd gotten into some paint. I joked with the counselors about his highlights, telling them I had no idea there was a hair salon at camp. I didn't tell my husband, but I did ask him what he thought of our son's hair, and he thought it was chlorine from the pool that had done it! I explained it to him after his guess. Amazing what kids will get into...

Throw in the most boring planetarium show I've ever seen, a great peanut butter play-dough making session, and some shoe wrestling high jinks, and it's been one heck of a week. A friend of mine emailed me recently, attaching a recent New York Times article discussing the increased incidences of suicides and the growing numbers of depressed people in our area, and all I could say to that was what follows:

These days, I'm working as a counselor for a summer camp out in Metairie, on the west side of New Orleans. Life is going on down here...the kids I'm working with are great, the fellow counselors are a great bunch, too, and my drive is all right getting to the facility. My son is really enjoying himself at the camp, too (and I'm glad I'm not in charge of his class; I'm dealing with a group of older kids).

What helps me is blogging about the whole situation down here. The Central City murders of five kids happened only a half-mile away from us, and that was the straw that broke the law enforcement camel's back. Having the National Guard here is only a preliminary step, however - the biggest problem is a massive overloading of the criminal court system here, and not enough prosecution muscle of the criminals that are caught. The ones that go through the system are let go pretty quickly as a result, spreading the word that operating in New Orleans dealing drugs and doing other nasty things has few consequences.

However, where you gonna house all these prosecution people, when the ones who live here are still having trouble getting home repairs straightened out? The ones who are trying to do it in the "dead zones" have to combat theft of major appliances that get delivered and of fixtures too big to be placed in the house or delivered too early to install. It's rough...and there but for the grace of God we would be. Luck and high ground (location closer to the river) prevented flooding in our area - this time. No one in this area is completely out of the water, so to speak.

What are the effects I have seen on the kids? One of them in my group already had significant behavioral problems before the storm...and since then, added to his repertoire of behaviors is a tendency to hide under tables. Another kid is angry at times that his best friend had to move away due to the storm. A recent field trip to a cooking school in a New Orleans shopping center went well, but the route the bus driver chose to take back to camp went right through Lakeview, and things got a little quieter on the bus. It's been nine months, and aside from there being less trash and debris than there has been (Mount Lakeview, as the median pile was called, is gone), it is a ghost suburb, harrowing to travel through in broad daylight. Once we crossed over the infamous 17th Street Canal, things brightened up because it was back to relative civilization.

It's something everyone outside of all this, the rest of the world, fails to see, even if they come here for a very short while. The Katrina effects are NOT over.

However, the rewards of being here, at least for us, are great. We haven't given up yet...and I guess the best place for me to be right now is with these kids, who hold a great measure of everyone's hopes for recovery in their little hands, whether they know it or not. The counselors' job right now entails giving these kids a good summer - and we seem to be doing it for ourselves in the process.

I hope that last assessment stays with us as we continue with our jobs for six more weeks. We all are going to need to keep the energy up that we've had with the kids, even though I know personally I wake up as one giant ache every morning. My way of dealing with it is to suck it up some and get moving with the kids, because they hit the ground running and drag you with them, whether you like it or not. And strangely enough, I'm getting to like it...

Father's Day, also know as my dad's birthday, has arrived.

We tried to get reservations at Brennan's, which recently reopened, in honor of my husband, the father to our sweet child, but they were booked solid. So we will have to make do with a barbecue and poolside celebration at Justin's house across the river...got to whip up something for that. Note to self...

I must say that the men in my life have left the outward firebrand stuff to us women. In my family, we women are an emotional bunch, myself included. Not to say that the men don't have their moments. My father recently overheard a phone conversation I was having with the secretary of my son's pediatrician in New York, one in which I had to spell "New Orleans" and in which I established that a request to transfer my son's medical records to his pediatrician down south had apparently never been received. His unbridled id let loose and he exclaimed in the background, loud enough for the secretary to hear, that what she was telling me was bullshit. Plus, "Who doesn't know how to spell New Orleans?!?!!!?"

"I don't have to take this, " the secretary said. "He's a very nasty man."

Oh, honey, I wanted to say, you have no idea.

When Dad has a bee in his bonnet about something, he will move heaven and earth to help. Deep down, he's a big softy. When my mom would lay down the law with me in terms of punishment, it was Dad who would try to break through that a little. When Mom told me I couldn't go to a showing of Rocky Horror with my high school friends after a dance, it was Dad who, when picking me up from said dance, drove us by the movie theater to see if any of my friends were hanging out. When I went to a clothing store with Dad to get one trendy piece of clothing (trendy for eighth grade), it was Dad who asked me if I was sure I wanted anything else, wallet opened to the ready, even though the trendy dud had cost fifty bucks.

Dad was the one who, in grade school, would turn all my friends upside down. It was a major attraction of overnights or of having friends over, having him pick them up and make all the blood rush to their heads. Seven to ten year olds love that stuff. He used to swing me from his arm like I was a monkey, until the day I let go and fell on my head - right in front of my grandmother.

Dad would introduce me to culture on occasion - I watched 8 1/2 and The Seventh Seal with him once we got a VCR. We ate out regularly at Japanese places where we were the only Caucasians in the place, we had a favorite French place where I first tasted escargot, we had good Indian food on a regular basis at restaurants and at home when post-docs in my dad's lab brought some for parties, and we found a Chinese food place where my dad got the cooks to make the food like we were in Sichuan. Best chicken I've had, though my mouth was swelling up from the spices. I got to know the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, the Band, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, the Fugs, and other great bands and music makers from his record collection...but he still hasn't forgiven me for partially ripping the banana off his Velvet Underground and Nico album. Dad, now that I love the Velvets so much, I know why you're ticked...but I was into scratch and sniff at the time, and it was so tempting...

My dad would also make sure, as I got older, that I was making choices in my life that were right for me, and would sustain me. His competitive streak manifested itself in me in this aspect of life - if I set my mind to something, I was going to be the best at it. Dad helped me with college selection, his softy side letting me apply to one art school where my mom had forbidden me to apply to such places. He went on a college visit with me to Smith and came away from it wanting to go there himself...but he held himself down and went over the considerations with me. Was the college awarding BFAs? What would provide the better background for me if I wanted to have an art career or a career teaching art? When my brother went through the college shuffle recently, I know that Dad did the same for him. It's what's made my dad a successful lab manager and grant writer all these years.

Of course, Dad's bullheadedness can be detrimental to himself as well as others. Ticked that, because an electric bill was a little late, the power company sent out a disconnect notice for the first time, Dad decided not to pay the electric bill for a while. The nanny we had for my brother at the time had to repeatedly head off the power company employees when they entered our backyard to try to cut our power. She deserved some combat pay for that one.

Dad was a one to two pack a day smoker for a number of decades, thinking his good genes would help keep him alive and well into his nineties, as it did for his ancestors. He would even smoke almost to spite all of us who were trying to get him to quit - I gave up on convincing him a long time ago to quit, because it was like beating one's head against a wall. Good, Dad, real good...especially since he does cancer research. A recent bout with chemo once they found cancer in one of his lungs convinced him to quit...and left us all with that "I told you so" stuck in our throats, because, deep down, we believed in his invincibility, too. As if to put that supposed invincibility in relief, he also got some major government grants at a time when the money was and is shrinking for such things. He would be recovering from his treatments in his office and deciding how many people to hire for the next year. When it rains, it pours, I guess.

Aside from being overly tired, and having lost some hair, Dad weathered it all okay - thus far. However, he will always be a cancer survivor, not to mention a survivor of some tumultuous times. And now that my brother is graduating and attending Dad's alma mater, to boot, my grandmother worries about what Dad will do with himself now that his "partner in crime", so to speak, is heading out from the house and leaving behind an empty nest.

I personally see no need for worry.

Dad has always had a penchant for throwing himself into all kinds of hobbies. Wine collecting, gardening, model train building and collecting, and building computers, not to mention close study of cars and new technology, have all been things he has pursued with zest and a sense of competition, even. Aside from possibly getting more sleep, I think something else will come along that will ignite those creative and competitive fires within him once again. He might still be somewhat involved with my brother's lacrosse league in some capacity, though my brother will have moved on. He'll still be checking out the car magazines and building the computers. In the past few years, both my parents have been developing a cooking repertoire, with the help of the Internet, Food Network, and some good grocery stores in their area. I'm proud to report that Dad was thoroughly enjoying using his birthday smoker to do its thing to some brisket, and he was simultaneously grilling some lobster outdoors and happily directing my mom and my brother on preparing the rest of the menu while talking to me on the phone.

Happy birthday, Dad. And many more! There'd better be...

Well, here's a short account of my first week of counseloring at a local day camp:

One week down, seven more to go.

I'm working with some great counselors every day, and the kids, for the most part, have been great, too...BUT. There are always some exceptions, and there were about three of them this week.

I expected there to be some kids who might be somewhat wacky. Just communing with all the counselors in the first week revealed some who were clearly affected by the events of the past year. One counselor had returned with his family to their home, which had taken on some water due to Broussard's decision to dismiss the folks who were supposed to be manning the pumps in Jefferson Parish. He said if it happened again, his family would be picking up and moving.

However, there's only so much stuff us counselors are equipped to handle. We had a maximum of thirteen kids this week, and under normal circumstances, three counselors should be enough to handle that many kids. Throw in one VERY needy kid with a tendency to separate from the group on a regular basis, however, and one counselor is out of the game, period. Throw in a second kid who wants to hide under desks on a regular basis, and it stretches the personnel resources. Throw in a third kid who is bound and determined not to listen and to thumb his nose at the counselors on a regular basis and...Greater New Orleans, we have a problem.

I know we have consultations with the camp director and notification of parents as disciplinary measures. If worse comes to worse, we can let our fingers do the walking and call up the local family service and counseling organization for tips from the professionals for how to deal with a kid.

But THREE of them? It leaves all of us counselors who have to deal with this on a regular basis wondering what the hell we did to deserve all this tsuris, as they say in Yiddish. Every time we have brought this class into the art room, they have done things to tick off the art teacher, who doesn't deserve it either. One of the kids, the needy one, was brought in to the camp director after a disastrous field trip, in which the kid lashed out at an offending kid and cursed at him. Early on in the week, this same kid said that he didn't want to be at camp, that he wanted to be at home playing video games and swimming at his pool there. According to my other counselor, who brought him in to the director's office, she told him repeatedly that he wasn't going to be sent home, and he kept screaming that he wanted to go home.

I talked to a friend of mine, an education director herself, about the situation, and she said she wouldn't have tolerated that. The only thing that would convince anyone to keep a kid such as this in the camp, though, would be money. I think the family service folks will have to be on my cell phone's speed dial from here on out. Today the needy kid wasn't in class and it was a gazillion times better...we could really devote our time to the whole class. Even the other two kids who have been driving us nuts were better. It made me feel like less of a failure, for certain. I still can't shake that nagging feeling that I've gotten a preview of what will possibly be coming down the pike for my own son.

Other insights into seven and eight year old behavior? They are a very active bunch that love to play games and to do a lot of hands-on activities. This group was largely disappointed when a recent field trip to a cooking school was structured like a cooking show in which they got to eat the food - they thought they really were going to do some cooking. A good bunch of them loved to do puzzles. Each had a favorite board game, to boot. Swimming was the ultimate, however - and most of the kids delight in riding on a counselor's back, or on being launched in the air by my guy counselor, the strongest and biggest of the counselors. I was one giant ache every day from having some kids riding on lil' ol' me in the pool - but the cure for that is to start another day with such a wild and crazy group.

And then there's my son, who is enjoying camp, but who wants to sit with Mommy at dismissal instead of with his own preschool group. Oh, the pitfalls of working at the same place your own child is attending - I'm just glad they didn't place me with his class. That really would have been awkward! The counselors for his group marvel at how polite he is - glad I taught him that much, and he listened. He expresses his usual frustrations from time to time - a good yell until someone tells him to talk about what's making him mad. Heck, I've certainly felt like doing that in the past week.

Hope this week will treat us all better...

I began to write a post while I was out of town recently, but due to some BUSY circumstances, I haven't been able to continue. I'll see if I can come back to it, because it was all about a subject near and dear to me: good ol' hot glass.

However, I recovered from a visit to my family recently, on the occasion of my brother's high school graduation and of a lacrosse tournament his team won ( his last lacrosse games before college begins for him in the fall) only to find that my trip up north was a good breather from all the havoc of New Orleans and the vicinity. I came home to a house that smelled unfamiliar, even, and not just because cleaning up after our cats is not my husband's strong point. Dan told me that garbage pickup missed a week, so the stink lingered on our street for a bit. Oh, well, back to life as usual in these parts, I guess.

I received a call from the Montessori school informing me that my son had been admitted, which elicited a major sigh of relief from me. I ran into an instance of one hand of the school district acting in complete ignorance of what the other hand was up to...actually, it was more like a couple of instances. Some vestiges of the old systems of evaluations have resulted in a strange meeting with an Orleans parish school administrator, who basically rewrote the evaluation my son had already received from professionals on an official school form and then offered my son a place in a pre-K gifted class at a different school. Here's where the offer turned into Deal or No Deal - to accept the place in offered class, I would have had to forfeit the school application for the Montessori, when I hadn't even heard from them yet. What would you have done?

Personally, I hate being railroaded into most any decision, especially, I'm discovering, when it comes to my son's education. No deal for the different school. I walked off with a copy of the official evaluation form wondering if the administrator knew something I didn't know. It was a bizarre offer and ultimatum, and I was glad I had at least another option open: a deposit towards another school year at his present preschool.

Was I ever ecstatic when I got word of his Montessori placement...and then they asked for my copy of my son's official evaluation. It was easier for me to bring it to them instead of leaving it to the school office to obtain what was technically an in-house document, possibly because the parish school administrators are tough to communicate with right now due to their "traveling" status - no real permanent building to work out of right now. Weird, but okay.

Know what else is weird? I now have a job. I am now a head teacher at a local camp that my son is also attending...thankfully, I will not be teaching his class, and I will also have two other counselors working with me. Large portions of the day are preplanned, to boot, though I will have to stuff my post-pregnancy body into a swimsuit for large portions of each day. Maybe I will get my son up extra early and take advantage of the early care at camp to work out some - but that would be cruel to him.

As it is, I seriously broke down after my first orientation day with the other counselors and the camp supervisor, and it concerned the babysitting for my son, which fell through that afternoon and was pretty much nonexistent for the following two afternoons, too. I was just at a loss as to who to call, really, since I had only utilized one sitter since we moved back, and there were occasions when she just wasn't available that piled up as strikes against her employment as my son's sitter. With the help of my fantastic husband and the ears of Edie and Justin, we lined up one sitter for the next day and I got the morning sitter at camp to stay the day after with the incentives of more money and a ride back home. I'm very lucky to have such a support system, especially since I haven't worked outside the home in, oh, four-plus years.

Initially, I think my supervisor's gentle admonition that I find someone to watch my son, because, though he was good, the orientation was adult-activity time, was one that cut into me more than she knew, because looking after my son had been my job all these years. Asking me to switch gears like that was a little crazy for me, and I came away from my first meeting with kids way younger than I as my co-workers (the other senior counselor for my group - well, I'm almost twice his age!) feeling as though I might have bit off way more than I could chew. Justin, with his usual quasi-bullheadedness, advocated that I give 'em an ultimatum or just quit. Sometimes the man is all id.

What I tend to do is to say, even at my lowest, that tomorrow's another day. It's something the doomsdayers who believed in the date 6-6-06 as a horrible omen have to admit, even. We're all still here...and today, we might have bonded together a bit more, my fellow counselors and I. Our jungle-themed room is coming together, thanks to the great idea our senior counselor had and the great execution by all of us in getting it together.

Next up tomorrow, I have to get in the bathing suit and demonstrate how well I can swim - not to mention a demonstration of my gut and my butt. This is your body post-pregnancy kids...

Any questions?

Oh, good T-shirt for the folks in the northeast, worn by a counselor today:

This is your brain: (the NY Yankees symbol)
This is your brain on drugs: (the Boston Red Sox symbol)