Letters from Lisa

This past summer I spent several weeks in Peru on an archaeological dig. Here’s a short article about my expedition. I wasn’t the one who found the trophy skull though. The skulls in my area of the dig were small, fragile, and unadorned.

I was in the gym by myself tonight, so I decided to flip around the television to find something that I’d actually want to watch (see my paean to Ryan Seacrest) and I stumbled upon it at last: the secret to the best workout. It was just starting on MSNBC - a horror movie all about what can happen to you if you DON’T stay on the treadmill. I speak, of course, of Super Size Me.

Now I normally don’t like horror movies, but horror documentaries I think I can live with. Especially if they encourage me to increase the amount of time I spend exercising. This movie literally made me want to run for two hours straight. (Of course I didn’t - I managed almost an hour and then finished watching it back upstairs in my apartment while I stretched out, drank some fluids, and ate a Big Mac. Just kidding!)

The sad thing is that kids absolutely LOVE fast food. I mean love it. I can remember some class parties in which the kids voted on McDonald’s or Burger King as their “treat”. You could not pay me to eat that stuff. Even as a teenager, my friends and I would go across the street to the local Burger King at lunchtime, and I would bring my brown bag along. I haven’t eaten at one of those places in years.

My preferred poisons are more in the breakfast/dessert range - sugary cereals, Dunkin Donuts, muffins and croissants, gummy candy, jelly beans, and that ilk. I haven’t yet learned to associate those things with the same level of disgust and danger that I do with other unhealthy food. Maybe someone needs to make a documentary about what would happen if you ate nothing but Dunkin’ Donuts and Lucky Charms for 30 days.

This link allows you to choose a spot anywhere on Earth and dig a hole straight through to the other side:

http://map.pequenopolis.com/

According to the map, digging straight down through my home will get you to a spot in the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of southwestern Australia.

Honestly, after spending 24 straight hours flying just to get to the East Coast of Australia, digging a hole through the center of the Earth to get there doesn’t sound quite so bad.

Today, said to one of my 3rd graders:

“‘Poopy’ is not a science term.”

I’ll leave it to your imagination as far as what sequence of events led up to that particular conversation.

If I let this child (have extra time on tests, type his work, take more frequent breaks, etc.) I will have to let every child do it, in order to be fair.

This is the most common myth I hear propagated by mainstream classroom teachers, and it’s one of the easiest to disspell. It is inappropriate to treat children as though they are interchangeable. If a child can’t see the board, you move her to the front of the room and tell her parents to get her eyes checked. This does not mean that all kids must sit in the front of the room or that all kids must get their eyes checked. Not everyone needs glasses, so not every child has to wear glasses. Having a child wear glasses doesn’t give him an unfair advantage in seeing things. It just corrects a problem. Giving a child who cannot walk a wheelchair doesn’t mean everyone needs to have one. It corrects a problem.

Similarly, providing a child with accommodations for a learning issue is correcting a problem. It isn’t unfair treatment. What would be unfair is ruining a child’s happiness and love of learning to satisfy your own rigidity. I’ve heard some teachers say that kids need to learn about the “real world” and that it isn’t always fair. Actually, what they are learning is that SCHOOL is upsetting and unfair. Very few people outside the teaching profession confuse school life with the “real world”.

All young children go through a developmental stage in which they think fair means absolutely even in every respect, which is why they fight over who got the bigger piece of cookie or who has more room in the backseat. But you’ll almost never hear a child complain, “Mo-om! My piece of cookie is bigger than hers. That’s not fair!” Most kids do not have a sophisticated moral sense of justice and fairness. Every younger sibling has complained about having to go to bed earlier than their older sister, but I bet they have never complained about how many more hours of homework she has that causes her to have to stay up later. So you may very well get a kid (or a kid’s parents) who complains that another kid in the class is getting special treatment. But you will not hear them complain about how unfair it is that the classmate has to work so much harder just to achieve the same results.

If a child in your class says, “It’s not fair, why does he get to….?” you can reply, “Fair means that you get what you need. When you need help, I’ll make sure that you get it.”

File this one under Science Units I Would Not Have Considered If I Had Been The Science Teacher Shortly After 9/11…

After spending almost half the school year studying space with my 3rd graders, I finally pried them off of that topic and am trying to get them interested in chemistry. Our little unit is called “Mystery Powders” and asks them to identify which canister contains salt, sugar, cornstarch, baking soda, and plaster by doing a series of tests. It’s the first time I’m asking them to keep any kind of chart of their results, or indeed to test a series of samples in any systematic manner.

Most of the kids are really enjoying the unit so far. Some of them are really independent and can test the samples, observe the results, and then take notes on their chart without much help. Maybe they need me to spell a word or help them read a direction. There are others who are great with testing the samples but forget to record the information or don’t really understand what they’re supposed to write. And then there were some who didn’t seem to understand the idea of the experiment. They tested one sample and wrote down the results, then thought they were finished. They didn’t realize that they were supposed to test and record all five. One child even tested and wrote the results for the same sample five different times.

One girl today spent the entire class period arguing with her friend over who got to scoop out the powder first. Then she’d get her hands in the powder and say, “Can I go wash my hands?” She was very anxious about the whole process and seemed ambivalent about participating, but she couldn’t stand back and allow the others to do their tests without getting her hands in there or yelling at someone for hogging the powder trays. This is normally a very cooperative, sociable child and I was quite taken aback at the way she reacted to the experiment.

We try very hard to avoid giving the kids anything that is way beyond their ability level, but once in a while it does happen. And then, it’s very interesting to see what the emotional reaction is. Some kids turn into lumps and just sit there. Others get overly silly and obnoxious. Some get angry at the kid next to them (misdirected frustration) or at the teacher (well directed frustration) or at themselves. You can tell that a kid is more mature than his or her classmates when they can actually think through a problem, come up to you with a question, or just take a break for a few minutes and come back to the problem with a fresh perspective. Frustration tolerance is a muscle that needs to be stretched, and this mystery powders project is definitely going to stretch it.

The health teacher came in this afternoon and said, “Mystery powders, huh? Cocaine, crystal meth…” Which is why I am glad I do not teach high school.

Liz from I Speak of Dreams was kind enough to post an open call for blog recommendations on my behalf. I am looking for blogs that cover the first-hand experiences of individuals living with learning/cognitive/physical differences and disabilities. Blogs of parents, caregivers, and teachers are appreciated as well. I have already found many such blogs, several of which I suspect will become full-length published books (if they aren’t in the process already) but I am looking for more.

Although I love to read the personal experiences of others for my own information and education, my short-term reason for the recommendations request is that I am preparing to teach a graduate class on the topic of developmental variations. Its aim is to introduce teachers, both in mainstream and special education, to the variety of learning styles, differences, and challenges that their students will encounter during their careers. We will be using many different sources for our research, including first-hand accounts of what it is like to live, work, and go to school with a disability or other difference. Though I have found many excellent books in this genre, I feel that blogs provide a different and valuable way of looking at things. Published books tend to tell a finished narrative, generally with a specific message or point in mind. Whereas blogs are immediate, less likely to be edited for “off message” content, and evolving over time. There are many that a mainstream publisher would consider “too raw” or “too political” for a memoir sort of book. Yet teachers need to hear those voices.

So please, comment and recommend. Recommend many. Recommend opposing viewpoints, if you can.

On a side note, when I took this course in graduate school, it was called “Disturbances in Development”. Though I did not choose the current name of the course, I like the word variation far better than disturbance. “Disturbance” sounds like something has gone terribly wrong and must be fixed, and while it can certainly feel that way when a child is struggling, I don’t think it’s helpful to conceptualize a child’s life and capabilities by what has gone wrong. “Variation” is more accurate. It allows us to step back and see how a person’s abililty may or may not correspond to the demands of a task, or how a person’s particular variation might lend itself to some alternate technique or way of accomplishing the task.

As the administrator of this website, as well as a loyal Monty Python fan, I wade through a lot of spam. Most of it is attempting to sell pornography or impotence drugs (no doubt those two are related) but I can’t figure out what this next one is about:

More or less nothing seems important. I’ve just been letting everything happen without me recently. I can’t be bothered with anything recently, but such is life. My life’s been generally bland today. Not much on my mind these days, but eh.

Since I’ve just noticed this sort of spam message within the past couple of weeks, coinciding roughly with the darkest days of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, I have come to the conclusion that my spam’s come down with Seasonal Affective Disorder.

I would advise my spam to get a nice bright lamp into its life immediately, as well as to get out into the sunlight whenever possible.

Google Earth is cool enough (and I use it often) but I did not know that there was also Google Mars!

Why did I have to find this out AFTER we finished the unit on the solar system?

Well… I guess after four newsletters’ worth of links and free software, it isn’t such a massive oversight. Still, I’ll be sure to make more direct use of it when I teach that curriculum again.

Besides, if you have a PC (which I don’t at work) World Wind is even neater, though much slower to load and a memory drain. You can get data not only for the Earth and Mars, but for the Moon and Jupiter as well.

My Freshman Year - What A Professor Learned By Becoming A Student is a study of intriguing, and sometimes baffling, college student behavior. Written by “Rebekah Nathan”, an anthropology professor at “AnyU” (later outed as Cathy Small at Northern Arizona University) the book explores questions that must surely be on every professor’s and dorm advisor’s mind. Why do students sleep in class? Why don’t they do the readings? And why do students tend to hang out with other students who look like them, despite the university’s attempts to create a “diverse” community?

The fact that the professor chose to go “native” for the purposes of researching this topic created a great deal of controversy (for example, see the comments attached to this article, many of which accuse the author of being “unethical” despite the permission she received from her university’s ethics board) but the actual findings seem to be in line with what everyone expected. Students were far more concerned with post-college jobs than they were with actual coursework. Conversations in the dorm and in class centered around procedure - did you do the reading? what font are we supposed to use? - rather than the content of the readings or lectures. They were most likely to do the required readings when they were directly tested on the content or otherwise held accountable - a purely pragmatic decision that had nothing to do with the intellectual pursuit of knowledge. During leisure time, students talked about sex, drugs, sports, and other “fun” topics, rarely delving into anything “school” related. When students did admit to talking about “deep” subjects, they generally made excuses such as being drunk, or that they tended to get “dorky” late at night. It was breaking the cultural norm to be seen “trying too hard”.

Perhaps the most frightening passage from the book was when the professor, in her teaching capacity, asks her anthropology classes to make anonymous lists of the “three people in the room most likely to be witches” as an introduction to the study of witch hunts. She finds that, consistently, students list the most motivated and outspoken students in the class.

Time was the limiting factor that propelled students to make most decisions. Most students were juggling a part-time job, a full class schedule, and volunteer work or extracurricular clubs, often dropping or adding activities as time permitted. This contributed to a “community” atmosphere that seemed scattered and elusive, despite the university’s many attempts to organize group activities. This occurred most dramatically inside the residence hall, where Resident Advisors would organize movie nights and Super Bowl parties that no one attended. Students often thought that the activities sounded nice, but “forgot” or had something come up when it was actually time to attend. Because “community” activities were lost amid a huge array of options, there were very few times when large numbers of students were actually in the same place at the same time. Lounges and other communal spaces lay empty, or were sparsely populated by students trying to “get away” from the noise and bustle.

Perhaps reflecting the unreliability of a large “community”, students did most of their socializing with a small network of friends that they made during freshman year, often beginning the networking process before college officially began, and thus guaranteeing that their networks of close friends included only people similar in views and demographics to themselves. The university, in its desire to provide orientation activities that brought students of similar backgrounds together, inadvertently reinforced this separation. White males were the least likely to have close friends of diverse backgrounds, and when they did, they tended to be women of different backgrounds, not men. Men from different groups rarely interacted.

How much can the fiindings at Northern Arizona University be extrapolated to other schools? I recognized some aspects of life there in my own college experience, but I have to say that many I did not. True, my freshman year of college was 10 years ago, but I think the bigger difference is that I attended a very different sort of school. My college was a small liberal arts-oriented Ivy League school, rather than a large state university. Some of my fondest memories of college are of late night talks about so-called “deep” topics, and I don’t recall anyone being embarrassed about it. People DID tend to socialize in small clumps, but people were much more likely to make friends with those who lived nearby, who were in their classes or extracurricular groups, or just through the “friends of friends”. I personally found that physical proximity was much more important to maintaining a college friendship than anything else. People who lived near one another tended to do things together. (Maybe this is because we didn’t have cars on campus.)

One thing that I found remarkably similar, though, was that people DID tend to form more homogenous groups based on ethnic or racial or some other group identity. And although I hadn’t thought about it in terms of gender before, I do think that women at my college had far more interracial and inter-religious friendships than men. And I can’t remember a single example of a real friendship between two men of different races or ethnicities, though I can think of plenty of examples of men who had close friends of their own background. A big point of controversy at my school was the university’s TWTP orientation - the Third World Transition Program. Minority students were invited to move in a week early and get to know one another before general orientation started. This, in my opinion, led to all sorts of problems, not the least of which was the same phenomenon that the book pointed out - people’s groups of friends coalescing based on a common background, thus undermining the university’s goal of having a “diverse community”. Maybe this would have happened anyway, without the university’s help - but I think emphasizing differences over similarities is a tricky way to promote unity.

Then again, in today’s individualistic culture, differences rule. Even more so than when I was in school. When I was a freshman in college, I bought my first CDs - the Beatles, of course. And down the hall from me was a friend who shared my interest in the Beatles. He had every single bootleg and re-release that there was. He had all of their solo work too. I got a real musical education from him, and it gave us something in common. These days, people don’t even listen to full albums anymore. They download the individual songs they like onto their iPods. They don’t end up having any experiences in common, even with other people who have the same interests. The downside of uniqueness is separation. As the book points out, many of the students felt ambivalent about the whole notion of community. It felt oppressive, but more so than that, just irrelevant.

Yet the students in the book reported that they felt the “college experience” was the biggest source of learning for them during their four years. I remember hearing this too. “Most of what you learn in college takes place outside the classroom.” Students talked about learning more about themselves, having fun, and avoiding the “real world”. And yet these were the same kids making very pragmatic decisions about how to spend their time and what majors would lead to the most lucrative careers. These would seem like opposing goals. It sounded difficult for them to find a balance.

When I think back on my own college career, several things stand out to me. One was the opportunity to learn about anything I wanted, since Brown doesn’t have any “core curriculum” and you can take anything Satisfactory/No Credit. So I did. I took studio art, political science, immersion Hebrew, evolutionary biology, piano lessons, religious ethics, four semesters of creative writing, modern dance (I was in the best shape of my life during that class - it met four times a week), and Israeli-Palestinian literature — all classes outside my major. Another aspect was the chance to become a teaching assistant as an undergraduate, which I did on three occasions. Yet another was my work-study job in the library system, which allowed me ample time to do my coursework and fill notebooks full of (mostly bad) fiction, and also brought me into contact with large numbers of books. I read SO many books when I was in college, a habit that I retain to this day (though instead of a huge university library system, I have to make do with Amazon and my local Borders).

And lastly, there was the experience of living with and around friends. I felt that I got to know people extremely well, though often in a very short period of time. For me, the diverse university worked - I got to know a lot about the world based on the experiences of my friends who were from other countries or simply had much different backgrounds than myself. I didn’t find that my friendships were as stable as I would have liked, but looking back, I think we were all quite young and “trying on” different aspects of ourselves, particularly as people got into and out of relationships. I found that my friends changed, sometimes dramatically, as our circumstances changed. And sometimes, living with or near someone brought out unrealistic expectations that couldn’t be fulfilled. It’s one of the reasons why it’s hard for me to imagine living with roommates today.

Anyway, I found the book very thought provoking. I thinkwe so much take for granted that kids “need” to go to college that we have not yet asked the question of what college is supposed to DO, besides provide a “college experience”. This recent article in the New York Times depicts students who are so advanced, so driven to learn, that college almost seems like it would be irrelevant for them. It’s certainly hard to picture them at “AnyU”.

In a news story that just came out but apparently describes events that took place several years ago, the parents of a profoundly disabled girl made the decision to alter her surgically and hormonally, in essence “freezing” her physical development. They removed her uterus and breast buds, and gave her high doses of estrogen so as to stunt her growth. They have named this set of procedures after their daughter, calling it the The “Ashley Treatment”. (The link provided is to the parents’ site, detailing what they have done and how the decisions were made.)

When I first heard about this, it shocked me. I think what shocked me most was the idea of deliberately interfering with the child’s normal development to make “improvements” (my word, not theirs). We are all certainly familiar with a wide array of procedures intended to correct abnormal physical development or injury - fixing a cleft palate, amputating a gangrenous limb, removing an infected appendix, radiating cancerous growth, even extracting sections of the brain that are generating life-threatening seizures. In each case, there is a clear malfunction that the procedure intends to fix. The large majority of us don’t have a problem with this, even with procedures that carry significant risks and discomfort.

But in this case, the child’s body is developing normally. The aim was specifically to halt normal development.

The parents argue that these procedures were necessary to maintain and improve the girl’s quality of life:

Ashley’s biggest challenge is discomfort and boredom and the “Ashley Treatment” goes straight to the heart of this challenge. It is common for Ashley to be uncomfortable or to be bored. Even though Ashley’s level of tolerance has increased along the years, she is helpless when bothered and her only recourse is to cry until someone comes to her rescue. These episodes are triggered by something as simple as sliding off the pillow or a hair landing on her face and tickling/bothering her, let alone menstrual cramps, adult-level bed sores, and discomfort caused by large breasts. Also, without the treatment, Ashley could not be moved as frequently or be as included in family life, and we would not experience the joy of being an intact family as often.

Many of the comments received by the parents include references to adults with profound disabilities and the difficulties of caring for them, particularly in regards to having to lift a full-sized individual. The thinking is that keeping Ashley the size of a nine-year old child will allow the family to interact with her more easily - hold her, bathe her, transport her out of the house, and so on.

After turning this over and over in my mind (since I read about it, it’s been hard to think of anything else) I am still uncomfortable with the idea.

Although I have never been in the position of caring full-time for a profoundly disabled child, my family did provide care for my grandmother at home during the last six years of her life. We hired a series of health aides to help lift her, keep her clean, move her into and out of rooms and cars, feed her, and so on. We worried about bedsores, pneumonia, and her not being able to communicate to us when she was in pain. Her level of independence fluctuated quite a bit during those years, so I will not pretend that the situations were at all the same - first off, it was not clear that she would never recover, and in fact she did make many gains (and subsequent losses). Also, she was elderly, meaning that we knew we were looking at a finite amount of time that she would require care, rather than an entire lifetime. It was hard enough financially even with this limited timespan. And finally, she developed her medical difficulties later on in life, after she had grown up, had children and grandchildren, and made life choices that we could use to help us figure out what she would want, were she able to communicate to us.

In such a case as the little girl, there is no such background. She appears to have had her condition since birth, or possibly before. No one can consult her past remarks or behavior and ask, “Is this what she would have wanted, if she could communicate with us?” No one is clear as to whether she can even accurately perceive her situation, or form a clear opinion. Even when she becomes adult-aged, she will never be in a position to give consent for any aspect of her care. She is wholly dependent upon her caregivers to give or refuse consent on her behalf.

Here is where I am uncertain. The parents of this child are being placed in a dual role - that of being care providers for their dependent child, and being in the role of legal guardians charged with the responsibility of protecting her rights and dignity. To me, it appears that there is a conflict of interest. They are being asked to make decisions on the girl’s behalf based on what they think she would consent to, if she were able to do so, but at the same time they are making decisions as the provider of services. There is no one in this situation whose sole purpose is to represent Ashley’s point of view.

Let’s see what would happen if we removed the conflict of interest. Let’s say that the child is not being cared for at home, but in a nearby apartment with a full-time caregiver. The caregiver notices that Ashley is getting bigger and heavier and harder to lift. S/he fears that Ashley will soon not fit in the bathtub, wheelchair, carseat, or bed. Also, Ashley’s increasing weight leaves her more prone to bedsores, pneumonia, and so on. In other words, all the reasons that were provided as justification. The caregiver approaches the parents and explains these issues and makes the proposal to alter Ashley physically. What would the parents say? Let’s say, now, that Ashley is living in an institution with a staff of people who work with her, and the institution approaches the parents with this proposal.

My take on this is that most people’s reactions to the exact same set of procedures would differ enormously if it had been an institution, a team of physicians, or a hired caregiver who had asked for the procedures to be done. Why? Because parents protect their children. Parents act with the best interests of their children in mind, even if it presents grave difficulties. I suspect many, most, if not all, parents would say to those well meaning doctors or that institution or set of caregivers, “Let me get this straight… you are proposing to surgically alter my daughter? Are you kidding?”

No one is denying that caring for a profoundly disabled person is difficult and expensive. But having made the commitment to do so, it does not follow that the parents have the right to alter their child at will. Although Ashley appears to function as a 3-month old infant, that does not “make” her an infant. Though her mental development is that of a child, it does not permanently “make” her a child, just as when my grandmother suffered her series of strokes that reduced her functioning to a childlike state, that did not cause her to turn into a child. And what of children or adults who receive brain injuries or contract illnesses that reduce their level of functioning, even permanently with no hope of full recovery? Their conditions make them dependent on their caregivers, but do NOT give their caregivers license to alter their development. Or, indeed, to act in any way that would constitute a conflict of interest - pitting the rights of the dependent individual against those of his or her caregivers.

Such situations are difficult, even heartbreaking, but as mortal beings prone to injury and illness and frailty during our short lifetimes, we must face them. In our society, we tend to take a utilitarian view of people - we measure them by what they are able to accomplish, how much money they can make, how much “good” they can do. We do not value people for simply being people. And because of this, we don’t know what to do with people who need help. We have bits and pieces of a system for supporting people with disabilities (whether it be due to chromosomes, developmental problems, injury, or old age) but we tend to view them as burdens, as things to take care of or do something about. Either cure them, make them better, or put them somewhere. Anyone who actually cares for such a person is considered an angel, going above and beyond. We totally understand when parents don’t want to be the parents of a disabled child - we even understand when they murder the child. Many people would even say that they’d rather die than lose their functioning to the point of being dependent on someone else, because they would not have any “dignity”. But as long as we allow people to treat their dependents as though they are simply extensions of themselves, or as if they don’t have any rights at all, I can guarantee that there will not be any dignity. For anyone.

As the first week of 2007 winds down, I am pleased to report that I have been to the gym more times in the past week than I’d gone in the entire month of December. Maybe even November and December put together. What happened, I think, was that I hit a plateau in the fall. I couldn’t seem to add any more distance or speed to my running without hurting myself or coming down with a cold. Seriously - I’d go for a run, push myself just a bit, come home and wake up with a monstrously sore throat the next morning. As if my leg muscles extended all the way up to my chin. It was my body’s way of saying, “You don’t really want to go to the gym anymore, do you?” And I didn’t. But now, I might. I’m going to just keep popping the Halls Defense and hope that my throat minds its own business.

The only drawback of going to the gym, so far, is all the bad TV I’ve been subjected to. I usually wear my headphones, but people will turn up the TV so loud that you’re practically forced to watch. And unfortunately, what they’re watching usually involves Ryan Seacrest, “breaking news” about blond idiots in low cut dresses, or reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond. Sometimes I think it’d work better if they put the TVs behind the machines, so you can feel like you are RUNNING AWAY.

If only we had a DVD player down there. We could invoke what I have decided to call the Qantas Effect, in honor of my original idea to show all three Lord of the Rings Extended Editions back-to-back on very long flights, such as the 14 hour slog I endured between LA and Sydney. I’m restless. I need a reason to sit still that long (other than “We’re still over the ocean”, apparently). On my flight home from Australia, I was so desperate for entertainment that I was reduced to watching Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy five times in a row. Just hitting repeat on my seat’s controls. It wasn’t exactly the high point of the trip. By the time I make it back to Australia, Qantas, I hope you’ve gotten with the program.

The same principle could be applied to working out in the gym. Put on something really good, so people will want to stay. Again, I think Lord of the Rings would be perfect. You’d feel like you were being chased by orcs, so you’d WANT to run. I have tried just playing the soundtrack over my headphones with moderate success, but then I happen to look up at the TV and Gandalf and the Balrog have been replaced by Ryan Seacrest and Donald Trump. (I’m not going to say which one I think is the Balrog there.)

In the meantime, it’s been so unseasonably warm lately that I may not need the gym at all. Maybe the first DVD we should play is “An Inconvenient Truth”.

And now for something completely different… 2007.

Doesn’t look all that different, actually. We’re having a bit of rain. It’s still winter. It still hasn’t snowed here. In future years we may be able to look forward to rogue iceberg patrol in the harbors of the Eastern Seaboard, but for now what we’ve got is dense fog (and I don’t mean the kind inside our addled brains, though I can’t speak for everybody, not being much of a drinker myself).

I’ve always found it odd that we begin our calendar year in the midst of winter, rather than at some more obvious natural transition time, such as a solstice or change of season. In a way, though, celebrating the New Year in mid-winter seems right. In the Northern Hemisphere, it’s dark and occasionally dreary at this time of year. We all need something to do. And at least in America, we don’t have any fireworks-themed holidays now until the summer. New Year’s Eve keeps our decorative explosives industry strong. It’s our patriotic duty to celebrate.

My attitude about beginning a new year has changed a bit over the past few years. Some I was quite happy to see go - 2001, for example, couldn’t depart quickly enough. Between stress over a terrible job, tough decisions about my career (namely, whether or not to keep it), a seemingly irreconcilable rift with one of my best friends, a big breakup, and September 11th, I had more than sufficient reason to bade it good riddance. 2006, though, I rather liked. It certainly had its difficult moments, but I would say overall it’s been the best calendar year in my recent memory.

Of course it isn’t all happiness and light - hard to really get smug about how well everything’s going when, in the world at large, things aren’t going altogether smoothly. (There… my first entry for Understatement of the Year 2007. I’m out of the box early here, with 2007 only 12 hours old. 9 if you’re on the West Coast.) Maybe 2007 will be the year that things finally start to turn around.