Letters from Lisa

The lady turned to the dog she was walking and said:

“I don’t have any more bags left, so you’d better not do anything!”

In the science-fictional world of Star Wars, whenever pain and suffering are unleashed in the universe, the waves reverberate and can be felt. It’s a “disturbance in the Force”. In the real world, sometimes we can feel these disturbances, and sometimes we are numb. I believe we are numb to it more often and not, for if we weren’t, how would we go about the day?

A few days after the massacre at Virginia Tech, Jon Stewart had a high ranking advisor to the Prime Minister of Iraq on the Daily Show. He first excused himself for the very personal question he was about to ask, then wondered how the Iraqis have been dealing with daily equivalents of Virginia Techs (including one just that morning, a suicide bombing that affected hundreds of people) for the past several years. I had been wondering the exact same thing. Here we are, shocked and saddened and angry about the deaths of innocent people out of nowhere (as we should be) and yet there are places around the world where this happens constantly, where it has become normal. A day WITHOUT any shootings or bombings would be the aberration. The guest said that there are too many immediate problems in Iraq for anyone to have the time to mourn. Too many people are in danger every moment of their lives, and there are too many refugees both inside and outside the country. There is so much displacement, so much death, that it’s impossible to even think about.

But here in the US, the big topic was Virginia Tech. It was a tough week, at least for the adults at school. The little kids seemed to be oblivious to it (hopefully they hadn’t heard much media - sometimes don’t you feel like your brain is doing a 24 hour news cycle? I do, and I never watch cable news) and the older kids talked about it, but weren’t overly obsessed or even disturbed by it. They’ve lived through worse.

I don’t know how kids today keep it so together. When I think of what the major traumatic events were of my childhood, they don’t begin to compare to what today’s kids have been through. When I was ten, the Challenger blew up on takeoff. When I was in middle school, we fought a three-day video game war in Iraq. There was a drought in parts of Africa, prompting the media extravaganza “We Are the World” - which seems sort of quaint now. There was a coup in the Soviet Union, and a few hours later the coup tanked, and the Soviet Union dissolved, taking the Cold War with it. Then there were wars far away - Serbia and Croatia, Hutus vs. Tutsis. This was horrible, and should have been more in the forefront of our minds than it was, but it all happened far away, and wasn’t an immediate danger to me or anyone I knew. And I didn’t have cable or the internet - no 24 hour news cycle running through my head.

Today’s kids? Let’s see, there was 9/11. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially Iraq. Hurricane Katrina. The tsunami. The Columbia shuttle burning up on re-entry. (Must every generation have one of those?) And there’s the reporting and discussion of it - constant, unrelenting, most of it speculative, disturbing, maddening, and depressing. This is the atmosphere that kids today breathe. They have to be exposed to it a little bit - sort of like giving them a live vaccine, so it doesn’t overwhelm and sicken them later - but I think it’s poisonous for them to have to deal with too much. I, an adult, find the world scary and unstable, but I am not trying to develop my image of what the world is. I know there’s more to it than what’s happening right now. I’ve experienced more peaceful times. Whereas my students - many of them were very little when 9/11 happened, so they don’t have any memories of what it was like before we had color coded threat levels. They have never experienced government under any other president besides George W. Bush. They’re forming their views, today, on what it means to be an American, what government is like, what democracy and freedom are. I wish they could wait.

This is my first year teaching science, and so I am learning many things as I go along. We’re having a great time in my classes and I’m pleased, overall, with the units we’ve done this year. But I’ve also learned that every subject has its black hole.

A black hole, as I explained to my students when we were studying space, is a point in space in which gravity is incredibly strong. Anything that floats beyond its threshold (or “event horizon”) is pulled in, never to come out. It is sucked into the center and crushed into a single point of infinite density. After that, we don’t have the physics to know what really happens. But let’s just say that, if you are a space traveler, you want to go around the black holes, not into them.

Every subject I teach at school has its black hole - a sub-topic, an idea, or even a word that has an  irresistible pull over my young students. For example, let’s say we’re examining caterpillars and making observational drawings, and someone yells out, “Hey, I think he pooped!” We’ve just hit the event horizon there. Once the kids have crossed the event horizon, the entire class is sucked irrevocably towards its dark center of infinite gravity. In other words, I lose the class as they dissolve into giggling, silly comments, or miming violent death by strangulation or stab wounds. Yes, in each of my classes, there are psychologically healthy kids jumping out of their seats and pretending to strangle themselves whenever someone says the word “blood” or “death”. This is the basis of my humble opinion that kids these days watch TOO MUCH VIOLENCE on tv and movies and in video games. Not to mention the nightly news. Maybe it’s a natural byproduct of having to grow up in this day and age, with its many disasters both natural and human-caused. In any case, it’s especially important to tread carefully around the black hole topics that trigger kids’ violent fantasies. (Again, I want to emphasize, these kids - who are generally boys - are NOT disturbed or mentally ill, just piqued by violence.)

I’m currently teaching life science, which is chock full of black holes. Watch a National Geographic special sometime. It’s all mating and violence, isn’t it? Talking about how living creatures adapt to stay alive naturally implies that there is a possibility they will die. Having food chains means that some living things will be hunted and devoured by others. As for mating, it’s not something I dwell on with little kids, but there isn’t any other way to explain how those eggs got there. And reproduction happens to be the mechanism for evolution. (I am lucky, with this topic, that I don’t teach teenagers.)

As for the ever-powerful black hole of “poop”? Well, the other day, when I heard yet another “Hey, I think he just pooped!” followed by event-horizon giggling and groaning from the class, I said, “And good thing too - that way he won’t die.” That froze them long enough for me to launch into an impromptu speech about how living things must find ways to eliminate waste from their bodies, or else they would get blocked up with it and be unable to take in any more food, and if they couldn’t take in any food, they wouldn’t get the energy and nutrition they needed to stay alive. They all gaped at me, somewhat stunned, and I cheerfully said, “OK, so…. any other observations?” Black hole averted!

Overheard on the A train this afternoon, between a little girl and her mother:

“Did you bring a book to read on the way home, honey?”

“No, just the one I made. Let me get it” (rustles in her backpack, pulls out a folded book from construction paper) “Here it is, it’s Sleeping Beauty.”

“Oh, how cool! Did you make these illustrations?”

“Just the pictures.”

“Oh, I see. Should I read it? Once upon a time there was a girl named Aurora, who was a princess. She was cursed by a witch who said that she would prick her finger on her sixteenth birthday and go into a deep sleep, and only the kiss of her true love would wake her. Hey, are these Care Bears?”

“They’re not in the story. I just wanted them for decoration. Keep reading!”

“OK. So there were three fairies who gave gifts to Aurora and raised her as their own. One day she was walking in the woods, picking berries, and she met a young man. They fell in love… They fell in love while picking berries?”

“Keep going!”

“OK, OK… They fell in love. Then she went home, pricked her finger, and fell into a deep sleep. While she was asleep she dreamt of all of the careers that she could have and ways that she could support herself, without having to depend on anyone — ”

“That’s not what it says!!”

“It’s not?…. Oh, sorry. While she was asleep she dreamt of her true love. Then her true love, who was actually a prince, fought and defeated the evil Maleficent and came in and kissed her. She woke up, and they lived happily ever after…. As equal partners.”

“It doesn’t say that part either!”

No…. but it should! Good going, mom.

You are witnessing the birth of my very first handknitted sweater that I am knitting all by myself! It is the Somewhat Cowl and I am somewhat intimidated by it, considering that I haven’t made anything more complex than a hat before - and this involves sleeves and shoulders and a neck and all kinds of other things. And it actually needs to fit. I am fully aware of the possibility that I am going to need to rip this out and try again, if it ends up being Barbie sized.

This project has been sitting around for months now and I haven’t quite struck up the courage to really get started on it. I bought the yarn and needles for it… hmm, let’s see… almost a year ago. It was near the beginning of the summer. And I had to go to several different stores to get the size needles I needed. Then I took some time making swatches of it, decided to get different sized needles, tried THOSE out and realized that they weren’t quite right either. In the end I went with the size specified in the pattern, because it was the closest. Like I said, this probably won’t fit.

 - More of my hard work!

And most of it is still in the bag:
 

As relief for my tired hands (small needles = hand cramps), and since I am not going to be commuting with a complex project and messing it up on my subway rides, I am also working on a heavy scarf, which ironically I could have used all winter:

  The Barbie Needles Strike Back!!!

How is it already Friday? I feel like my vacation has barely gotten started, and now it’s nearly over. Once we’re back, we don’t have off again until Memorial Day Weekend. May and June are always crammed full of special events, not the least of which is my own show, May 31st. It’s an anxious time of year.

So let me rephrase that - how is it already April??

I’ve been catching up on some things this week, though never as much as I’d like. Much of it has to do with my adjunct position. We’re bearing down on the end of the semester, so there are papers to grade (everyone’s favorite). I have a small class this time around, so I’m not swamped with work, but since it’s the first time that I’m teaching a class of this nature, I’m being very careful and slow and going over everything several times.

The next semester begins, naturally, on May 31st. Hmm, that date sounds familiar. Why?

And to make things even more stressful, the June semester is only four weeks long, with 3 1/2 hour sessions twice a week. Which means that my syllabus has to completely change. This past semester I’ve been doing 2 hour sessions once a week, for 14 weeks. Yeah. Totally different. And not that I intend to complain or anything, but it does just so happen that the June semester directly coincides with the last month of school.

On the plus side, the July semester is the same length and format as the June semester. And then the fall semester goes back to the 14 week format. So putting in the work at the beginning will mean less stress later.

And this is the week to get it done. Slowly, surely, I’m getting there.