Glass House

a river runs through it

2008-04-12T05:47:06Z

CREEK
By Laurie Feldman

Transfixed,
I stood on your bank
Watching dark water
Rush by.

Lazy,
Swimming over deep water
Between volcanic boulders,
falling in love.

Soaking,
seeking relief
my expectant body
floats on your currents.

Watching,
him splash and dive
Learning to swim
In your shallows.

Walking,
Along your green banks
Hoping for insight
Moving forward.

Sitting,
In meditation with
Aching feet submerged,
Growing older.

Gone,
My ashes scattered
on your gentle tide
as you flow on.

new orleans

2008-04-02T06:19:23Z

Over spring break I traveled to Louisiana with my family. While we were there we visited New Orleans and took some time to walk around the lower Ninth Ward where so much devastation occurred 2 ½ years ago due to Hurricane Katrina. Here are some of the pictures I took:

These are the flags that were flying on the day I was there. Tattered but still proud.

This wreck of a house is STILL THERE after 2 1/2 years. Is this Iraq or America?

One picture is worth a thousand words. I wonder if the walls in this doghouse are emitting toxic formaldehyde fumes?

It was surprising how little anger I was exposed to while I was there. This sign seemed to distill some of what must be bubbling under the surface in this land of southern hospitality.

Notice the letters 'TFW' encircled on the front of this house. Thats stands for "Toxic Flood Waste." This is someone's home, still waiting for help.

How many billions have we spent to blow up someone else's country while allowing our own citizens' homes to languish, unrepaired and moldering into irreparable? The injustice is shocking to view personally and yet, as a country, we have seemingly mostly forgotten.

bad budgeting

2008-03-12T02:06:49Z

I’ve been thinking often lately about an article I read in the paper a few weeks ago. It was about another harebrained idea for balancing the California State Budget. The scary thing about this harebrained idea was that it came from Governor Arnie. In a nutshell, Arnie proposed requiring all MediCal recipients to complete re-qualifying paperwork every three months instead of the every 6 months that is currently required. This would double the paperwork burden for the agencies that administer MediCal too, such as the Department of Employment and Social Services. Which already works like a well-oiled machine, right?
Now I happen to have a job working with people who are mentally ill. Who I like a lot. And who I’ve watched struggle with the paperwork that we require of them.
Some of these are folks who can not read or write, often because their mental illnesses began in childhood and interfered with their ability to learn. Or sometimes because their tweaking crank addict parents were too busy starving them and exposing them to toxic fumes to have the opportunity to help them with their homework. Some of them are survivors of wars in their home countries and grew up speaking another language that does not have a written form, thus they are not so good at writing. Some of them have to spend their days listening to internal voices while navigating our complex world.
And Arnie, with all of his counterfeit compassion, knows that by requiring more paperwork of these tormented souls, that many of them will simply give up and forfeit their MediCal coverage, stop taking their psych meds and slip into an even worse state of body and mind. But it will save the state some money! Arnie thinks it’s a marvelous idea to balance his budget on the backs of these folks. Because he’s too chicken, I’d guess, to do the real work of governing. Which involves making considered, difficult choices and implementing them.

stoopid standards

2008-02-19T01:50:14Z

I’m getting really tired of dealing with the public school system. Let me start by saying that I doubt it is the teachers who ratchet up the frustration component quite as much as it is “THE STANDARDS.” Seems like whenever one of my children shows an ounce of creativity with regard to a school project, THE STANDARDS get whipped out and are used to knock us both over the head so we understand that thinking for ourselves is NOT the object. We are only to think in whatever way has been decided to be grade level thinking by an anonymous (to us) group of alleged experts who don’t know us and, mostly likely, wouldn’t care if they did.
Here’s an example of a accomplishment that is required by the 4th grade math standards. Each student must be able to regurgitate the multiplication tables through the number 10 in 5 minutes or less and must get a minimum of 90% correct. So… if the child takes 10 minutes for this feat, he or she does not meet THE STANDARDS. This obviously discounts the fact that the child actually knows the multiplication tables, he or she just isn’t fast enough. Now, what is the point of this STANDARD? I don’t really know and I wonder if any one actually does. Or is this just SOMETHING EVERYONE OUGHT TO KNOW. Personally, I’d like to ask the School Board and the Superintendent to take this test and score them. I wonder how they would do? Do you think they might bog down in the seven times table?

sometimes being miserable works

2008-02-12T01:40:02Z

Where would we be without a little glumness? I read an interesting article over the weekend. It had to do with happiness and melancholia. Apparently a backlash has started against the notion that everyone should be happy all the time and if you aren’t you need therapy. Several academics are now arguing for the benefits of sadness or “melancholia” as an important contributor to creativity. They point to Vincent van Gogh whose art was infused with his personal experience of mental illness. Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath are good examples of the effect of depression on poetic accomplishment. I’m sure I wouldn’t think of this trio as the poster children for the benefits of malcontentedness. After all, I think two of the three killed themselves, didn’t they? Maybe they did need a little bit of mental health care after all…?
It does bear consideration that there is something strangely motivating about having a bit of angst. A “bee in the bonnet” or something “stuck in your craw” can drive a person to demand or create change. A smidgen of discontent, irritation or annoyance and we get fired up to write letters to the editor, complain to the boss or organize a neighborhood watch program. Who writes a diary about all the good things that happen to them? Not me, that’s for sure.
So go out an insult someone? No, that might be dangerous to your health and that of the person you chose. But I guess I can embrace a little suffering in the interest of getting something done.

mucus diaries

2008-01-26T22:06:00Z

Its cold and flu season everywhere in the United States. Most people I know either are sick, are getting sick or are recovering. In comparing notes with fellow sufferers, one of the recurring topics is the plethora of mucus that the human body can produce. How do we do it? Where does it come from? And, more ominously, what is it for and where does it go? I received the following from my sister (written by one of her friends) via email, it is a horrifying account of a few hours with a pair of snotty children. Readers be warned, graphic material is contained in the following…
“Yesterday I was reading to the kids when we got to a page that was stuck together. I pried the pages open only to discover a disgusting slimy substance squashed between the pages. When I wiped it with a diaper wipe it was yellowish----more SNOT yucky, yuk, yuk One of those darling babies must have sneezed into it! UGH The day before that, it was early morning and Noah had just finished a sippy cup of juice. I was holding him when he got a coughing attack and proceeded to vomit a snotty substance all over me. He missed himself completely as well as Mika's head but I was drenched. (I was wearing a tank top and pajama bottoms). I managed to scrape the tank top off without getting my hair. Both kids were crying and I ran to the bathroom, grabbed towels, wiped myself off, wiped snotty noses, threw the cover off the bed and sat between two crying sick babies. We put on "Busy People” for the 100th time and everyone got quiet. The remainder of the day was spent wiping snotty noses and watching DVDs and Videos. Later on I came out of the kitchen to find Noah sitting in the middle of a mound of white tissues, pulling them out of the box one at a time all 700 of them. I looked over at Mika a few feet away and she was staring at the rug. I crouched down beside her only to discover she was picking alphabet pasta out of a pile of cat puke and lining them up neatly in a row.”
Ah, the joys of parenting!

why are we good?

2008-01-14T04:03:47Z

I belong to a book group. This month we read A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. This is the same guy who wrote The Kite Runner. To summarize, this is a story about two women in Afganistan, before during and after the Taliban period. They are both treated brutally by a variety of people, most importantly, by the same husband (they are co-wives). They become unlikely best friends and when the husband attempts to kill one of them the other one protects her with the result being the death of the husband. Eventually, the “murderess” is killed (death penalty) for this act while the other woman escapes.
In our discussion of this book, the topic of what motivates people to perform acts of kindness, charity and selflessness was raised. Essentially, why do people do good things? A couple of our members argued that a belief in a supreme being was necessary along with a belief that one will be held accountable for one’s behavior in the afterlife. The majority of the group seemed to be surprised by this premise. I was one of them.
Does one have to be able to anticipate a reward in order to behave well? To many of us (including several in my book group) the behavior itself and, perhaps, the response it elicits in others is enough of a motivator. It even seems logical that the assumption that people will only be “good” if they can expect reward or judgment must be preceded by the assumption that people would naturally be more likely to behave badly if they thought they could get away with it. I don’t think this is true. I believe most of us desire to be better than we are, no matter how “good” we may seem to others. And this is just as true for atheists and agnostics as it is for Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and all the other religious preferences we can find.

practical promises

2007-12-31T01:15:33Z

It’s two days until 2008 and time for some new year resolutions. I would like to resolve to be mindful and present every day of my life. But that may be too tall an order. Giving my full attention when someone else is speaking would be nice. Practicing acceptance of myself and others would be commendable. Eating only whole grain, organically and sustainably produced foods is a lofty goal. Tasting the food I chew and swallow would be fine.
Some of the above may seem easy to you, none of it is for me. I know that I will be able to continue my present habits, that’s what’s easy. Most of them are advantageous and even praiseworthy. I’ll go to work as scheduled and give a full measure of my effort to my job every day. I’ll enjoy and support my husband. I’ll love and care for my children, whether they want me to or not. I’ll re-use and recycle with all the passion I have for keeping our earth, water and air clean for future generations. Unfortunately, I’ll also read too much, sleep too much and promise to do things that I can’t or won’t accomplish.
So….perhaps I’ll just resolve to try one new thing in 2008. Maybe it will be a trip to somewhere I’ve never been, maybe a new food. Maybe I’ll skydive….not! What about you?

Holiday Spirit

2007-12-24T17:13:39Z

This morning my newspaper reprinted the famous column from the Chicago Sun of 1897 in which its editor reassures Virginia O’Hanlon that there really is a Santa Claus. I have always enjoyed re-reading this column. I like it because of its overarching good will and its lack of specificity about who and what exactly is Santa Claus. It’s clear that its author believes in a Supreme Being but he leaves no clue from what religious tradition that Being originates. I appreciate the writer’s caution.
I have a complicated relationship with the December holidays. My parentage is half-Jewish and half sort of Christian with a large dollop of atheism thrown in. As a child we celebrated a completely secular Christmas. But as my life has unfolded, I have found my Jewish half exerting a stronger pull on my heart and spirituality. Still, December in the United States is all about Christmas.
This year my husband (who is 100% Jewish) produced a homemade, 5-foot-in-diameter Star of David for our front lawn. He wrapped it with multi-colored lights and hung one of the spiral lighted Christmas trees along side it in front of our house. I think this display is a perfect representation of who we are. We love the festivity of the season: the parties, the songs, the lights, the food, the gifts (and especially the time off from work). But underneath our celebration, in our hearts and our DNA, we remain Jewish with our own view of the world and our place within it.

To light or not to light?

2007-12-17T00:26:11Z

I have a love-hate relationship with woodstoves. I love how warm and cozy I feel when I am sitting right next to one, reading an interesting book and drinking a cup of tea. I hate the mess left around the stove and along the trail from the woodpile as well as the choking, wood smoke that comes out of the chimney and joins with the smoke from our neighbors to create a suffocating inversion layer outside my bedroom window at night.
Before I moved here, I never ever saw a woodstove, in spite of growing up in the Northeast where winters are not for sissies. Where I grew up, we had steam radiators under the windows in every room. I guess the idea was that the cold air rattling through those single panes was moderated by the intense heat generated by the radiator it passed over on the way into the room. I don’t remember being cold as a child (though what child does?) so I guess the radiators worked.
I’ve seen some fascinating solutions to the home heating issue. Several years ago a friend of mine moved into a home that had solar-heated water circulating through thin pipes imbedded under the floors of the home. Her floors were deliciously warm to a bare foot throughout the winter. I’ve also heard of homes that are perfectly oriented on their lots to focus sunlight on a energy-collecting wall during the winter with the slight shift in the sun’s path during summer translating into no direct sun on the same wall during the hot months.
I am looking forward to one of the bright youngsters I have gotten to know coming up with the perfect solution to my love-hate dilemma. I’d still like to be able to sit close to a heat source when its cold outside but also wish for complete independence from the utility company. In the mean time, the sun is setting outside and the wind is starting to blow. Hope its not a “don’t light tonight” evening because I want to throw another log on the fire and settle down for a good read.

Season of the leaves

2007-11-24T04:07:33Z

Oh! ‘Tis the season! The season of the dreaded leaf pile. If you are a cyclist in Chico, this is one of the worst times of year to ride. At least that’s true inside the city limits. On beautiful fall and early winter days, crisp and bright with angled sunshine, we cyclists have little time to look up and enjoy. We must concentrate on dodging the endless leaves piled in the bike lanes. Most of the time this requires a foray out into automobile territory where our presence often generates impatience and resentment. Occasionally it is possible to ride between the leaf pile and the curb. Interestingly, the biggest piles seem to be in front of businesses along the most heavily used thoroughfares in Chico. For instance, today pedaling toward downtown on Vallombrosa by the post office my ten year old son and I skirted large piles of leaves dotting the entire length of the bike lane from Arbutus to Mangrove. It makes me think that these bike lanes are really just authorized for the use of bicyclists three-quarters of the year. Maybe I missed the memo…

where do your tennis balls go?

2007-11-05T00:38:18Z

I went up to Five-Mile today to look at the beaver dam that was blocking the water flow (apparently some of it was just removed recently and water is flowing again down Big Chico Creek). While I was watching hopefully for beaver life, I saw two large dogs playing in the water. They were having great fun retrieving the tennis ball their owners were tossing into the water for them. I have a dog who is a retrieving machine too. A while ago we got tired of throwing the balls for her freehand so we bought a “Chuck-It” to do the work for us. With that wonderful device you can throw a ball much further, and much more easily, than freehand. This makes you willing to throw it much longer. Thinking about that reminded me of the time we took her on a vacation to the beach and threw the ball into the waves over and over until finally she got so tired that she didn’t go after it that one last time and it floated off. I noticed the couple I was watching lost their dog’s ball too and were looking downstream in hopes of finding it. They didn’t. And all this thinking finally led me around to thoughts of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
I just learned about this phenomenon last week while reading the San Francisco Chronicle. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is 1000 miles off the California Coast on the way to Hawaii. They say its size is larger than the state of Texas and that its total mass equals 3.5 million tons. Some of the garbage in it extends under the ocean’s surface to a depth of 300 feet. It mostly made up of plastic. I think this garbage patch is misnamed. It should probably be called the Horrible Pacific Garbage Patch or the Utterly Disgusting Pacific Garbage Patch instead.
So what does this have to do with dogs and balls? Well, that ball we lost in the surf wasn’t the first one that went missing. As a matter of fact we now buy our dog’s tennis balls by the dozen because they get lost so fast. I bet the couple I saw today does too. So I started wondering, how much of the Great, Horrible, Utterly Disgusting Pacific Garbage Patch (GHUDPGP) is made up of our missing tennis balls? I think I’ll go back to throwing sticks. They make my hands dirty and are harder to throw (you can’t use a Chuck-It) but it might be worth it if the GHUDPGP doesn’t accumulate any new tennis balls.

how young is too young?

2007-11-02T20:14:12Z

Early College High School is an idea that is being made into a reality by the Chico Unified School District in collaboration with Butte Community College. I had vaguely heard about a partnership between the school district and Butte College that was to provide vocational technical programs to high school students. It sounded like a good idea and I recently corresponded briefly with both Kelly Staley, the interim district superintendent, as well as Sara Simmons, the director for innovative programs. What I found out is that this idea is much further along in development than I knew.
Ms. Simmons informed me that they hope to start with an initial class of 9th graders next fall (2008). These students will be transported to and educated on the campus of Butte College. The intention is to provide them with a high school education and two years of college within a five year program. Each student will have the opportunity to either graduate with an Associate’s Degree in addition to their high school diploma or will be eligible to transfer into a four year college/ university as a junior. The target students for this program are to be those presently under-represented in post-secondary education, i.e. first generation college students, economically disadvantaged or minority students.
My first reaction to this was: what a great idea! By the time a student is 18 or 19 years old they will either have a viable skill that will enable them to get and keep a decent job or will be two years away from a bachelor’s degree. As a parent, this sounds especially good. Imagine the savings on college fees and tuition! Imagine a child who can permanently provide for him or herself at age 19! But then my cynicism kicks in.
There has been story after story about the busyness of childhood. About the stress to which our young children are subjected by being relentlessly shuttled from soccer to kung fu to music lessons to tutoring to drama class, etc. (OK, I'm guilty too). About the loss of the opportunity for children to make discoveries of their own while they engage in play which is the work of childhood. So I wonder what effect this effort to push teenagers even more quickly along the continuum will have. Will it have a dampening effect on their creativity and exploration of the world? How will it effect their social development? Will they become more precocious than they already are or will it have the opposite effect of pushing them into a more isolated stance because their peer group is so limited?
These are all concerning questions. Having raised two children to adulthood with one more to go, I am very concerned about children becoming fodder for an experimental program. I’ve seen this happen with year round school, several mathematics curriculums and other less notable issues. It seems like by the time the school district gets around to evaluating the effects of their programmatic decisions the education of years-worth of students has already been impacted. And, if the program is found to be a failure, the ill-equipped students are the ones who suffer the most serious consequences.

Litter losers

2007-10-27T04:13:34Z

I have a friend who has some strange habits. Smoking is not one of them. Bike riding is. I should also disclose that my friend is an enthusiastic and very talented math teacher. When she bikes, she spends a lot of mental energy on preoccupying herself with mathematical problems that keep her distracted and, perhaps, in the saddle a little longer. Recently, she has developed a fascination for studying an issue related to smoking. She is able to do this from her perch on her bike which makes it near perfect.
As we bike riders know, the leisurely (sort of) pace of riding combined with its open air nature gives one rich opportunity to observe the surroundings, especially the ground near the bike. My friend does this too and has recently excitedly informed me that she has begun to study the empty cigarette packages frequently discarded on the roads around Chico. Like I said, a bit strange. Anyway, she has observed that lots of empty packs get thrown on the street. I suspect she is not the only person who has made this observation, however, her mathematical mind has taken it a step further than most of us. Mathematicians are all about patterns. So she started looking more carefully at the empty packs to see if she could detect a pattern. Interestingly there actually is one. The vast majority of the empty, discarded packs are Marlboros. To be exact, as mathematicians tend to be, there have been 25 empty Marlboro packs, 5 Camel packs and a smattering of other brands (we saw an American Spirit pack on Old Humboldt road last Saturday). We are still collecting data (I say we because she has got me doing it too) but have begun the analysis phase of our research. What seems to stand out is that Marlboro smokers are litterbugs.

guns at school

2007-10-07T23:43:41Z

Guns at schools are very, very scary. Sheer cold-sweaty terror is the feeling I imagine I would feel if someone brought a gun to my child's school. If one of my children had been at Las Plumas that day I'm sure I would have been sick with terror and that would have probably easily become anger at anything handy. The school administrators, law enforcement, the student with the gun.
For some reason, my mind keeps going back to the boy with the gun. I've read in the paper that he is to be charged as an adult. That seems so wrong. Even though what he did was terrifying and shocking, I still think that boy is still just a boy. A boy who's moved around a lot lately, maybe making it hard to make or keep friends. A boy who has had a couple of homes with a couple of different parents lately. Maybe a boy who's angry about how the world has been treating him. Sounds like he found a little comfort with a girl in Oroville for a while. I bet she got tired of trying to heal all of his wounds and finally said, enough is enough. Good for her, she's a strong girl who knows herself and is willing to speak up for her own needs. But the boy was so sad when she decided this. Maybe she found it easier to say that she had another boyfriend, maybe she really did. So the boy's sadness turned to anger, fueled by all the anger he already had pent up inside. And he got a gun and took it to school.
Thank heavens everything turned out all right. Two other self-possessed young ladies with courage to spare evidently knew the right words to say, the right things to do. And they brought everyone out unharmed, including the boy with the gun. Let's send these two young ladies to Iraq, sounds like they've got what it takes to handle that sorry mess. But where was I...yes, the boy with the gun.
Now we have a problem, what to do with the boy who had a gun? Well, I say try him as a juvenile for possession of a weapon on school property and terrorist threats. That seems about right. Then lets put him on probation, get him some good counseling and see what we can do about redeeming that troubled soul. Just like his friends want us to do, or they wouldn't have saved him.