Four years ago, I went to the Middle East, and twins were everywhere. They popped up double in the labyrinths of Jerusalem, the gardens of Lebanon, and the kibbutz of Ein Gedi by the Dead Sea. When a motif presents itself, you at first become a collector. You collect for a time, knowing that the repetition is important but not knowing why, until you can connect, until you can apply. So along with documenting the lives of children in conflict for my teaching fellowship, I also collected twins.

I reconnected with my elementary school boyfriend, a photographer who had recently shot some celebrity twins. He was a person who throughout life kept circling back to me, like those loops on the figure eight or infinity sign. When I first met up with him in Tel Aviv, it was awkward for a loop, and then normal. We were fifth graders once again. In the Mazda that looked just like my Mazda, he drove me to the house by the sea to which I had air mailed letters as a teenager. We drove through a fire and fell asleep with cats under an enormous tree. We sat on the floor of his apartment, acting nonchalant, like we had when we were twelve before he moved away. Was he my twin?

Goats of Ein Gedi

Your shutter clicks twenty times
You want to frame two goats that look like one
“You only know it from their two little butts,” you say
And we all marvel at the unity of their horns.

On the hills of Ein Gedi they roam
A pair within a scattering herd
They stand out as lovers, best friends, twin goat souls
In a dry landscape.

Now turn your head!
And there is the Dead Sea.
You want to float there with me
and let our arms cross over?

Photograph by Daniel Tchetchik

In Jerusalem, I told a woman I didn’t know that I was seeing twins everywhere. She told me about the Mengele Twins and Nazi experimentation during the Holocaust. Josef Mengele performed medical experiments on nearly 1,500 sets of imprisoned twins in Auschwitz to research the similarities and differences in their genetics. Around 200 individuals survived experiments ranging from injection of dyes into their eyes to change the color to being sewn together in attempts to create conjoined twins. Mengele Twin survivor Eva Mozes Kor has dedicated her life to teaching young people about the power of forgiveness. Both she and her twin Miriam survived horrific human experimentation.

In Lebanon, I met a ten year old boy named Emil. In Israel, I met another ten year old boy, also named Emil. They were the same person in a way, very gentle and wise, so I thought of them as Twin Emils. When I told Israeli Emil that I met a Lebanese Emil, he wanted to meet him too. He was learning Arabic at school, and when I told him “Marhaba” (Arabic for “hi”), he replied “Marhabten” (“hi back at you”, Arabic slang). Most of the people I met in antagonistic countries wished they could cross borders and meet the others, be in the other place. I started thinking that the Palestinians and Israelis were really twins, just working through a few domestic problems.

If you really want to see them, you see twins everywhere. You may look back at what you saw much later, and wonder how it was that you saw twins. But that doesn’t change the fact that at the time, and in that place, you saw them.

***
When I returned to Chicago, the twins followed. A student in my class was a twin who hated her twin. She always spoke ill of her, and on Halloween she dressed as her twin and acted surly all day. At our school we wore uniforms, so the costume was her regular clothing. A subtly different hairstyle was the only visual indicator that Karla was Sofia that day. Sofia had purple glasses, so Karla hated the color purple.

I taught Karla about the Israeli Palestinian conflict and how it impacted kids. But on the subject of twins, only she could teach me. That you don’t always love them, but it’s almost impossible to leave them.

Karla wrote a poem called 3,000 Days

A broken building with
a broken TV
next to it.
It has blood and
a ghost saying
three words
again and again
“I miss you”
it says in
a hiss.
The sky has
different colored
stars forming
an arrow,
pointing a path
to
a black hole.
The house is
covered in
ashes
and two birds
remain silent to
find a non-broken
home.
But they
have
no hope
and follow
the stars
to
reality.

When I returned to Chicago, I also returned to a boyfriend who was not my twin. While I had been in the Middle East, he had been in Japan. I gave him an Egyptian jalabiyya; he gave me a Japanese kimono. We tried them both on and looked like friendly foreigners, but not like twins.
I saw twins everywhere, I told him.
Oh.
No, ramping up the intensity Middle Eastern style, I saw twins. Everywhere.
OK. What are you saying?
I couldn’t explain what I was saying- partly because I didn’t know, and partly because I thought he might not understand anyway. How could I explain the two goat horns that looked like one and what that meant to me in the dry landscape near the Dead Sea? The horror of the holocaust as imagined at Yad Veshem, in photographs of survivor sisters? The closeness of children, leaning upon one another, in the skinny labyrinths of Jerusalem? The frustration but hope I felt when talking to children who were supposed to hate one another because their governments dictated so, but only had a curiosity of the other, a wondering? And how could I convey this to someone who wasn’t my twin?

A few weeks after we exchanged reunion pleasantries, the jalabiyya, the kimono, a violent storm hit Chicago, reaching the category of a “Particularly Dangerous Situation.” My best friend called me, deliciously hysterical, but my boyfriend was unmoved.

A Particularly Dangerous Situation

He’s bent over the wok, committed to the fried rice
I’m glad he’s brave and I’m lucky he cooks
The crackling of the rice competes with 70 mph winds,
warning beeps on TV, tornado sirens

Back from the basement, where we hid from glass windows
The neighbors huddled, comforted freaked dogs and jittery cats
I coveted a doll-faced toddler, a wedding ring, parallel legs
I kept looking to my love for a sign of survival

He brought mail to the basement as we ran for cover
He read the mail, even though I wanted this:
I want us to look at one another as if we are going to die
I want to know if dying together would be right

He wasn’t afraid; he rolled his eyes at weathermen
But I’ve been living so strongly that I’ve wondered if the end is near
Who do I want to be with in my last moments?
I thought of two people who were not in the basement

He read the mail, found a notice from the building
Our storage lockers are switching, he lamented
The weatherman called it a Particularly Dangerous Situation
My gasp was muffled by more envelopes he opened

You are one of the people I thought of in the basement
Because you say you have loved me since ten
Because you say we might be missing something Above All
Because recently I drove through a fire with you

Not a heart fire, an actual fire
We drove close to it so we could document the flames
and feel the heat on our lazy faces
You pointed out the smoky backdrop to charred branches

The wind shifted and the flames nearly ate us
FUCK! We yelled SHIT! HOLY SHIT! OH MY GOD!
JESUS CHRIST! Checking ARE YOU BURNED?
We screamed together in our getaway car

I communed with strangers from our building
as they received calls predicting touch down times
2 more minutes to Soldier Field, they said
4-5 minutes to Grant Park

“Honey,” he asked me, and I yearned for him
“Can you call and ask if we can keep our locker?”
“FINE,” I said in a voice that was pissed
“What’s wrong?” he asked in a voice that was innocent

“WHAT’S WRONG?!” I yelled, as if it was obvious:
It was a Particularly Dangerous Situation
Living with someone you might not want to die with
Thinking of someone you might not get to live with

The only reason we ran for cover
is that you called my cell phone, yelling
ARE YOU GUYS OK? BETTER RUN FOR COVER!
EVERYTHING IS HORIZONTAL! your drama contagious

CALL ME IF YOU DIE! I told you
CALL ME IF YOU DIE! you agreed
We’ve been through such disasters together
I thought I would die with you forever

After we separated, you told me of a dream
We were plummeting in a crashing plane
We locked eyes as we approached death
You cried while sleeping, you cried when you woke up

He comes in now that the fried rice is ready
“What are you working on?” he asks innocently
I minimize the document and show another
“Planning my trip,” I lie, running for cover

“What are you up to?” I ask, running for cover
“Nothing.”
“What are you up-“ you trail off
Is this swallowed ending our version of a fire?

***

Still swept up in the intensity of travel and storm, I became convinced that two men in my life were my Astral Dads. One of them was my best friend, and the other was the photographer of the celebrity twins and twin goats. They were born on the same day in the same year, one in Chicago and one in Israel. Their birth was nine months before mine, so clearly they gave birth to me in the astrological sense. As you’re considering my sanity, please note that when I called these two very pragmatic individuals to let them know they were one another’s Astral Twins and my Astral Dads, they agreed without hesitation.
Yes, they said in the same way, makes sense. I know what you’re saying.

Maybe I’ve been looking for my twin because everyone else came in a pair, yet I am the only lonely of my biological mother and father. Pete goes with Molly, Dave with Jon, Liz with Sarah, but me I’m alone. I could have been a sibling, but that didn’t work out.

***

I felt twinned on my wedding day, joining someone who makes sure I never feel alone. Twins surrounded us that weekend, in sickness and in health. Two twins walked us down the aisle to guitar played by a twin. One invited guest, a twin, could not attend because he was dying. My neighbor’s friend gave birth to twins that day, but one was a stillborn.

We enter and exit the world alone, twinned or untwinned. The untwinned look for their counterparts, and twins look for their separate selves. Sometimes they look together for a non-broken home, or divide their home up with borders and kill one another in wars. I’m surely not done seeing twins- collecting, connecting, and applying new meanings. There isn’t just one reason to see them. But wherever and whenever I do see them, there will always be a strand of the land between Syria and Egypt, where they first came to me.

Maybe twins are shadows of us as we run along the wall.

Jerusalem Shadow Twins
Music: 2080 / Yeasayer

I wish I was living in the time and place of old wives. They would circle around me and cluck their tongues and dangle rings and needles and look at me from different angles and assess the situation I’m in. They would tell me if this little being doing flips in my uterus is a flipping boy or a flipping girl. I wouldn’t need an anatomy scan for this- I would trust my old wives. But alas, I don’t live in this time or place, and tomorrow is my anatomy scan.

At the eleventh hour, this anticipatory night before, I’ll call around for some old wives. It’s Thanksgiving weekend, a time when people are wearing thin on “I’ll ask my mom,” but they’ll do it anyway. Even if the old wives can’t circle around me, I’ll heed their predictions.

Italian and Irish Old Wives (from Erikka and Molly Z)

Perform the threaded needle test. Take an ordinary sewing needle and thread it with about a foot of thread. Hold the end of the thread and let the needle dangle about six inches from the expecting mother’s stomach. If the needle goes in a circle: girl. If the needle moves in a back and forth motion: boy.

According to the Italian old wives, It’s a girl.

Irish variation: Instead of using a needle and thread, put a gold band, the woman’s wedding ring, on the end of the thread. If the ring swings in a circle: girl. If it swings back and forth: boy.

According to the Irish old wives, It’s a girl.

Listen to this fascinating story of an Italian “Nonna” who accurately predicts the sex of 23 of her descendants, even from beyond the grave.

Puerto Rican Old Wives (from Lilly)

If you’re still looking pretty, you’re having a boy. If you’re not having a pretty pregnancy, the little girl is stealing your beauty!

According to the Puerto Rican old wives, It’s a boy.

Filipina Old Wives (from Ginny)

If the line on your abdomen is only below the navel, it’s a girl, but if the line crosses above the navel, it’s a boy.

I don’t have a line (yet). Inconclusive.

Lebanese Old Wives (from Rami)

If the woman comes first when having sex (at conception), it’s a girl. If the man comes first, it’s a boy.

I love you, Lebanon. You are the same country that prescribes a no sex diet during the entire duration of pregnancy. And yet your predictor is the most bawdy of them all. Too bad I was born in a Puritan state and can’t discuss this matter. We Pilgrims never conceive and tell- Inconclusive.

Hungarian Old Wives (from Zoltan)

If it’s a boy: in early pregnancy no morning sickness, carry in front, very dark nipples on you, craving sour tastes, and meat. If your feet get cold, hands are dry, and father of the baby is gaining with you and if you have a runny nose. If it’s a girl: left breast bigger, gain weight around your hips, craving sweets and fruits, facial skin is dry, dislike bread crust, more round belly, carrying baby higher, some parts of your hair turn reddish.

Wow, Hungarian wives, I never thought I’d say this, but that is almost too much information. I really need you here in the flesh to assess me. How dry is dry? How dark is dark? In your opinion, does Justin look fat? My hips, not sure? Round, high? But bread crust, really? I don’t dislike it. Overall, based on your many, many predictors, according to you, It’s a boy?

***

Thank you, worldly friends, for putting me in touch with old wives around the globe. Tomorrow around this time I will return to post the flags of the countries whose old wives accurately predicted the sex of our baby.

***

It’s Halloween, a Dark and Stormy Night, and your phone rings. You answer it. It’s Gloria Steinem. She tells you that you should be afraid, very afraid. Of what should I be afraid?, you ask Gloria, not even wondering how she got your phone number. She makes her voice all ghostly and raspy, and tells you some horror stories. She starts with the one in which Rush Limbaugh calls a Georgetown student protesting about contraception a “slut”. Next, she chills your spine with the one about women not being allowed onto a panel of witnesses at the hearing on the White House mandate to require employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage. You shudder some more when she tells the tale of Rick Santorum proclaiming that those criminal-breeding single mothers need politicians who aren’t afraid of “kicking them in the butt.”

The stories that scare me the most are the ones that I experience. My friend who counsels college students tells me that many of his female students start sentences with “I’m not a feminist, but…” You’re not a feminist? Let me Google that for you. You’re not an advocate for equal rights for women? That’s too scary- it might make excessive hair sprout from under your arms, or people might think you hate men.

When I got married, I chose to add my husband’s name. It wasn’t an easy choice to make, but it was a choice. One friend commented that she was surprised, that she thought I was more “independent.” Choosing my new name, a name I will share with our family as it grows, felt independent to me. But I did consider the context and implications of being a woman who took on the name of her husband (in addition to the name handed down by her father). After the wedding, acquaintances would ask: “What is your new last name?”, and I would think: “Why do you assume I have a new one?” Or they would call me “Mrs. Gumiran”, and I would say: “I’m going by Ms.” Some of them asked why. What is Ms.? What is Ms.?!  I started to realize that many women my age and younger did not know about the title of Ms. and what it signifies. I was horrified!

From http://bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com/

So on Halloween, the last day of the month that marks the 40th anniversary of Ms. Magazine, and six days before the election that has everyone talking about the “War on Women”, I am going to get on the phone like Gloria Steinem. It’s time for the…

Ms. Marketing Campaign

Sorry to bother you all by calling random numbers, but it’s better than stuffing Halloween candy in pamphlets and handing them out to trick-or-treaters. At least this is a day on which you’re accustomed to interacting with strangers. Top telemarketing tips offers that:

A good script needs to incorporate all parts of the Sales process; Rapport, Disturb, Solution, Close. Whilst doing that you also need to be considering how people are influenced. The words will differ greatly, depending on your industry, but more importantly depending upon the purpose of your call.

Following these suggestions, I will “mirror” the answerer’s speaking patterns to develop rapport, build their need to know more about Ms. by asking open-ended questions, present the solution that knowing about Ms. will better their lives, and lock them in by asking a closed question. I’ll loosely use the script sample provided on this helpful site.

Opening Statement:

Happy Halloween! My name is Katie, and I’m an independent writer.
I’m calling to find out what you know about a particular topic so that I can write about it.
Would you be willing to talk for three minutes?

Identifying a Need:

Are you married or single?
What title do you go by? Mr. Mrs., Miss. Ms., Dr. etc?
If single: If you get married, what title will you go by? Why will you make that choice?
If a married man: What title does your partner go by? Do you know why s/he chose that title?
If a married woman: Why did you choose that title?
Do you know what the title Ms. represents?
Could I tell you what I know about it so you have more information with which to make choices?

Personalizing Our Product to Suit the Clients’ Needs:

Ms. is intended as a default form of address for women, regardless of marital status.
Note: a man’s title does not change based on his marital status.
It was used as early as the 17th century, but eventually Miss. and Mrs. replaced it, which, please note, do indicate marital status.
In 1901 there was a movement to bring Ms. back into use, to signify sex without expressing views on the domestic situation.
It was suggested again in the early 1950′s as a matter of “convenience”.
In 1961 a feminist named Sheila Michaels tried to promote its use, but was ignored.
In 1971, a friend of the important feminist Gloria Steinem heard Sheila Michaels on the radio, and suggested Ms. as the title for Steinem’s new magazine. The title was used and popularized the use of Ms..
A year later the US Government Printing Office approved using “Ms.” in official government documents.
Today some women use Ms., and others use Mrs. and Miss. I have found that many women do not know the significance of these titles and therefore do not take their meaning into consideration when choosing their own titles. I think women should have the right to choose what they’re called, but they should know the story behind the words they use.

Was some of this story new to you?

The Closing Question:

I really appreciate you giving us this time to talk on Halloween Night. I think its really important that you know the story of Ms. Now that you know the story, what title will you choose?

Let the campaign begin!

First answered call:

You are a write-rrr? A writer! I can’t read. I am stupid. Yes, I am. Don’t call me a liar. You are going too fast for me. Slow down and calm down and tell me what you want. OK, you can get three minutes out of me. I won’t give you any information, though. What do you want from me? Title? What is that? Oh- I don’t even think about chicken-shit like that.

Second answered call:

I”m single. I go by Mr. I would go by Mr., it wouldn’t change. Ms.? It’s a single woman. It isn’t? Oh. Oh. I didn’t know that. Well, if they want to bring it back, that’s cool. If I was a woman and I got married… well… I guess I would go by Mrs. I think people like status, and if they wanted to get married, they want people to know they’re married. I don’t care that Mr. wouldn’t change; for me it’s easier. Unequal? No, I don’t think that’s unequal. It’s not unequal. No problem, I hope I could help.

At some point on Halloween night, they make you stop ringing doorbells. Like houses with no lights and no candy, all of the women who answered their phones declined talking to me. It’s too late at night for me to continue dialing random numbers. At least in developing my script I became more clear about what I wanted to say. And at least I got to talk to one crazy man and one uninformed man about Ms.. Maybe some of you readers will consider this post a call and provide your commentary about Ms.. Was some of this story new to you?

From http://bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com/ 

Happy Halloween & Election Week!

Is Athena in Athens, her namesake city? If so, where and how does she live? Do today’s Athenians “believe” in her? As a deity, historical figure, patroness? Under the guise of a honeymoon, I went to find out. I looked for her on the streets and in the people. I’m still not sure if I found her- maybe if you read between my lines you can tell me?

The fundamental confusion I had about ancient Greek civilization was with all those blurry, intersecting lines. Drama, philosophy, mythology and history all seem to intertwine, leaving one to wonder if a Cyclops is a real threat and if Helen of Troy existed. When people ask about the honeymoon, they don’t ask me if I could feel the Acropolis while I slept (I could), they ask if I witnessed riots and unrest. Poor Greece. Poor because they suffer from a national reputation as lazy and economically challenged, rather than as descendants of  an innovative and influential civilization. The blurry lines could not exist without so much that flourished. It’s a lot to uphold while the world is calling you lazy.

On Adrianou Street in Athens, Aristotles Marouli sold me a beautiful leather bag. I asked him about Athena and he accessed his Greek pride which was not too far beneath the skin. “I am Greece. I am sorry.” He said he was sorry not because he was sorry to be Greek, but because he was about to insult the European Union. The Sunday before our conversation, the vote had passed to stick with the Euro rather than return to the Drachma. “I am not Germany. I am sorry. They killed millions of people. And we? I am Greece.” We spoke for a while about Greece’s contributions, dating back thousands of years, and the relative youth of countries such as my own. So what do people see and feel when they look at images of Athena and the other Olympians? According to Aristotles, they can draw on these figures as a source of pride, much needed in this time of disregard.

On to the island of Naxos, and to Nicoletta, gregarious daughter of the family that runs Hotel Grotta. Mama makes pies (fig and kefalotiri!), Papa makes wine, and Nicoletta is a tourist’s muse. On the grounds of lovely Grotta, you can park your ATV in the shadow of the Temple of Apollo, which like the Acropolis, you can feel in your sleep. As Chicagoans orient themselves to Lake Michigan, Naxians have the iconic ruin constantly on their radar, nodding in its cardinal direction instinctively in reference while indoors. I asked Nicoletta who her favorite deity was. “Mmmmm… Apollo. Yes, the music, but also, he was laid back. And Athena, she was smart, clever. Not Hera, she was jealous. Yes, sure Zeus was unfaithful (Naxian wink), but he is the father of all the gods. Ehhh… Athena was clever to plant the olive tree… yes, I love olives too… and they are good for so many things. Not Aphrodite– too passionate– I don’t want all that passion. Not all the time. Just on special occasions (Naxian wink).”

But how do people regard the Olympians today? In a religious way, historical, cultural, or something else?

“It’s for pride. Today many see us for our struggles. When we look back to Ancient history, we feel pride. (Head instinctively tilting toward the Temple of Apollo.) Religious, no. Greeks are generally Orthodox Christians. My parents’ generation more-so than mine, which is more secular. You see my parents’ generation dressing in black, attending church regularly, but ours is more relaxed.”

But I’ve heard that there’s a resurgence of polytheism. That some people do worship the Olympians as actual deities.

“You heard this? Where? Oh wait. There was something. A family in my son’s kindergarten class. The young boy did not want to go to church, which we understood, that is common. But more than that he wanted his classmates to pray to the Olympian gods. The family was not from Naxos; they were from Athens.”

Hellen ritual performed by members of the YSEE, Supreme Council of Ethnikoi Hellenes
Made with Paper app 

Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism emerged in the 1990s, and in Greece is now institutionalized under the Supreme Council of Ethnikoi Hellenes. As fascinating as this is, I decided not to hijack my honeymoon and search for hellenic rituals. Instead I did some shallow Wikipedia research and found that “polytheistic reconstructionism is not a religion itself, but is the methodology for re-establishing a historical polytheistic (or pre-Christian) religion in the modern world”.  I imagine the kindergartner and his family practiced Hellenismos or Hellenism, a traditional polytheistic religion that revolves around the Greek Gods, focused on Athena and the other eleven Olympians.  The Supreme Council’s website has a comprehensive and bold FAQ section that holds no ambiguity. For example:

Some make fun of Ethnic Hellenic religion by referring to the wanton sexual practices of the Gods. How do you respond to this?

We simply pity them, because of the degenerate level of their boundless stupidity. Our Gods and Goddesses are not personalities, nor do they have a gender that would allow them to participate in physical practices necessary for mortals.

We Ethnikoi Hellenes, describe the Gods anthropomorphically simply because the High Theology contained within the Myths can be better appreciated when it is changed into a more comprehensible language, conforming to human measures. Every Myth hides within it one of many profound symbolisms. Mortals are invited to seek and research them according to their quality, which is dependent on their Understanding of the Cosmos and Education. It is not surprising therefore, that when vulgar people bring a Myth down to their base level they interpret it accordingly.

I must be one of these vulgar people, because while gazing at anatomically awesome statues, I did spend some time thinking about how in the versions of the myths I know, gods and mortals sometimes get it on. This happens in in a transcendent way in a book I picked up in Mykonos, the day before our ferry departed for the ancient island of Delos.

Have you ever read something that you’re torn between recommending for a Pulitzer or for use as toilet paper? Morning on Delos by Giorgos Asimomitis is a true genre-buster, combination erotica/sci-fi/political op-ed. Its protagonist Zannis Elefterios is a hunky activist-scientist-time traveller, and poses a major threat to the neo-conservative movement in the United States. Thinly veiled as George W. Bush and the republican administration, the “Guidance Council” wishes to convert the United States to a theocracy. Made up of the Pastor-in-Chief, Secretary of Sacred, and the Crusader General, the Council is threatened by Zannis’ team of scientists who have been traveling in time to solve historical anomalies. If they solve the eighth anomaly, the Council may be thwarted in their plan to replace democracy with theocracy.

Zannis’ time travel is not physical, but rather a journey of his consciousness, aided by a psychotropic cocktail and Pallas, Zannis’ love interest, who anchors him to the earthly dimension as he travels. Despite a mutual attraction and hours spent together in the lab, Zannis and Pallas do not initially act on their impulses. When Zannis travels to 454 BCE Delos to witness the anomalous destruction of the island, he is moved by the scene of two Delian children. The boy falls off a cliff and dies, despite the girl’s attempt to save him. She lives, but is hours later raped by pirates. Zannis wants to travel back to this time and place to embody the boy, avoid his death, and save the girl from pirates. Before traveling back to Delos to rewrite history, Zannis and Pallas make love, a transcendent experience that makes him realize she is “not human in the ordinary sense”. Once in Delos, in the form of the young boy, he runs into the goddess Athena, who he mistakes for Pallas. It turns out Pallas and Athena are co-workers, Shepherds who traverse time. Athena is before going into after, and Pallas is after coming into before. After providing him sexual enlightenment, Athena brings Zannis before the twelve Olympians. They straighten his form to ideal perfection, rearranging him in their image to the thirteenth Olympian, and sending him back to his own time. Zannis’ sacrifices as a traveler result in the obstruction of the Christian Right’s takeover of the United States. He allows his astral body to join essences with Pallas, and they become Shepherds together.

So who have we found so far?
A clever goddess who was worshiped by your ancestors, in which you feel pride.
A relic of an honorable tradition, that makes you truly Greek.
A free and independent entity,  flowing unhindered through and around the material world.
A literary Shepherd of time, helping mortals fight just battles against theocracy.

How did I first know her? Like many, my first introduction to Greek myths was through the beautiful illustrated anthology by D’Aulaires.

What this version of the myth tells us:
She is the goddess of wisdom.
She was Zeus’ favorite child, having sprung out of his head.
She was birthed wearing a robe and helmet, with grey eyes.
Nike was her companion, the spirit of victory.
Athena led armies, but only for just causes.
She was skilled at the loom and the potter’s wheel, and demanded respect from her students. She turned the boastful Arachne into a spider in punishment for weaving an irreverent scene of Zeus and his many wives!
She competed with her uncle Poseidon for Athens, settling the dispute by giving a finer gift. Poseidon struck a cliff with his trident and made a spring. Athena planted an olive tree which gave the people food, oil, and wood. For this, she won Athens.
She ruled from the Acropolis with the wise owl on her shoulder, and the artful Athenians prospered.

The reason the olive tree was the best gift of all, is because it gave the Greeks self-reliance. This is still part of the modern Greek character. As a lazy honeymooner, I was welcomed on Athens and every island, but no desperation for my Euro or approval was displayed at any turn. In a difficult economy, the Greeks still have their olive tree, and they still have Athena. From the moment she sprung from her father’s aching head, she’s been guiding heroes from Odysseus to Perseus. If you agree that I found her, you can agree that she still guides the Greeks of today.

When you go to fertile Naxos, Greek island in the Cyclades, tell a proud, playful Naxian that his island is the best. He’ll wink and tell you, “I know.” Tell him it has everything: potatoes, antiquities, xinotiro cheese, wine, olive groves, herbed honey, kefalotiri, miles of beaches, terraced mountains, bougainvillea, kitron, and robust people. He’ll say, “I know!”

One thing you can find only in Naxos is the lucky eye of the sea. It is the oval opening of the shell shaped by sea and sand- smooth swirl on one side, rugged on the other. Creative Naxian jewelers incorporate them into earrings, necklaces, and bracelets, promising good luck. My lucky eye’s companion is my evil eye amulet from Lebanon. As they hang out on my wrist together, overlapping and intertwining, they get me thinking: What’s better? Something that protects you from harm, or something that brings you good luck? Which would I rather have, and which would most people rather have? Is there a difference, or is this a question of semantics and framing? How contextual is this choice? Do people in distress prefer protection, and people with security prefer luck?

In his influential book Teach Like a Champion, Doug Lemov claims that “people are motivated by the positive far more than the negative.” His technique #43, “Positive Framing”, involves assuming the best and talking aspirations. I see this work in classrooms every day. Teachers who narrate the positive while making least invasive corrections are highly effective in establishing a positive culture and climate in their classrooms. It’s palpable. When the teacher begins broadcasting what students are doing well, the mood matches the message. When teachers instead exhibit negative control or manage by fear, they may get short term compliance, but they don’t foster intrinsic motivation.

Is it negative control to clutch at an amulet to ward off something you fear? For millennia, people from East to West have believed in an evil eye. It’s a look from someone who envies or dislikes you, and it will cause you to suffer illness or even death. What’s extra scary about the evil eye is that its infliction can be unknown by both the giver and the receiver. In order to protect against the evil eye, various cultures have developed amulets or talismans such as hands, horns, or concentric circles that look like an eye and boomerang the evil gaze back to the envious onlooker. Fear of the evil eye is pervasive because you never know when you will be struck– envy is omnipresent. Do you have any small talent, subtle beauty, are you pregnant, or a baby? You are prey. Better keep that talisman around, because jealousy may lurk behind any set of eyes.

People also historically tote good luck charms. Rabbit feet, four leaf clovers, and and the lucky “mojo” bag are examples. So what would the people around me, 21st century Americans living in relative security, prefer? The charm or the protector?

If you want to find out what people think, one lazy way to do it is create a survey using SurveyMonkey. You can do it from your computer without having to ask anyone a question to his or her face. Besides granting you ease, it provides an anonymity that may incur a most honest response. I created a SurveyMonkey survey asking this simple question:

protects you against harm? brings you good luck?

Luck won over protection, though not by a landslide. As I imagined, the written responses showed varying interpretations of the question and the terms “luck”, “protection” and “harm”. Many of the commentators saw the two as synonymous, something along the lines of “if it brings good luck, it will protect me from harm.” Others felt more empowered to take control through protection, such as the responder who said “Harmful things are everywhere, but I can do what I can to protect myself.” Some who chose protection did so because they didn’t believe in luck, or felt that they “made their own luck”, viewing luck as something akin to fate or destiny. Some who chose luck did so because it sounded more positive, and they’d rather not live in fear, one stating that a “unique kind of luck would be not to be afraid all of the time”. Some people sought harder lines, claiming that luck felt “nebulous” and harm felt “concrete”. Others went for protection as a means to a lucky end: “I think luck might be something you make yourself when you are feeling confident and grateful, which is more likely if you have protection (security).” Still others thought about gain pragmatically: “Protection from harm is more conservative and therefore has a more limited benefit set. Presumably having good luck would translate into being less likely to be harmed, but it also would have other benefits.”

I was most moved by those who chose luck because they wanted a little harm. I was reminded by their words that “a little harm can be good for you”, we “need pain to go through life”, and “without bad (and good) life is very mediocre”.

As for me, I think I’ll continue to let my two bracelets entangle, those concentric circles that shoot back envious gazes and that smooth shell that reminds me of how lucky I was to set foot in Naxos. And if I ever get to stand again with my back to the Temple of Apollo overlooking the Aegean Sea, one rough inlet to the left of the path, one placid to the right, I’ll enjoy that mixture of fortune and fear that makes us mortals what we are.

I had the best day of my life a few weeks ago. It was my wedding. It was exactly everything that Justin and I wanted it to be. Because our friends and family placed no particular pressures or expectations on us, we were able to make it whatever we wanted. That involved making many decisions together. It also involved carving out identities of Bride and Groom. Despite how simpatico our relationship and how collaborative the wedding planning process was, some choices had to be made on an individual basis. Since nobody forced a veil over my face or clamored for my bouquet, I could be a bride of my own design. Early on I had to ask myself, what bride will I be?

I was captivated by the above photograph, found at the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco in the midst of our wedding planning. This bride has something of the iconic and something of the strange. Clearly, she didn’t spray tan for the wedding. She didn’t do eleventh hour P90X to tone her upper arms. She’s heading uphill, but there’s a pull to the sea. She’s connected to her groom and keyed in to her officiant, but she stands on her own, independent. I really like all of her fabric– she can negotiate it, but so will the wind.

Interpreting photography is fun, but at some point a bride needs to make some decisions. She needs to decide not only what to wear and what vows to say, but whether or not she’ll change her name. While a pro/con list might work to make one important decision, the myriad of decisions involved in a wedding requires a matrix. I used this matrix as a tool to investigate the origin and symbolism of various traditions, determine whether or not I like what it represents, and decide what to do. Sometimes the (dis)approval of the representation does not align with the decision, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t like my choice. Sometimes the pull to do or not do something was as elusive as the wind on this strange bride’s turban.

BRIDAL MATRIX

During my research, I learned of the epithalamium, a song written for the bride and sung on the way to her marital chamber. May this epithalamium express what a matrix can’t.

EPTHALAMIUM, by a bride, to a bride

Verano Porteño
a Buenos Aires summer all years long
place you’ve been and not been
perpetual treehouse balcony
he spins a cup of wine for you
plucks mint from nearby soil
a coppery dog at your feet
his cottony sock on your knee
your laser beam focus in his Ritalin hand

Verano Porteño
a person from a landlocked port
places not been yet, your collective map
it’s not inertia, it’s a readiness to go
to eat an olive you deliver without preview
you feel resilience in his skin
the energy of lifting pianos
the angles of elegant eyebrows
so let’s walk down these stairs into the fold

Tango en Skai
accompanied by tiny guides
to a friend in a fiery dress
you knew she’d speak her poem to a tango
and prepare your hands for Tying the Gap
reminding you of trial and error debriefs
the cutting of lesser candidates
it lets you close the loop
around the chosen finger

The balloon of our excitement will go up, up, up
to that land which is the land of true living
promise the friends who always lift you
they speak of deprogramming your brainwashed brain
at risk of pain and chance at authentic love
I think I am willing to try
to eat an olive he delivers without preview
to close the loop around the chosen finger
to walk further down these stairs into the fold

And it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
an inherited friend singing endorsement
then suddenly six parents grip points of light
a sister cries, a brother chimes
further in the fold they fold you in
your laser beam focus in his Ritalin hand
you spin a candle for a new family
it lets you close the loop

Your grandmother in a flowery blouse
ignores her paper and flashes her eye
her laser beam focus looks back on ancient times
the energy of lifting pianos
they were changed into an oak and a linden tree
intertwined, and never again apart
that’s you guys
that’s us
so let’s walk down these stairs into the fold

***

References:

Verano Porteño / Astor Piazzolla
Tango en Skai / Roland Dyens
Tying the Gap / Rima Rantisi
Jon / George Saunders
i carry your heart with me / e. e. cummings
Baucis and Philemon

During freshman year in high school, while I could have spent time learning the fundamentals of astronomy and algebra, I instead passed my time shoplifting. I would sit cross-legged in the town commons with the alpha friend who taught me how to remove sensors, and we would sort our loot. Among the hot piles, make-up was always the mode. Blush, concealer, liquid eyeliner. I applied the stolen make-up, and kept my fingernails filed and painted just as 1990 dictated. But, perhaps out of guilt, I never really learned how to make the make-up look good.

In my twenties I had trouble with ambiguity. I was conflicted by my feminist belief that women should not have to paint their faces, and my desire to have even skin tones. So on top of the layers of identity confusion, I inexpertly painted layers of base. Often I retained a natural face, and was jealous of the smoky eyes and glossy lips of less conflicted and more integrated young women. I also admired the women who did not wear make-up, looked beautiful and confident, and didn’t appear to struggle with themselves at all. I still feel a mild sense of panic when I apply make-up. It’s in my muscle memory- the deceit, the confusion, the conflicted feelings about femininity. I swipe eye-shadow across my lids with my finger like I’m stealing frosting off of someone’s birthday cake. There’s no reason for this now. I’m comfortable with myself and with the concept of wearing make-up. I’m ready to learn how to apply it well.

In 1983, as I was watching my mother expertly apply Clinique, educators Pearson and Gallagher were busy developing an instructional model called “the gradual release of responsibility.” The model involves the teacher transitioning from assuming the responsibilities of a task to students assuming all of the responsibility. Also called “I do, We do, You do”, this process begins with the teacher modeling the activity while the student listens and observes (I do). Next, guided instruction occurs as the student begins the task and the teacher prompts, questions, facilitates (we do). Collaborative learning may occur, as students consolidate their understandings by working with peers. Finally, students transfer their learning, solidify their understandings, and complete the task independently (you do). Educators Fisher and Frey further developed this model, and it is widely used by teachers today. I decided to employ it in order to learn to do make-up.

My teacher was Reese, a talented make-up artist and aspiring English teacher.

“I love what I do, and I believe it can help people. Sometimes it can even be life changing. And it’s not as different from teaching as people think. But I hope that if I can get to people early [as a teacher], I can do some work on the inside, and prevent some of the need to repair the outside.”

Activating her teaching skills, Reese “gradually released” me to do my own make-up. She helped me stretch my budget to purchase versatile tools for reasonable cost, maximum impact, and ease of use. She made the art of make-up playful yet strategic, always assuring me that we could achieve any desired effect if we applied our tools correctly. She used the words “fun” and “work” interchangeably.  

TOOLS, TECHNIQUES & TIPS FOR THE OUTSIDE

Play with a Stick and a Sponge
Get a Play Stick and an antibacterial sponge. Use a cream to powder foundation. It’s versatile and easy. You simply put it where you want it, and smooth it out with the sponge. You can keep the sponge until it grosses you out, something I’ve strangely come to peace with since the failed sponge experiment. It’s called a “PLAY” stick, so have the fun with it you used to have with a magic marker. Draw until you like it, no fear.

Try the Snake-Oil
I never used to buy eye cream because it is extremely expensive and I was suspicious that it was snake-oil. What makes eye cream different from regular cream? Supposedly, eye creams address eye ailments without harming the eye. They are meant to sooth inflammation, restore the skin, and strengthen the eye area which has very thin skin and lacks support structure. I tried some, and I do think it has reduced the dark circles under my eyes. Snake-oil or not, I enjoy putting it around my eyes morning and night. Even more important than eye cream: sleep.

We Do Smoky Eyes
In this video, Reese teaches me (and you) to create a smoky eye.

TOOLS, TECHNIQUES & TIPS FOR THE INSIDE

You’re Life Size, Not Larger
I used to expect that make-up would morph me to the point of appearing like a totally different person. It’s not that I dislike my looks, but like many people I crave the experience of total transformation. On Halloween, I am often surprised that despite my efforts to be a robot bunny, murderous tooth fairy, or Santa Claus, I’m still recognizably me. I look at myself in the mirror from across the room and am confounded that I’m the same old size. Shouldn’t my inflated character make me larger than life? It doesn’t- never to the degree that I expect. So part of feeling efficacious at make-up application is accepting that I can’t completely transform myself, nor do I truly want to. I’m not lacking that one dramatic tool or technique that will shape shift me. I’m lacking a reasonable expectation of what make-up can do.

Live in Shades of Gray
Do you ever ask yourself these questions: Why am I covering my face? Why am I trying to hide my flaws? Why am I succumbing to marketing ploys? Why am I doing something men don’t (generally) do?

Many of us could grapple with these questions, yet still enjoy wearing make-up. Let’s call this living in the shades of gray. A ten year old recently taught me how to live in the gray by drawing a line. Her bedroom door has a list of criteria for those are are “Allowed” and “Not Allowed”. Those who are not allowed include “People who care more about what they wear than other more important things in life.” Above that declaration is a drawing of a girl in a super cute outfit and a smaller sign that says “The Designer Is In”. She knows how to love fashion and design, but how to draw a line. There are more important things.

Part of living maturely in the gray is saying “This is as far as I’ll go.” It’s also about determining purpose. The art of make-up involves self-expression and exploration; it need not be used as a self-edit or to delete flaws. There are some rare individuals who live outside the gray, choosing consciously each day.  What they eat/don’t eat, buy/don’t buy, do/don’t do is carefully aligned with their views. While I really admire these people, I notice that in order for them to maintain fidelity, their lives have to be subtractive. My desire to taste, try, add on, and say yes, trumps my desire to walk all of my talk. For me, living in the gray involves setting parameters and purpose, and making pledges like the one Mariela posted on her bedroom door.

Parameters= wear make-up that enhances not masks.
Purpose = self-expression, not concealment.
Pledge = to be creative and have fun.

A homophone is a word that sounds the same as another word but differs in meaning. Homophones may or may not differ in spelling (right/write, tire/tire). The above photograph is of a letter, sent to me by the Chicago Board of Education, confirming my resignation, and misspelling a homophone.

It’s hard for me to write these words: I am not a teacher anymore. I resigned from the Board and am now a coach of new teachers at turnaround schools. A turnaround is defined by Mass Insight as “a dramatic and comprehensive intervention in a low-performing school that: a) produces significant gains in achievement within two years; and b) readies the school for the longer process of transformation into a high-performance organization.” The stakes are high, and the teachers I coach are under a lot of scrutiny and pressure.

Transitioning from teacher to coach is like going from being a superhero to being the person who massages the superhero before she changes into her world-saving cape and leaps into the air. My bosses don’t see me as a masseuse; they believe that coaching is the lever to raise teacher and student performance. A lever amplifies an input force to provide a greater output force. So yes a lever can uplift you, but there’s force involved.

In 2010, results from a Tennessee experiment “Project Star,” showed that teachers are the largest determining factor of student achievement. This conclusion has become a panacea in the current national debate on school reform. Much like a homophone, this statement can crown or crucify a teacher depending on its context and how it is spelled out. The belief that teachers are highly influential could serve to improve the regard and increase the support of teachers. However, in today’s climate of accountability and measurement, it seems to be used more often as an weapon for teacher bashing. Teachers are blamed for the failing of our schools, and current school reform policy purports that the way to fix our schools is by fixing our inadequate teachers.

This is not to say that there aren’t incompetent, clock-punching teachers in our system. There certainly are. In fact, one of the reasons turnaround schools exist is because it is close to impossible to fire tenured teachers. The union supports its constituents regardless of the quality of their instruction.

My colleagues and I share a sense of urgency to close the achievement gap by training, coaching, and supporting teachers who work in schools that have been failing for decades. We don’t point to challenging factors as excuses. As a lever, I amplify a force that my teachers and their administrators already exert. But I’d like to pause from pushing for a moment, and point out five things that teacher-haters and policy makers sometimes overlook or forget:

Teachers have to do everything.
In most fields, there are separate positions for employees involved in design, implementation, and evaluation. Teachers have to do all three of these. When people unfamiliar with the work of a teacher express envy over a 3:00 dismissal, they are overlooking that the 8-3 portion of the day is only one-third of the teacher’s work. Most teachers I know come to school very early to prepare their materials and classrooms, and leave very late after assessing student work and restructuring lessons based on the assessment data. Most teachers I know spend at least half of their weekends planning lessons and doing paperwork, and a good deal of their evenings communicating with families. Most teachers I know spend a significant portion of their winter, spring, and summer “vacations” engaging in professional development or working on curriculum.

Teachers are working within a system that is outdated.
This RSA animate of Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk makes a compelling case for a complete paradigm shift in education. Robinson explains how compulsory public education was established during the industrial revolution and based on a factory model. This model no longer serves today’s students, but rather causes their capacity for divergent thinking to deteriorate. He states: “This isn’t because teachers want it this way… it’s just because it happens that way… because it’s in the gene pool of education.”

The people who are telling us that students are failing are the same people who are getting paid to test our students.
Gene Lyons recently noted in his column that public schools are doing better than Michelle Rhee and other “reformers” want us to think. Just a few weeks ago, Kevin Drum interpreted the results of the NAEP’s Trial Urban District Assessment, a measure of academic progress in big-city school districts. He notes: “These urban kids have improved their math and reading performance by anywhere from half a grade level to a full grade level in just eight years. There are plenty of nits to pick with data like this, and I’ve picked some of them in the past. Still, why is it that progress like this so rarely gets reported? It’s fairly impressive, no?” This is not to say that the achievement gap has been closed or that our scores aren’t lagging behind those of other countries, but doesn’t it seem strange that all we hear about is the dismal state of American education? And doesn’t it seem strange that it’s all based on standardized tests scores, and that these tests are manufactured by the same companies that manufacture the test preparation materials and programs?

Teaching to the test is obligatory and not fun.
Most teachers I know want their students to be critical thinkers, productive members of society, and creative and happy individuals. Most teachers I know would like to teach holistically, to tap into their students’ passions, and inspire them to better our world. However, teachers are under such incredible pressure from their administrators (who are under pressure from district level administrators) to raise test scores, that their curriculum, management, and instruction begins to reflect those of standardized tests. When I first entered the field in 2000, project-based, experiential learning was in vogue. Now it is the norm for schools to hold mock tests, test-prep rallies, and completely restructure their curricula in service of the test. The myriad of tools to collect and analyze data can be helpful to target students’ individual needs and differentiate instruction, but it also begets more testing. We test to prepare for tests which are meant to be indicators of performance on other tests. And we teach our students that they come to school to learn how to take tests, and then to take them, and take them some more.

Teachers can not single-handedly combat all social ills.
They should try, and they do try. And many of them hold themselves so accountable that they are consumed by guilt. They can’t fall asleep at night, worrying about the children they can’t reach. One teacher thinks about the child whose father suckerpunched him in front of school security cameras, on whom she had to call DCFS. She thinks about her students with early onset diabetes, who can’t exercise outside because it’s not safe, and can’t exercise inside because it’s too small. She thinks about the parents who couldn’t come to the conference because they work three jobs. The parents who avoid school functions because they are illegal immigrants. She thinks about how she has thirty-two students reading at a range of of eight grade levels, about the mom who asks her child to read to her while she cooks versus the mom who is functionally illiterate. She doesn’t blame her students or their parents. She puts the onus back on herself. She asks herself, “What more can I do?”

***

As a coach, how can I make my teachers feel supported, not blamed? Wikipedia tells me: “The ideal lever does not dissipate or store energy, which means there is no friction in the hinge or bending in the beam. In this case, the power into the lever equals the power out, and the ratio of output to input force is given by the ratio of the distances from the fulcrum to the points of application of these forces. This is known as the law of the lever.”

Jim Knight‘s article What Good Coaches Do, published this October in Educational Leadership, makes the case for coaches and teachers interacting equally as partners. He describes seven partnership principles: equality, choice, voice, reflection, praxis, and reciprocity. He stresses the importance of coaches enrolling teachers authentically in the coaching process, identifying goals, listening, asking questions. Coaches also explain practices and provide feedback; but in a partnership model, this involves a collaborative exploration of data.

I am particularly influenced by Knight’s explanation of dialogue in the coaching process. Based on Paolo Friere‘s description of dialogue as a “mutually humanizing” form of communication, Knight suggests entering into coaching dialogue with humility, temporarily withholding our opinion to hear others, and engaging in a radical honesty. “That is, rather than covering up the flaws in our argument or hiding our ignorance, in dialogue we display the gaps in our thinking for everyone to see. If we want to learn, we can’t hide behind a dishonest veneer of expertise”. The loud voices in the political debate on school reform should consider that advice. Sadly absent from the dialogue is the voice of our teachers.

The charge of my new experience is to listen to the voices of the teachers.

***

For those of you who are disappointed that this post was not a rant on the misuse of homophones, below are some favorite homophones from A-Y:

awful/offal, bald/balled/bawled, chic/sheik, discussed/disgust, eight/ate, fairy/ferry (not a problem in the northeast where we can actually pronounce the short e sound), guise/guys, heroin/heroine (feel free to debate this on the basis of its etymology), I’d/eyed, jinks/jinx, kernel/colonel, liable/libel, morning/mourning, not/knot, overseas/oversees, principle/principal, queue/cue, roomer/rumor, sects/sex (feel free to debate on this on the basis of pronunciation), taught/taut, use/ewes, vain/vane/vein, whacks/wax, you’re/your. There are no homophones that start with Z.

It’s been a little gloomy here, what with blood diamonds fueling civil wars, Chicago youth murdered by the hundreds, and bacteria holding my counter tops hostage. How about a few cookies to cheer us up?

Of course, these can’t be conflict-free cookies. Their very batter stirs up psychological disturbances from my past. Behavior was modified and inner children were hugged in the baking of these cookies. Thankfully my friend Tim of Lottie + Doof was there to help me through it.

It all started in 1979 on the first day I met my stepmother. I was three, but just as neurotic as I am at thirty-five. I don’t remember this day at all, but I am told that on the first day we met, we baked cookies. What a classic lure! Just as Hansel and Gretel were lured into the witch’s oven by a gingerbread house, I was lured by chocolate chips. And just as the cannibalistic witch of the fairy tale fattens up children in an iron cage, I was fattened up with cookies!

Actually, knowing three year old me, I probably licked the spoon briefly with a paranoid tongue and ate a single cookie with hesitant bird bites. Life is pretty Disney for my stepmother and me today, but many of our years together were quite Grimm. And so the cookie-lure of my primary years lurks in my psyche.

Flash forward six years to the fourth grade. I was drafted into the Brownies. Yesssss. Finally, I had an in to that exclusive group, that secret society, no doubt shrouded in secret handshakes and hard to crack codes. We would surely meet in a cave somewhere, don our brown sashes, and ceremoniously pin our sisters as we chant in strange tongues.

Really we met in the Kindergarten classroom at my school, and glued a Polaroid photo of ourselves onto a construction paper flower. How lame. There was no secret handshake, nothing secret at all. The overhead fluorescent classroom lights gave off their ordinary glare. Ah but…. on the calendar… a meeting at Lisa Bard’s house! It must be off school grounds where the secret society flourishes. And what happened there? Kids yawned, and moms delivered instructions on how to sell Girl Scout cookies. I dropped out of Brownies immediately.

So here is where I started to associate cookies with The Other. At this time I lived in two different towns, and went to school in a third. It’s a long story that involves divorce, joint custody, and now cookies. Cookies were for the Lisa Bards of the world, the people who host Brownie meetings. Cookies were for suburban bake sales, for sports teams I don’t play on. That doesn’t mean I won’t eat cookies, but I don’t bake them, and I certainly do not sell them.

When we become adolescents, we do a Spice Girls thing in which we have to look like everyone else while simultaneously looking only like ourselves. We’re all scantily clad, but only I am posh and only you are sporty. This extended into my twenties and thirties when it came to domestic tasks. I found that I often lived with a person to whom I assigned: Only you are the baker. Why did I remain so adolescent about this? My sense of efficacy as a domestic person was stymied as the people I lived with became talented cooks and bakers and homemakers. I became skilled at certain domestic tasks- arranging books beautifully on a shelf- but didn’t bother with others. One thing I still have not done, to this day, is baked cookies. My friend Tim, who I have known for eighteen years and at one point lived with for seven, is an incredible baker and blogger of cookies and more. His baking became increasingly enjoyable and intimidating as he racked up recipes and stacked up cookies throughout the years.

If you’re a teenager, you may assign discreet roles to yourself and  your peers- you’re the jock, you’re emo, you’re the baker. But if you’re an adult, you may capitalize on your friends’ talents without being concerned with identify formation.  You get over your stepmother’s lure and your Brownie disillusionment, and you get in the kitchen and roll up your sleeves. Today I’d like to be an adult, and bake some cookies with my friend.

It turns out that making cookies is both simpler and more complex than I thought. What’s complex is that it is chemistry and requires precision. For example, Tim taught me that when you measure the flour it’s important not to pack it in the measuring cup. You should spoon it in gently, spoonful by spoonful, then use the edge of the spoon to level off the top (just like in chemistry class). It’s also important that each raw cookie is the same size, so that they bake evenly. Unlike with cooking, you can’t get away with being experimental or crude. The simplicity lies in how wonderful it feels to share the cookies once they are done. It’s a pure act. You made this thing out of flour, sugar, butter, butter, butter, and a few more ingredients, you baked it, you handed it to someone, and they became happy. They ate it and smiled and felt better than they felt before you gave the cookie. I find that in my daily life I am constantly trying to make people happy, but it usually requires more layers or more time. Cookie happiness is immediate and pure.

And now, the recipe:

PISTACHIO-CHERRY OATMEAL COOKIES
(Recipe by Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park via One Sweet Cookie by Tracey Zabar)

13  1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1  1/4 cups packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/3 cup honey
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 large eggs
2  2/3 cups bread flour
1  1/2 cups old fashioned rolled oats (not instant)
1  1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3 cups pistachios, shelled
3 cups dried sour cherries
fleur de sel, for sprinkling

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and salt. Mix in the honey, vanilla, and olive oil, and cream until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, then add the flour, oats, and baking soda, and mix just until combined. With a silicone spatula, fold in the pistachios and dried cherries. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight.
(Or a for a while!)
Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line two half-sheet pans with parchment paper.
Using a small scoop, drop the dough onto the prepared pans, and lightly press down each cookie. Sprinkle with the fleur de sel. Bake for about 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool completely on wire racks.
This recipe makes about 70 small cookies.

Photograph by Tim Mazurek

BAKE SALE REDEUX

Remember the yawning kids at Lisa Bard’s house? The Girl Scout cookies I never sold? The suburban bake sales for sports teams I never played on? This time, I got my chance to sell cookies, my chance to belong. I helped Tim sell cookies along with his friend Sandra of Chicago’s best bakery, Floriole. They had a booth at Dose Market, a year-round market selling local fashion and food. Discriminating foodies chose between eggnog meringues, whole wheat shortbread, earl grey chocolate, and more. Some just bought them all to avoid having to choose. I ate them all, for the purpose of being able to describe them to customers.

Photograph by Tim Mazurek

Cookies, in their simplicity and complexity, mean something new to me now. They mean friendship, generosity, and happiness. They are something I can bake, and so I’ll bake on.
Coming soon: cookies for the neighbors.

One reason that I avoid cleaning, besides being lazy and having better things to do, is that deep down I feel that I am perpetuating filth, not annihilating it. Sometimes the act of cleaning feels so dirty. One reason for this is the sponge. I do not understand the sponge at all. It is counter-intuitive to me. You have this object that absorbs, which makes me feel that germs (and everything bad you’ve wiped the sponge over) are festering inside of the sponge. Keep it a month or more, they say? That’s a month or more of festering! Heat it in the microwave, a trick they prescribe? It smells like sautéed microbes. And now that it’s absorbed a month’s worth of everything you wanted to get rid of, then sweated half of that out into your cooking apparatus, spread it around on other things you want to clean, and make them dirtier.

I have an innate sense of mistrust. I remember being a young child as my mother ran a hot bath for me. I thought about how she could, if she wanted to, drown me in the scalding water. I had no reason to think this; my mother is very nice. Trust nobody, not your mother, not a sponge. Because of this, I can’t seek help in conducting this research on the sponge. I’ll have to do it myself. And then with some curmudgeonly scientist’s method, I’ll have to test it, and prove the good or evil of the sponge once and for all.

***

After some preliminary research, I am ready to conduct an experiment using the scientific method. I read online that there are three methods for cleaning a sponge:

THE SOAK METHOD
Soaking with bleach supposedly kills 37%-87% of bacteria.

THE MICROWAVE METHOD
Microwaving for a minute will allegedly murder 99% of bacteria.

THE DISHWASHER METHOD
Washing your sponge in the dishwasher is thought to obliterate 99.9998% of bacteria.

But I can’t trust the word of wikihow. I must employ the scientific method, and control all of my variables. For the past ten years, I have worked with students in Chicago Public Schools to conduct science experiments and science fair projects. Resisting the lure of the fancy three-fold display board, I wanted my students to develop true inquiry-based projects and to CONTROL THEIR VARIABLES! I wanted my students to observe, question, research, hypothesize, test according to a controlled procedure, collect data, analyze data, and draw conclusions.

One time a fourth grade team of scientists was testing the affect of gender on the ability to throw a ball. Several boys threw balls and several girls threw balls, and the distance the ball traveled was measured and compared. A usually quiet student, Enrique, noticed that the data seemed skewed. Indeed, Ashya (whose super far distances were outliers) was using a different ball! The scientists decided to retest that set of data, because they determined that the ball was a variable and had thrown off the results. Ah, a method to the madness!

After ten years of forcing students to engage in the scientific method, it is time for me to do the same, to test the affect of these three cleaning methods on the bacteria in a sponge. I will follow the method as I have prescribed it.

***

SCIENCE FAIR = SPONGES

PURPOSE
Which cleaning method is most effective at removing bacteria from a sponge: the soak method, the microwave method, or the dishwasher method?

HYPOTHESIS
I think the dishwasher method will remove the most bacteria from a sponge. I think this because the dishwasher cycle is longer than the soak method or the one minute microwave method. Also, I observe that dishes that come out of the dishwasher are clean, and I usually don’t get sick when I eat off of them, so they probably don’t contain too much bacteria. I observe that items I microwave get heated, but they don’t get clean.

MATERIALS
Four new sponges, the exact same brand.
Four petri dishes.
Agar.
A stove.
A pot.
Scissors.
A microwave.
A dishwasher with cleaning tablets.
Bleach.
Water.
A tub for soaking.
A camera.
Regular kitchen surfaces, dishware, and utensils.

PROCEDURE
1. Open all four new sponges. These sponges will be used for:
a) soak method, b) microwave method, c) dishwasher method c) control (do not clean this sponge before sampling)

2. For three months, wipe surfaces and dishware with all four sponges. Take care to use each sponge as equally as possible by cleaning surfaces and items in quadrants, with attention to area and volume of food. Also control the washing and squeezing of the sponges. Observe and note any noticeable differences in the appearance or smell of the sponges.

3. Create four agar plates. Boil one teaspoon of agar flakes in one cup of water. Reduce to a simmer, and allow agar to dissolve (about five minutes). Put dissolved agar in a jar and swish it around so it’s evenly distributed. Allow it to decrease in temperature. Once warm but not hot, pour a small amount of agar into each petri dish. Be careful to only open a small part of the top of the dish so as not to allow too much air inside. Quickly close the top of the dish. Briefly tip the dish upside down to avoid condensation on the lid. Allow the petri dishes to sit at room temperature. The agar plates will be ready when the agar has solidified into a gelatinous substance.

4. Conduct all three cleaning methods:

4a. The Soak Method (Soak in 10% bleach, 10% water for 3 minutes)

4b. The Microwave Method (Wet the sponge and microwave for 2 minutes)
Warning: Allow to cool before squeezing!

4c. The Dishwasher Method (Place sponge in dishwasher for one complete cycle)

Note: Sponge 4 is a control sponge. Do not clean this sponge.

5. After three months, cut the sponge down the middle and about a half an inch from the end. Wipe each inner part of the sponge over the surface of the agar in the petri dish.

6. Wrap the petri dishes in a dishcloth, and store them in a warm, dark place, such as a cabinet. After three days, observe.

RESULTS

These results are very shocking and confusing. They do not match my hypothesis at all! The petri dish with the most bacteria is the dishwasher method dish, which is the method I thought would be most effective at killing bacteria. The second most bacteria-ridden dish belongs to the microwave, which I hypothesized would be the second most effective. Soak and control methods had almost no bacteria in the dishes, making my results the reverse of what I hypothesized.

CONCLUSION OF A CLEANER

If I were to trust this data, I would never clean my sponge. I would become paranoid about something new- that perhaps microwaves and dishwashers grow bacteria on sponges (and… what else…?!).  I’m more apt to mistrust my results, because I know that my implementation of the scientific method may have been flawed.

CONCLUSION OF A SCIENTIST

How was it flawed? What variables was I not able to control or what additional variables may have come into play? First of all, my method of using the sponges evenly for three months was inherently flawed. I tried to divide objects into quadrants when cleaning them, but because we don’t eat evenly in quadrants, and because sometimes guests and other impostors used the sponges during those months, measured cleaning was impossible to achieve. Also, this was my first time making agar plates, and though I tried to wash my hands well when making them and open and close the lid quickly when pouring in the agar, it’s possible that some wayward bacteria got into the petri dishes in the process. Another mistake I made was that I microwaved the sponge for a minute dry, wet the sponge, then microwaved for two more minutes. Maybe the dry microwaving increased the bacteria in the sponge (and by the way, it’s also a fire hazard- oops). Finally, my method for wiping the sponge on the agar is questionable. I cut the sponges and wiped the inside area on the agar’s surface. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to wipe the original surface of the sponge instead. So what will I do? Go on feeling paranoid as I sponge surfaces? Become obsessive compulsive about appliances? Try it all over again? Inconclusive!

CONCLUSION OF A TEACHER

While holding high expectations of our students, it’s easy to become disgruntled about the work they produce. For many years I have felt that students could do better science fair projects. I should have conducted my own experiment long ago in order to understand- it’s hard! Many times we ask our students to do things that we haven’t done ourselves, or haven’t done since we were in school. Though this experiment was time consuming (and may not even be over yet), it helped me understand the nuances and challenges of the scientific method. The So Crazy It Just Might Work episode of This American Life explores the passion and diligence required to pursue experimentation for the long haul.

Will I keep pursuing this? Should I start over with four fresh sponges? Or should I learn to live with uncertainty (and bacteria)? What do you think?

I have been teaching on the South Side of Chicago for ten years, and yet I have not been an authentic part of the communities in which I work. I have lamented low attendance at family nights, and yet aside from a first communion, a basketball playoff game, and a few home visits, I have not reached out to spend time with families outside of a school setting.

It’s not because I don’t want to, or don’t find it important. I read about Paolo Friere‘s work in Brazil, and about Paul Farmer‘s work in Haiti, and I recognize the importance of working in partnership with communities. I know that for true change to take place, initiatives must be grown organically in collaboration with community members, not generated by academics and imposed upon them. But I never found the right entry point.

One night a few years ago I left school late, probably grading fraction quizzes or setting up microscopes for a lab, when I saw a procession of adults and children, carrying points of candle light, singing. They were turning the corner of 71st and Christiana, a spot usually devoid of magic for me, the site of my daily grind. The procession was mysterious, haunting, and humbling. For what was this vigil? Remembrance of loved ones lost? A protest of urban ills? An appreciation of saints? Why didn’t I have a candle and a place in this line? Would I scold a student for not having homework the next morning, not knowing he had been processing the streets all night? Had I done that many a time? Would my time that evening have been better spent at this vigil, rather than inside the building inserting common denominators? I didn’t see an entry point. I drove away.

I sing in the Chicago Community Chorus. We are directed by a gospel composer, and much of what we sing is religious. I am not religious, but I sing the spirituals and masses and cantatas with my own brand of conviction. The music is my entry point.

Our chorus participated in Urban Dolorosa, a multimedia vigil in response to the 263 young people who have been killed by violence in Chicago over the last three years. The five night “pilgrimage” included vigils at five churches in five different neighborhoods, and I participated in each one. The O Madonnas movement we sang contains these lyrics:

Permit me then to grieve with you
To learn from you
To love your children as my own.

Here was my long awaited entry point.

NIGHT ONE: SAINT SABINA

Saint Sabina is an African-American Catholic church in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side. Their pastor, Michael Phleger, is a controversial social activist. This German American Southsider adopted children in defiance of a cardinal, guided parishioners to provide outreach to prostitutes by buying their time, and erected billboards protesting “disrespectful” rappers such as 50 Cent and Lil Wayne. Father Phleger was not there this night, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel was.

Emanuel stood before the parishioners and other guests, including those in rows reserved for Parents of Murdered Children, and told us of a difficult call he made a few hours before. He had called the mother of a child who had been shot in the leg by a Latin King while trick-or-treating. He lectured to us that “We will be a strong city if we’re one city”, but it sounded like empty rhetoric as I sat in a racially segregated church within a racially segregated neighborhood. We were told that our program, with the names of the murdered youth, had to be updated to include the brother of one of our young performers. I shook my head along with some of my fellow chorus members, and our conversations were just as vague and unsatisfying as the Mayor’s statement. “It’s terrible,” we said. “It’s complicated”, we said. “What can we do?” we asked.

The performance was a bit more specific in its language and imagery. Spoken word artist Mama Brenda Matthews howled at us: “Can you help us catch our falling stars, so they can be bright lights?” Baritone singer Khary Laurent’s voice boomed down the aisles as he picked up shoes of deceased children and placed them on an altar. The photography of Carlos Javier Ortiz’s Too Young to Die project was displayed on a screen, corresponding with the libretto of Susan Johnson and music of Fr. Vaughn Fayle. The text includes liturgy as well as excerpts from Chicago writers such as Carl Sandburg and Alex Kotlowitz:

Beside the Lake, the native grasses bow their heads in hushed remembrance of summers past.
Her children are no longer free; there are no children here.
Yet the city, unmoved, big shouldered- carries on-
is there no balm, no remedy, no physician anymore?

Of course the most powerful performers were the young people who dressed in everyday clothes, chatted in the aisles before the performance, added photos and memorabilia to the altar, and clinked marimbas that manage to sound both woeful and hopeful. After lighting our candles, they they led us out of the church in procession around the block. We sang:

Pour out your heart like water
for the lives of your children-
let justice roll down like waters
righteousness like an everflowering stream.

The mayor and a few citizens made the evening news.

NIGHT TWO: CHICAGO TEMPLE

More dignitaries this night. Jean-Claude Brizard, CEO of Chicago Public Schools. As well as many white people, at the lovely First United Methodist Church at Chicago Temple in downtown Chicago. My best friends were in attendance, and from many pews away I saw them wiping their eyes as the names of children were called out. The saddest part of all was when it was said: “If there are any names of young people who have not been mentioned, please say them now,” and names were spontaneously spoken from the pews. This night only two names were called, but that was enough to make my friends cry. Our “vigil” was not a procession this night, as we were in the heart of crowded downtown at rush hour and could have easily disbanded, but a gathering across the street at the Picasso statue. The minister rang a bell for the number of youth who have been killed in this school year (16), and my friends and I later laughed over dinner about how quiet, how weak, the ring of the bell was. An ineffective ding in a noisy city that’s hardly listening. Even the people gathered there, trying to listen, could barely hear it.

Though many in attendance this night seemed less affected by urban ills like gang warfare, drug abuse, and youth violence, they were an important audience. People should be exposed to the issues of marginalized communities, and not just by the evening news. Perhaps someone there has the resources or influence to do something about the problem. And though the ding of the bell sounded weak in the roar of the crowd, people came to listen, and they heard something this night.

NIGHT THREE: NEW MOUNT PILGRIM MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCH

No dignitaries this night. And hardly any white people. And many, many, many names of unlisted victims spontaneously spoken from the pews. Tonight’s procession felt different. I felt in it. Trash swam around our ankles as we walked around the block. Pit bulls behind fences sang along to our song, truly in tune. A processing woman fell into a hole. A hole, yes a hole in the sidewalk, the diameter of a leg, as if the street was swallowing her up. But she was quickly pulled out. No complaints were issued about the hole; folks just laughed at the absurdity and processed onward. The singing stopped momentarily, and a teenager lamented, “Dang, I was really feeling that,” and so the singing started up again. We were all feeling it. There was no mayor, no CEO, no media–  just grieving, resilient people affected by a violence regarded as a common cold.

The amazing new documentary The Interrupters tells the story of three “violence interrupters” who protect Chicago citizens from crimes they themselves used to commit. They work for the highly effective Cease Fire organization, which operates on a public health model. Cease Fire classifies violence as a learned behavior that can be prevented using disease control methods. The film explains that people in communities historically plagued by violence are “infected”, and from a young age imagine themselves dying from the “disease”.

With it’s garbage streams and leg-sized holes and singing pit bulls, the Garfield Park neighborhood felt infected. But it also felt charged with strong people ready to sing new words, laugh at absurdity, and pull people out of holes, while barely missing a note. At one point a woman from my chorus and I became separated from the procession. We were about thirty paces behind, delayed as we tried to relight our candles that were burned out by the wind. We kept singing, but our voices sounded so solitary. This gave me just the tiniest taste of the isolation people in marginalized and neglected neighborhoods must feel. Where singing about pouring out your heart for the lives of children feels farcical, ridiculous. Eventually we rejoined the line, and thanked one another for the support during that brief time of isolation. Why wouldn’t a young person in a fractured neighborhood cling to a group, a family, a gang for protection and support? Who else is going to pull you out of the hole?

Photograph by Carlos Javier Ortiz

NIGHT FOUR: HOLY CROSS – IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY

This night was throat-choking sad. It’s not that crushed crying of recent immigrants is actually sadder than the resilient laughter of generational poverty-stricken folk, it’s just that it SOUNDS sadder.  When you hear crying, you tend to cry yourself, like a contagious yawn. You can fill in the blank of the narrative: We escaped the drug cartels of Durango and arrived here for a better life, and it was a little bit better, until Juan was shot.

Holy Cross is in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, a now predominantly Mexican-American community that was named for the former union stock yards depicted in Upton Sinclar’s 1906 novel The Jungle. Four years ago, former mayor Daley yelled at residents after the shooting of a pregnant woman. “You know who did it. Don’t be blaming the police. Look in the mirror and say, ‘I can do better.’ …If you don’t turn these individuals in, you’ll be marching [against violence] for the rest of your life.” I haven’t read The Jungle yet, but I will. Wikipedia says it “depicts in harsh tones poverty, absence of social programs, unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness prevalent among the working class, which is contrasted with the deeply-rooted corruption on the part of those in power.” No dignitaries attended this night’s event.

Photograph by Carlos Javier Ortiz

NIGHT FIVE: HYDE PARK UNION CHURCH

This was the final night of the pilgrimage. We were conscious of being recorded, wanting to do justice to the victims and their families with each note we sang.

We processed down manicured streets past stately homes, as this is what is called the “nice” part of Hyde Park. Unlike in Garfield Park where curious residents peeked out of windows yet stayed inside, Hyde Parkers casually exited their brownstones and tudors to inquire about the vigil. I spoke to some people my friend knew, a kind family whose parents are deeply involved in improving urban education. The two children in the family were concerned that our candles had burned out. They asked us if they could run inside and fetch the propane lighter for us. Protected by a pleasant neighborhood and nurturing parents, they felt safe enough to perform an act of kindness to strangers. They returned from the house to light our candles, and when the flame first flickered the girl exalted “Yay!”. We thanked them and continued on. “Have a nice walk!” they called.

Photograph by Carlos Javier Ortiz

That’s not a diamond ring!
No, it’s not. It’s an aquamarine. It’s my aquamarine engagement ring.
It reminds me of searching for seaglass by the Atlantic ocean, of my Italian grandmother’s blue crystal candy dish, of the coast of soon to be visited Santorini.

A week before Justin presented me with this beauty, he solicited some guidance on ring selection.
Simple, I said, but with something strange or different about it. Not a diamond.

Why did I ask for not a diamond?
For one thing, everyone else has them. And a lot of people have a lot of them. By that I mean that I see women of all economic stratas barely able to lift their hands to steer their cars or swipe their credit cards as rocks and rocks and dripping rocks anchor them down.And sometimes I don’t like to have the thing that everyone else has. Growing up within a half-time custody arrangement made me belong everywhere and nowhere, and vacillate between wanting to fit in and wanting to stick out. There are certain things that everyone has that I want too: an iPhone, a golden retriever, a honeycrisp apple. But there are certain trends I don’t want to perpetuate, like Uggs in the summer. And diamond engagement rings!

I call diamond engagement rings a trend, because they are not really FOREVER. They have not been worn as engagement rings for very long, and they do not always outlive other stones. I say that, but I can’t elaborate yet. Justin was grumbling about the crooked De Beers long before we were thinking about getting married, and I overheard but I didn’t delve.

Diamonds are expensive, and I’ve never felt right owning expensive items that nobody else benefits from but me. It feels selfish. And there are some other problems with diamonds. It has to do with AFRICA. There’s a movie depicting this called Blood Diamond that I still have not seen. My mom gave a copy of the DVD to Justin a few Christmases ago. Had she known that it portrayed the diamond as an evil character, I am not sure she would have given the gift. My mom wears many large diamonds upon her wedding finger, and she is polite about my aquamarine. We sat together at lunch once, our hands resting side by side, the contrast clear. I don’t criticize her sparkling loot, but I want to know more about why the alternative I’ve chosen is a fair one.

The person who knows is Justin, and not only is he knowledgeable, he is a great teacher. We have set a date to eat at Ethiopian Diamond, to dine by candlelight and discuss the dark side of this bright stone.

DIAMOND DATE

Justin waxes heretic on diamonds as we sip honey wine and rip injera apart. He provides many compelling reasons not to fuel the diamond trade. I test his convictions and his love for me when I ask him if he would have bought me a diamond had I wanted one. Does he hate diamonds more than he loves me? Will this date end with me hating diamonds too? Listen to find out.

After the date I was intellectually opposed to diamonds, and satisfied to marry a man with strong convictions. But the facts– though well researched, synthesized, and presented– didn’t move me. If you want to persuade me, you need to kick me where it counts. You need to get Leonardo DiCaprio to portray a diamond smuggler in Sierra Leone, and litter the landscape with some murdered children. Luckily, the producers of Blood Diamond made that happen for me, and it was after watching this cinematic depiction of human suffering that I really felt disgusted by the diamond trade.

The movie takes us to Sierre Leone in the late 1990s, where government soldiers fight rebels in a bloody civil war. A loving family is ripped apart when the father, Solomon, is captured from this village and enslaved in the diamond fields.  Solomon finds an unusually large pink diamond and attempts to stow it away, but his captain witnesses this just as government troops invade and imprison them both. Meanwhile, Solomon’s young son, once a gentle mannered student, is stolen and brainwashed by rebel forces. We see how the Revolutionary United Front rebels are using diamonds to fund their war, trading them for arms. How within one family a son can become a cold killer while his father’s forced labor pays for the weapon.

The diamond trade becomes even seedier as we watch Danny (DiCaprio) smuggle diamonds to a South African mercenary who is employed by a diamond company executive. Landing himself in the same prison as Solomon and the captain, Danny overhears about the hidden pink diamond. He arranges for Solomon to be released from prison, and strikes a deal- he’ll help Solomon find his family if Solomon leads him to the valuable diamond’s burial spot. And why can Danny arrange a family reunion? What gives him the power? He is a white man in Africa.

The movie shows us the human cost of conflict or “blood” diamonds, and the interconnected corruption of the government, rebel forces, smugglers, mercenaries, and diamond companies. It closes with a reference to the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme, designed to certify the origin of rough diamonds from sources which are free of conflict and human rights abuses. Organizations such as Amnesty International question the impact of KPCS. Amnesty stated: “Until the diamond trade is subject to mandatory, impartial monitoring, there is still no effective guarantee that all conflict diamonds will be identified and removed from the market.”

Some “conflict free” diamond companies assure consumers that their diamonds originate from Canadian mines partnered with local indigenous people who benefit from the trade. The company Brilliant Earth advertises “ethical origin” diamonds from Namibia and Botswana, promising that in these countries “diamonds are helping to foster broadly-shared economic development “. Even if this is true, wearing a diamond perpetuates the consumption of diamonds overall, hence indirectly supporting traders of conflict diamonds. And don’t you know that there are other rocks that are beautiful and sparkly? Like this fool’s gold heart I gave to Justin.

I feel defensive. Putting g-spot on my list of things I don’t know about makes it look like I have sex problems. If I did, that would be normal. I could write about g-spot from that stance. That might help people, or help me work through the problems.

Is it okay if I am defensive? Can I just tell you that I don’t have sex problems? I don’t. No, seriously, I really don’t. But somehow, I just didn’t really understand g-spot. I didn’t know what it was, where it was, or why it was called a g-spot. When you reach a certain age, you think you should know your body pretty well, so you stop asking questions. You think: I graduated sex ed in more ways than one, I should know this. When I teach sex ed to my fifth graders, I encourage the girls to use a mirror to check out their equipment. I don’t want them graduating not knowing how many holes they have down there. They get embarrassed. I get embarrassed. Americans, descendants of puritans, get easily embarrassed about sex and the human body. But this blog is about confronting shame and getting the facts… of life!

My cousin Liz is an amazing filmmaker. In her investigative documentary, Orgasm Inc: The Strange Science of Female Pleasure, Liz confronts the medical industry and marketing campaigns that take advantage of women and endanger their health. Liz was initially creating a documentary about female pleasure, and has conducted research on this topic for years. I was visiting her in Vermont and after peeking through her bookshelf, I decided it was time for me to do a little confronting of my own.

I have admired Liz for so long, since birth! Wouldn’t it be easier to look through her books? To Liz I have to admit that I don’t know about the g-spot? On Liz I have to turn the camera, even though she is the supreme filmmaker?

Luckily, with her usual enthusiasm, she agreed to be interviewed. She even recommended this aerial shot which I got by making her lay down on a bed and standing with her in between my legs.

VIDEO INTERVIEWS WITH LIZ CANNER

Part I- Fundamentals of the G-spot

Part II- Liz on Sex Ed

QUICK AND DIRTY FACTS:
It’s in the vagina, but in no specific place.
It can become hardened when engorged, and cause intense pleasure.
It was named after Ernst Gräfenberg, a German gynecologist who wrote about it in 1950.
There’s controversy over its existence.
Scientific tests have shown no evidence.

Like many people, I am more likely to assimilate information if it is in narrative form. For example, Dave Eggers’ creative biography Zietoun taught me more about Hurricane Katrina than news coverage did. I am also more likely to learn something if I can experience it. That’s certainly not unique. There’s a slew of educational research backing the merits of experiential, hands-on learning. What helps me remember things most is a combination of these three: I have an experience in which someone I have a relationship with tells me a story. It is at the intersection of these three things that I learn something new and remember it.

To learn about Madeleine Albright, I employed the three factors. Why did I want to learn about Madeleine Albright? Because I didn’t know about her and I thought I should. When I was a teenager, I played Trivial Pursuit with my family. I drew a card about Margaret Thatcher and fumbled with the answer. My Dad (a Harvard graduate with a daughter ignorant about the stats of a prime minister!?) wore a look of shame. I felt shame for letting him down and for not knowing about Margaret Thatcher. Over fifteen years later I felt a brief burst of the same kind of shame about Madeleine Albright when her book Read My Pins was released. But in my thirties I refuse to feel shame, to fear asking. This project is in part about confronting fear and shame, about bravely asking others to teach me what I do not know.

My method worked. I remember each fact I learned about M.A. precisely because of the person who contributed that fact and my relationship to that person. The “experience” of getting the information involved asking people to share anything they knew about her, or what they thought was most important about her. The experience continued as I followed up on that research using a variety of sources, but the origin of the person’s contribution framed that research. The final component of the experience was applying new knowledge by creating something.

For each person and her contribution I have designed a t-shirt with a slogan. Beneath each t-shirt design I will tell you about the person, my relationship to him or her, and how that intersects with Madeleine Albright. Madeleine will be modeling the t-shirts, in various incarnations.

THE MADELEINE ALBRIGHT T-SHIRTS

KISS ME- I’M JEWISH?!
Susanna Lang

Susanna Lang is a poet and an educator. I taught with Susanna for several years, and worked with her on our school’s literary magazine. Susanna shared this with me:

I’ve never paid much attention to Madeleine Albright, despite her role in so many high-profile issues–I’m not sure why.  I did do some research, and I find what interests me most is that this person who has studied and affected the political history of Europe so intensely would be ignorant of her own family’s history as a piece of the larger puzzle.  That she didn’t know her family was Jewish, forced to convert before they were forced into exile.

I remember Susanna’s Madeleine contribution because as teaching colleagues we considered issues of culture and identity within our students’ writing. Our students confronted serious issues such as immigration, domestic abuse, and gang violence. Several times we had to decide whether it was safe or appropriate to publish a piece. It is safe to read Susanna’s new chapbook, Two by Two, which you can find at www.finishinglinepress.com.

I GET BY… WITH A LIL HELP FROM HILLARY
Rima Rantisi

Rima Rantisi is a close friend of mine, a writer, blogger, and English instructor in Beirut. She shared this fact with me:

appointed by bill clinton, with a lil help from hillary

I remember Rima’s fact because Rima and I often discuss issues of gender, particularly women’s roles in the Middle East. Her blog, Crosseyed Revolutions, often broaches this subject. Rima’s contribution is short, almost fragmented, because we often communicate this way. Since we live halfway around the world, we sustain ongoing conversations through phone, email, chat, and skype. Sometimes our conversations are long and detailed. Sometimes we exchange snippets that later build to something more. Madeleine and Hillary’s relationship continued to build when Madeleine endorsed Hillary in her 2008 campaign for U.S. President. She advises her on foreign policy, just like Rima keeps me abreast of Lebanon. Am I having delusions of grandeur, or are we just like world leaders?

PURPOSE and HUMOR
John Bridges

John Bridges is the Assistant Dean of The Theatre School at DePaul University, where I studied playwriting as an undergraduate. John’s distinctive sense of humor forces overly dramatic students and faculty to maintain a healthy perspective. If you’re having trouble imagining theatre students bringing drama off the stage, consider that more than once “miscast” students punched and shattered the glass door on which the casting lists were posted. John shared this reflection on Madeleine:

Madeleine Albright always impressed me during her time as the U.S. Secretary of State as an exceptionally skilled politician who had a near perfect balance of commitment to purpose and a wonderful sense of humor.

I remember this reflection because John maintains that balance within a community bred to overreact. When I listened to interviews with M.A., I did enjoy her sense of humor. Read My Pins is a good example of how she likes to bring levity to politics.

YES, THEY ARE WORTH IT
David Meyers

The Chicago Reader credits David Meyers with starting a “DIY roasting revolution”. David runs an independent coffee roasting business in Chicago and a small organic farm in Michigan. I met David at a party where we had a serious conversation while doing ridiculous dance moves. I now buy coffee from David, and admire his work with the Latino Union, where he involves day laborers in micro-roasting. I knew he would provide some gut-wrenching information about Albright, and he did:

Her quote on 60 Minutes comes to mind first, when asked whether the sanctions on Iraq, which had caused the death of 500,000 children at that point, were worth it. She paused ever so briefly, then said, “yes, they are worth it.”

Since David told the Reader, “Pretty much everything I do comes out of anarchist activism,” I expected he might view Albright with a critical eye. His unique lens and my experience buying his radical coffee help me to remember the anecdote he shared. You too can get your Resistance Coffee; he’ll deliver it to your door.

UNCLEAR ABOUT RWANDA
Marcus Hammonds

Marcus is a polymath. If we lose touch for a few months, I can be sure that when we reconnect he will have a new project in the works. Marcus is or has been an engineer, real estate agent, Chicago House DJ, brewer, and probably more. Marcus and I worked together in the late nineties at an online community for kids called FreeZone. We were in charge of monitoring conversations between children around the world who had very real interactions with one another yet existed for us as text on a computer. It was our job to set parameters in order to provide a safe community. Marcus would always challenge our notions of what was or wasn’t appropriate discourse or content. He engaged us in critical conversations about race, gender, age, and economics. From Marcus I expected a dagger, and I got it:

For someone who’s family was a victim of the Holocaust, it seems odd that she was “unclear” about what was happening in Rwanda.

I can still count on Marcus to knock off my rose glasses. Sometimes that punch in the gut is what makes learning most meaningful and memorable.

OLD WORLD/NEW WORLD
Raul Niño

Raul is a poet, librarian, and bike enthusiast. He was born in Mexico and grew up in the North Shore of Chicago where his mother was a domestic worker. Much of his poetry tells this story. I love Raul’s poetry, and I love hearing him read it aloud. When I first asked him to share about M.A., he sent me an email with links to NPR programming about her. Raul loves radio, and loves learning by listening to radio. I pushed him to synthesize what he had heard and share one fact, and this is what he provided:

Madeleine Albright: That she was born Jewish in the “old” Europe, and raised as a Catholic into the “new” world. That conversion on the part of her parents was of course political, economic and social, and very much played a part in saving their lives at that time.

I mentioned Raul’s experience immigrating and living with his mother’s employers because I think it fits with his Albright contribution. I’m not sure if he thinks it does, but the connection I formed helps me to remember what he taught me. I will also share Raul’s radio recommendations for all of you auditory learners:

Jewelry Box Diplomacy
Madam Secretary
Advice for Obama

READ MY PINS
Molly Zolnay

Molly is the Library Assistant at Northwestern library’s multimedia center. Media passes through her hands all day. I met Molly when she was studying scenic design, and we continue to see plays together. Molly and I both have some Jewish ancestry, and it turns out part of her family history resembles Madeleine’s:

A couple of things I think are interesting about her … She didn’t learn her family was Jewish until much later in her life (her family had converted to Catholicism when she was young) – much like a part of my family.  Also, the whole brooch wearing thing as indicator of her mindset/intent – I enjoyed hearing her interviewed about Read My Pins on NPR a few months ago.

The two items that Molly highlighted are the two that ended up interesting me the most as well. And it’s funny to consider them in juxtaposition. A powerful world leader is ignorant of her own ethnic background until later in life. This same world leader makes bold, intentional, and personal statements by wearing pins. After being called a serpent by Saddam Hussein, she wore a snake pin while discussing Iraq. During dragged out diplomatic discussions, she wore crabs and turtles to symbolize her frustration. Putin noticed Albright’s three monkeys pin (hear, see, speak no evil) during a discussion on Chechnya.

GOOD WILL WOMEN
Marty Goldenblatt

Marty is my new stepdad. He and my mom got married three years ago. Marty has many of the qualities a person looks for in a stepdad: He makes me pancakes, he tries to curb his road rage when I’m in the car, and he adores my mom. I was elated by his feminist M.A. contribution:

Just off the top of my head: Madeleine Albright was a brilliant Secretary of State that successfully advanced the interests of the U.S. throughout the world by treating other countries as partners in advancing peace and prosperity to all people. She continues to be a shining example of the role women can play in fostering good will between nations and in advancing the rights of women everywhere.

Isn’t that exactly what you would want your new stepdad to teach you?

I DON’T KNOW, BUT I THINK IT’S IMPORTANT
Tim Mazurek

When I asked my best friend Tim to share about Madeleine, he sent me this image. After recovering from viewing it, I asked him why? “I don’t know, but I think it’s important.” It turns out this image is from a blog devoted to rebuilding the Lebanese political system. The post accuses Albright of “exacerbating genocide”.

On his blog, Lottie + Doof, Tim writes about food in an important way. His confidence in sharing this ludicrous photo without knowing why it was important, and his dedication to empowering people in their kitchens, reminds me of Madeleine’s irreverent and intentional wearing of symbolic pins in the political arena.

Reading the Lebanese blog that Tim led me to reminds me that a person’s political agenda and personal background influences her view of Madeleine. We all wear a different t-shirt, so to speak.  I intentionally selected a diverse group of people (although they lack diversity in that they are all my friends and are politically liberal), with a range of age, race, ethnicity, nationality, and gender. It was interesting to consider how these markers influenced the contributions. The process of considering this made for a memorable learning experience. Finally, politics I can retain.

When someone feels passionately about something, so much so that she changes her everyday actions as a result, we often fail to ask her why. Perhaps we don’t want to seem like we are challenging her convictions. Perhaps its because we don’t wish to reveal our own ignorance about topics common in public discourse.

But we should ask why, especially when we care about the person, and especially when her everyday actions impact ours.

My meat-loving brother’s fiancé has been a vegetarian during the ten years that they’ve been together. Last year she decided to become a vegan. I’ve had vegan friends before, and never asked them about their motivations. I’d heard the land use reasoning, but didn’t fully understand it. I’d heard the health reasoning, but wanted to know more.

I interviewed Pete and Louisa about the choices they make when they consume, and asked them to explain why they make those choices. You might say I pitted my carnivorous brother against his vegan fiancé. To give him an edge, since blood is thicker than water, I let him use a keyboard during the interview. Louisa had no props, but she is very articulate, and held her own in the debate.

VEGAN SYNTHESIS:
An interview about consumer choices with Pete Schneider and Louisa Trackman

When my fiancé was a young man, he found this book in a Salvation Army for $0.75. It had been recommended to him five years prior by his beloved high school English teacher. A Catholic school teacher recommends a book with sex, murder, and frequent, creative usage of the word fuck? Yes. Why? He didn’t think any of his kids would get their hands on it. Why not? It was hard to find. And in those days you could not order a book on the internet. But Justin found it and it eventually found its way to me.

Was this book critically acclaimed? A cult classic? A sleeper? I have no idea. I’ve resisted, day after day, the reflexive google twitch that accompanies curiosity these days. I want to look at MAGIC’s dusty, black, jacketless cover with its silver beveled title and wonder about it. That is what magic was back then; wondering about a book. I want to experience it for myself without being informed of its reception or background. That is what magic is to me.

The book is so, so good. I can’t get the mood of it out of my system, days after closing its crusty back cover. It’s about a man who wants to be loved, who wants public approval. As a child he seeks “everlasting health and strength” but fails at the football his father grooms him to play after his strong brother dies. Merlin the magician grooms him next, but his act bombs at an open mic magic show. He attempts suicide, but resurrects himself (or is resurrected, we wonder?) as a magician/ventriloquist, delivering a humorous routine with a dummy named Fats. The self-deprecating banter with Fats wins over audiences, yet Corky refuses to take the required health test to make it big with the help of an agent, The Postman. Is he hiding the fact that he’s insane, with Fats as his alter-ego? Or is Fats really alive?

I’ve created a triphopera of MAGIC in order to explore its characters and themes. Corky teaches me that it is impossible to win public love if that is our motivation for performance. Personal fulfillment, genuine self-confidence, and connection with those close to us give us a shot at happiness. Applause and accolades are elusive. The phrase within Merlin the magician’s advisory intro repeats throughout this piece: “If you do it right, they can’t love you enough.” This is a cautionary tale. “Love” of the faceless public is not fulfilling. That is helpful advice to me on the heels of being rejected from several jobs and a coveted teaching award.

Thanks to Justin Gumiran for bringing this book to my mind, and to Bob Leone for bringing this magical keyboard to my fingertips.

MAGIC: The Triphopera

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