Change

Ramona liked her new school. We visited last week. It is much more school-y than the Coop, but it isn't like school-school. Ramona was a little puzzled when she was asked to clean up for singing even though she was in the middle of a drawing. When she was told to "take a seat" during meeting, she was confused too. It just didn't feel natural to this little Coop spirit.

Before we visited, I told her that she shouldn't just rip off her clothes when we go there because I wasn't sure of the rules about that (this is legal at the Coop). I assured her that at home she could still run around in her undies whenever she wanted to. As we walked into the classroom she was quiet, a rarity. She stopped and asked, "Do you think I can even take off my shoes?" Well, in the end it turns out that the kids all bring their swimsuits and by 9:30 they had one by one, in thier own time, stripped down to nothing and changed into their suits. Thank goodness.

If you uask Ramona about it, she says she liked everything except for when they talked about nap...she doesn't want to rest.

I read somewhere

that if you haven't seen the ChroniWHATcles of Narnia rap that you dan't have friends. That made me feel pretty lonely. Hope you enjoy it. Once you are on this page look at the bottom right at "web favorites".

Times Picayune Letter to the Editor

Over the weekend the kids stayed with Mema and Pop, Phil went to work and I got to read much more of the Sunday paper than usual. I also had some quiet and time to write to the editor and they printed my letter today!

Go see the original article.

Then read my response.

Mr. Rogers vs. Everyone Else

Ramona made some puppets, Neighborhood of Make Believe Puppets. I printed up from the internet cutouts of King Friday and Queen Sarah (where I now think Ramona's name change originated) and Prince Tuesday and the rest of Mr. Roger's gang. She colored them and cut them out and taped them on the end of markers. Then she began a puppet show for me while I cooked dinner from behind the other side of the kitchen island. It went something like this:

Daniel Striped Tiger: Hello, Henrietta Pussycat.

Henrietta: Hello, I am meow going to poop on you meow.

Daniel: I am going to poop on you too.

ME: Ramona, I don't think Mr. Rogers talks like that.

Ramona (who's purple glasses broke the wall between audience and performer and were just barely peeking over the edge of the counter with the puppets flanking her in each hand): No, Mom, he doesn't. But everyone else does.

Everybody else! If only I could keep her locked up in a world of Mr. Rogers. I guess that would be the Mommy's Neighborhood of Make Believe.

Timid

I'm feeling a little timid. It is a very strange feeling for me. Especially since I wrote the book on putting yourself out there and going for it. But I feel downright timid. I'm not in the mood to make friends (and influence people). But making friends seems to be the next "to do" item on my settling in list.

I mean, I have Amy, the original. Amy one of my dearest, bestest friends in the world. And she knows me so well. So why do I need to go out and meet neighbors? The short answer: to facilitate community for my family.

Well, as with other "to do" items, I think making friends will slip to the bottom of the list. We can do that later. I'm feeling timid today.

Shapes

The other day, I was laying bed with Ramona as she fell asleep. She gently took my face in her hands and whispered, "Did you know that you can poop in the shape of a ribbon?" She went on to explain how she thought this could be done, which involved a little bit of bathroom gymnastics.

Just now she hollered from the bathroom, "Hey mom, my poop is in the shape of a moon or a banana."

And I thought I was talented because I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue.

Cogs

I have a friend who feels very strongly that she doesn't want her children to be "cogs" in the great American machinery that turns us all into human-robots and lulls us to a place where we don't question the things people tell us to do or the way our life is going. I see her point, but I also want my children to fit in. I want questioning cogs; we need to keep this machine going for God’s sake.

Well, I like how they each questioned things this week:

I was telling Ramona that her new school won't have parent helpers, like the Corner Coop, a parent cooperative, in Boston did. She started to tell me that they should and then she stopped herself. She said, "When I am at my new school I am going to give them suggestions. Whatever they don't have that the Corner Co-op has, I will suggest to them."

Then last night at bedtime, I shouted at Sumner for putting his toothbrush in a germy, gross spot. He told me he wouldn't have done it if I told him why. I told him [shouted at him] that he had to stop what he was doing and then I could explain. Then he said, "Instead [of reading one of my] books tonight, can we talk about this? Can we talk about why we [you] all get so angry and frustrated at bedtime?" I was blown away.

Of course when we all met up on Ramona's bed 15 minutes later these ever-so-reasonable children had a huge negotiation about whether he could sit on her bed because she was worried he would wrinkle it and fart on it and make it stinky. He later told her that he'd like to dump "a bucket of hot lava on your head from the place where the hottest lava comes from."

Cogs they are not.

Flags

The storm and flood brought out people's true feelings about the city. Some people had control over if they stayed or left. Of those people, those who were tolerating the city, left. People who liked it, love it now and they want to sing it from the mountaintop. Or from the flag pole in front of their house. There are these flags that people have placed on their porches that have New Orleans colors and fluer de les and say "NOLA Rebuild" or something like that.

Sumner said to me today, "If we are going to help rebuild this state, we better get one of those flags for our house."

That's the spirit.

Why did you name me Ramona?

Ramona has renounced the name Ramona.

She will now go by the name Sarah, but not the Sarah she knows from the Corner Co-op.

Sumner says that we won't ever remember to call her Sarah because Sumner's friend Nikhil decided to change his name to Leonardo and no one remembered so he's still Nikhil.

I had a friend, Sarah, Sarah Pool, who used to have a new name everytime I saw her. In fact, she was very Ramona-esque.

More Little Things

I can't really leave fruit out in my fruit bowl for a week. The fruit flies swarm.

It took only two hours to make hibiscus sun tea in our backyard.

No recycling post-Katrina. I am throwing away glass bottles, newspapers, tin cans, etc.

At least four neighbors stopped by, most of them with food or drink (and one offering us a sleeper bed he was getting rid of) to welcome us to the neighborhood.

Three of the eight or so moms I have met at the kids' swim lessons have returned post-flood, only to have to move away because of work-transfers or lay-offs.

My in-laws live up the road 10 minutes and can take the kids for a sleep over on Saturday night.

Half of the people I meet, in the grocery, at school, on the street, know Philip or his friends or a friend of a friend some how.

Welcome to the Third World

My mom was here in New Orleans to help us get settled and I think to settle herself a little bit more with the idea of us living here. One of the first days she was here she said that New Orleans reminded her of Ecuador, where Jake and Miranda and their boys lived. She said that it was hot, like Ecuador and the people were SO friendly. And there is the poverty, the potholes, the poorly maintained and crumbling buildings, and pitiable schools and social services. At first, I told here that comparing New Orleans to a third world country may not go over with the natives. That night, Marlow, an Oregonian living here, reminded me that there are t-shirts and bumper stickers that say, “Third world and proud.”

Why are people proud?

I think maybe they (soon to be me?) are proud of the friendliness of the city and feel like they don’t need perfect streets and buildings because they have good food and music and lots of people have access to that. I’m not so sure I agree. But there is some sort of pride in it.

I then tried to tell my mom that maybe it wouldn’t offend anyone...I dunno the answer yet.

But things certainly don’t seem to run quite as smoothly as in other parts of the U.S. We ordered the paper. It was supposed to start the next day. It started a week later. Many people don’t use email (business and the like) and so I have been using the phone to contact people much more. It took 10 days to get our internet up and working. The library system has laid-off 90% of its staff. Phil and I keep asking ourselves: Is this a post-flood thing or is it a Louisiana thing? We’re not sure. It is both.

Imagine if it wasn’t the paper you were waiting for, but a rental subsidy or word on when or if you could return to your home.

I did a little google-study of the term “third world”. I guess it isn’t PC any more. Less Developed Countries (LDC) is now the proper term in some circles. There does not seem to be one specific indicator that puts countries in the LDC column, but one definition indicated that it has to do with a lack of infrastructure and a large amount of poverty.

According to the census Louisiana does have nearly the highest rate of poverty in the USA, 17%. Wow. That number’s a couple years old and I am sure that post-flood it is higher. Click here to check out your state in comparison.

The National Guard was just called in because there has been a rise in the per-capita murder rate, especially in the last few weeks. The NOPD can’t quite handle it—they’re stretched. I think that 17% is hot and homeless and hungry and angry and killing each other.

What can we do? We’re getting to work in the next month or so. Please pray for this city. Or send some money to after school programs and churches and community organizations that keep kids off the street. Or keep us on the minds of your friends. OR email your congress people. Make sure they’ve visited here. Urge them to.

We’re really not in the third world. I think a trip to Zambia would prove that. But I sure see a lot of work to be done.

On Harvard

Before I move on to new New Orleans, I've got to get my two (or three or four) bits in about Harvard. When you grow up "way out west" you learn that Harvard is supposed to be a really great place. Really smart people go there and think important things and then go on and do important things. Maybe that's true, but for me it wasn't exactally all I thought it could have been.

Don't get me wrong, there were amazing moments. The School Leadership Director, Tom, and his assistant, Deidre, were very supportive, gave me great advice, and pushed me along when I needed to be pushed. My teacher leadership seminar with Heather Peske was fantastic. Most careful feedback I have EVER received and a great group of peers. Orfield?--What do you say, Sarah? I guess I got some research skills and a fantastic reading list.

And of course the great professor Elenor Duckworth changed the way I think about everything. She really pushed us. She shared in one class about when she was a student at Harvard working on her doctorate. She felt she had to keep up "a pretense", the pretense of knowing and understanding when she wanted to be able to get frustrated and really learn. That comment changed the way I looked at my learning and my degree and even led me to quit school for a while. I don't want to take a class or have a job or do something with or for my family as part of some sort of pretense. I want to do things that I honestly think are valuable and I don’t want to send my whole life trying to make it all look easy. That takes too much needless work. I just want to be real.

That gets to the downside of Harvard:

At times it seemed to be a lot of people trying to keep up the pretense of being smart and knowing something and a lot of professors unintentionally encouraging this. One of my take-aways: Looking "together" does not mean you are learning.

Another downside:

The administration often treated me as though I was a little bit of a nuisance and like they were doing me a big favor. It was odd.

And finally, the greatest downside:

They have ALOT of money and they don’t give enough of it away so that the place can be a more diverse community where all of us can benefit from having peers with many perspectives...not simply shades of our own.

A Blur

Graduation was a very sad day and week. We stayed with good friends. We had our families with us. And it was really sad to see our friends and say good-bye one...last...time.

When our friend Guy toasted to us he said, "Here's to the longest good-bye tour since the Rolling Stones." And he was right. All of those good-byes wore me out.

When it was time to go, Sumner laid on his friend Nikhil's couch in protest and asked me, once again, through his tears, "Why do we have to move?"

And I was asking myself the same thing. Our things were already in New Orleans. Our job contracts were signed and the house officially belonged to us. BUT...Why are we leaving my friends and community? Why am I starting over? How am I going to make it through medical residency without my medical wives trio? And it is so flat in New Orleans. Why do we have to move?

My friends were all around to let me vent and process each piece of leaving and starting over that was freaking me out. That helped. But it was a blur.

A blur of our friends' spare bedroom, futon, and air mattresses. A blur of late nights and early mornings and family meals and official events. Looking back it just seems like it went too fast. That week, those years.

I like what I learned and how we did it. In Boston I learned how to be a grown up. I learned how to take care of myself and my family a little bit better. I learned how to make space for me. I learned how to say no. I learned so much from my kids. I saw them "work through" so much stuff that we as humans have to figure out and I learned that we need to make room in our lives to "work through" things--otherwise we become programed humobots. I learned that I like to write and I want to take it more seriously. I learned that relying on God, praising Him for everyday and everything, praying a lot, and praying some more bring me peace and purpose and sustains me.

Like I said, it was a blur. But I like the colors I see.

We're in.

So we moved into the palace and it really feels like one. Phil and I get uncomfortable when our kids are on a different floor from us. It seems so dangerous to us parents who have always lived in four rooms with our children. We tried laughing this off and told ourselves that we are being ridiculous.

Then Saturday night, as we finished our dinner, we heard them running around in an unfinished and still-packed playroom and decided not to fret because they weren't arguing and playrooms are for playing. Right? When Phil finally went upstairs to put them in the bath he was shocked at what he found. Sumner and Ramona, each with a screwdriver in their hand, froze when they saw him. Sumner hit himself in the forehead with his palm and said, "You should probably punish us." Phil asked why and Sumner and Ramona confessed that they had been running across the room at full speed and jamming their respective tools into the wall. Aih, aih, aih!

Magazines, Trees, Chicken, Levies, & Talk

Highlights today: Hurricane season officially opens. Got our driver licenses, got our new plates, opened a bank account, and I acquainted myself with my new Target when I bought cleaning supplies for the new house.

Highlights tomorrow: Move into and sleep in new house.

A couple things I noticed today:

Do you know that the people of New Orleans have been living without magazines for months? They simply have not been getting them in the mail and I guess that local stores didn’t have the up-to-date mag.s either. It seems kind of like Hawaii when my parents lived there in the 1960s: in Hilo the television shows aired a week or two after they aired in the mainland. New Orleanians have been getting, if at all, their magazines about a week behind the rest of us. Weird thing is, while some Americans may try to disassociate with what happened down here (“that couldn’t happen here”), unlike Hawaii, we’re still attached to the mainland down here. And yet we can’t catch up on celebrity gossip very easily. I can’t find a damn People magazine and Brad and Angelina just had their baby and I want to read about it. (Alex and Julie, save this week and last weeks’ mag for me, please.)

Trees:

Phil and I had to drive to St. Charles Parish to get our DMV stuff taken care of because the lines in and around New Orleans at the DMV can take all day. As we were driving to Hanville, which is “across the river”, I was admiring the green on both sides of the rode. The trees were pretty. Then all of a sudden, I’ve seen this before in Louisiana, the trees changed and I was looking at what seemed to be giant sticks stuck in the ground with thin, light-green moss draped over them. I don’t get that. Phil suggested I have my sixth graders next year figure that one out for me.

Chicken and the Levy:

By the end of our stop at the Hanville DMV, we were famished. Popeye’s seemed like a good solution, so we asked for directions and made our way to the closest one. It was a strictly takeout or drive-up Popeye’s and there was a sign just inside the door that said, “This car isn’t big enough to hold all that Popeye’s flavor.” It took Phil awhile to understand the meaning of this, as he will not eat in our car and believes no one else ever should. Once we got our chicken we had to choices: eat in the car like normal people or sit on the levy, which was across the street from Popeye’s. Phil chose the levy, so with new Louisiana driver’s licenses in our pockets, we sat on the top of the levy and ate some really good chicken and avoided getting too hot by drinking ice cold root beer. And I thought: I live here. I really live here. And this levy is just a seat right now.

Talkin’: Phil saw a vanity plate in Tennessee that read “B-R-I-N-G I-T”. “Look,” he said to me when he spotted it and then he read it for me, “Brang et!” He keeps repeating this whenever I, or anyone else—including bank personnel and bad drivers, try to mess with him. Today he told me to go “git” something and later he announced that he was going to “fetch” something. After years of working to rid himself of his Southern accent, it all comes back so naturally for him.

By the way, there has not been one hurricane that hit New Orleans in June in 150 years (Times-Picayune, front page today). Why then is June still condisided part of the season?