Teaching to Learn, Part 2: "Momma says..."

As a teacher it's hard not to develop favorites.  Certain things about certain kids jump out at you and, depending on the kid and the thing, make you want to hug them, smile at them, or listen to them with more patience than you knew you had.  Some kids win you over because of how engaged they are in class (read: how well they stroke you teacher-ego); some because they will run up to hug you in the hallway at the risk of getting yelled at for leaving the class line; some because they're the picture of kindness and bliss despite a less-than-ideal home situation.

Jeremiah (not his real name) won me over with his easy smile and his insistence that every moment is for having fun.  Our first time in class together was a tough day for Jeremiah.  He refused to join our circle and felt upset because he thought everyone in his first grade class was teasing him.  It didn't help that it was rainy outside, and inside garden class rarely inspires joy.  Standing near the corner of the room away from the other students, Jeremiah and I had the closest thing to a heart-to-heart as you could reasonably expect between a six-year-old and a 22-year old.  He agreed to re-join class if I would sit next to him.  I did, and we've been pals ever since.

Jeremiah has trouble sitting still in most garden classes.  He's so bright, and even when he's wiggling around the benches in our outdoor classroom he's still totally engaged.  My instinct is to be relaxed about kids moving their bodies as long as they're learning, but because of school expectations I've felt compelled to discipline him more than once.

Once after a particularly wiggly episode Jeremiah felt frustrated that I had given him a negative point on the class chart - a form of discipline in our school.  As the class was lining up on our way out of the garden Jeremiah was nudged from behind by another student vying for a place in line, and Jeremiah reacted by punching the boy in the arm.  I pulled him out of line and asked why he had hit the other boy, to which he answered: "Momma says if someone hits me I have to hit them back."

This was my first really difficult moment of teaching.  I tend to buy into the logic that violence begets violence, that hitting back tends to escalate a situation rather than solve anything.  And yet I don't have a damn clue about the environment that Jeremiah or his mother grew up in.  Maybe acting tough is a way to earn respect or credibility among kids or adults in their neighborhood.  Maybe Jeremiah's mom has been hit so many times that she can't even think about teaching her son not to hit back.*

I wasn't about to tell him that momma was wrong.  I told him that there's one set of rules with momma and another with school, and left it at that.  A few weeks later a similar incident happened with Jeremiah and even though he shocked me by remembering what I had said about hitting people, he had again behaved according to the rules that momma had set.

Every day some interaction with students will remind me that what we teach in school is often not the same as what they learn at home.  Sometimes it's the opposite.  Sometimes the difference really matters, sometimes not.

School is as much about socialization as anything.  Many of our students in kindergarten are just beginning to develop a sense of adults' expectations for their behavior.  It's adorable to watch.  Like my favorite be-sweatered TV personality used to preach, "kids say the darndest things."  Part of what we're teaching our students is how to function in a culture: how to think about people and things, how and when to use their bodies and their voices, what behaviors are and aren't acceptable and when.  These are really important things to know to live a reasonably stable life, and even though there's a big, heady can of worms about cultural-norms-as-regulating-behavior-and-stifling-human-liberation, that's not the can whose lid I'm trying to pry.

I'm more concerned with acculturation: the question of whose culture they're being socialized into.**  As far as I can tell all of the students in our school are of African descent, most of them from low-income families, and many have roots in New Orleans running several generations deep.  Each of them is embedded in a very specific set of values, norms and behaviors that they don't even realize they know.  Much of those are informed by their home lives, and as their time in school goes on the more their schooling experience plays a role in shaping their understanding of the world.  The cultural distinctions between home and school can lie anywhere between vivid and almost collapsing, depending on the values, norms and behaviors of the people whom students spend time with at home and at school.

The question is: how will the cultures of home and school interact in the minds of our students?  Will they flourish in some mythical-melting-pot-mutuality?  Will they mesh into some mangled-but-manageable co-existence?  Will one masticate, melt or minimize the other? (sometimes alliteration is more important than making sense, but you get the idea)

Perhaps the best thing we can do as teachers is to enhance our students' understandings of the cultures they come from - to instill some pride, augment their senses of identity and connection to place - while also teaching them how to navigate between cultures (read: white educated middle-class cultures).  If we stumble the worst we can do is to acculturate them straight out of New Orleans, to the point where they feel more comfortable on a college campus, in a big anonymous city, or in a subdivision in Anywhere America.

For teachers the process of socializing students is a bit like painting a mural blindfolded.  It's impossible to tell which parts have been coated three times over and which are still bare, or to even know the size, shape and texture of the mural's surface, or to see who else might be painting the same mural and how.  No teacher can know when or how they're painting, and some teachers don't even know they're painting at all.

This is why my relationships with every single one of my students makes me at least a little uneasy.  I want Jeremiah to understand that momma and teacher can both be right.  I want him to be able to flourish among his family, neighbors and peers while still understanding how to operate outside of that community.  I don't have the tools or wisdom to know how to do that, and it's certainly not a topic of conversation in the teachers' lounge or at professional development meetings.

Throughout the day classes float along the hallways of our school, a teacher at the head followed by 20 or more students in matching-colored uniforms.  We ask them to face forward in a straight line while remaining silent and almost unmoving.  A momentary dance move or a single misstep to the left or right will compel a stern, sometimes irritated request: "Get back in line."

The question that we can't ask enough is: whose line are they falling into?


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*Don't mis-read this as writing off violence as a "cultural difference."  Every culture that I'm familiar with has aspects of violence whether they're physical, psychological, structural or whatnot.  And within cultures there are vast differences in attitudes towards violence, even within and among families.

**Although sometimes it's acculturation be damned.  Some of our students have such difficult home lives that they've actually become seriously traumatized by violence or neglect.  Thinking about acculturation in these students' lives is so secondary to providing some stability and love, which is something that many people at my school seem to do exceptionally well.

Teaching to Learn, Part 1: Creating a Culture

Since the end of August I've been working as a garden teacher for kindergarten to 4th graders in a New Orleans elementary and middle charter school.  It's my first time teaching and first time working with young people, and it's been both immense joy and ongoing challenge.  The next few posts will document some of my experiences, and the resulting conflicts and thoughts, as a teacher.  Names and references will be changed so I don't get fired.
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What are the boundaries of a culture?  Where does it end and begin?  Can you trace it down a street until you reach an intersection?  Can you look at it on a map and pencil in a line?

At the New Orleans charter where I teach a garden class, we operate under the assumption that a culture can be bound by bricks and mortar, extending only as far and high as the walls and ceilings of a building.  We cultivate that culture by repeating several catch-words - community and leadership, for example - over and over again in the hopes that they'll stick in students' minds.

Teachers and administrators are the arbiters of that culture.  We're expected to emulate those cultural values at all times and oversee the students every moment of every day to assure compliance.  We have a points-based system of discipline and affirmation that tracks how each individual student reflects those values on an ongoing basis, and each student can track how they're doing that day based on what color tag is next to their name on a board in class: red, yellow, green, or black (in ascending order).

The school intends its culture to be simple, with clearly defined expectations and overt methods of feedback.  In other words, everything that culture is not.

In my senior thesis I drew upon Dr. George Gerber's idea of culture as an "invisible web" of "stories and messages that govern our conception of life and our behavior (watch the clip - it's worth it).



Gerbner's idea of culture is that it's complicated.  Cultures are the results of so many stories, told over such a long time, interaction and combining in infathomably complex ways.  And each person experiences that culture slightly differently.  Untangling the web of culture that forms a person is consummate to separating a glass of water into each individual molecule and examining them one at a time.

So what does it mean to ask 600 students and teachers to cultivate a culture from scratch, one whose lines are supposedly as clear as the stroke of an architect's pen on a blueprint?  Each person will begin from a different starting point, entering with years of cultural learnings embedded deep into their psyches, from our four-year-old kindergarteners to our fifty-something teachers (though most are younger than 30 - more on that later).  Some may already think and behave in ways that align with some of the school's values.  Some understand the culture in theory but their own cultural backgrounds have taught them a bit differently.  Some will find it totally unfamiliar and have difficulty falling into line - sometimes literally so (more on this, too).  None will emulate that culture in all the right ways all of the time because no human culture has ever existed in such specific and delineated terms.

Nor is there such a thing as "from scratch" when it comes to culture.  Even the educators who designed such a system have their very specific interpretations of what each of the catch-words mean and what they're supposed to look like in action.  A sub-culture can't help but be the product of the larger cultural webs they're woven into.  The culture at our school is not value-neutral, not historically neutral, not politically neutral, and therefore not culturally neutral.  And yet the implicit message in our school is that our culture is contained, that it does not interact in any way with the cultures around it.  Or that if it does, it benefits the students and their communities unquestionably (more on that later, as well).

We often talk about cultures on a small-scale: school cultures, family cultures, organizational cultures.  Sub-cultures happen everywhere.  But no place is "everywhere," and this place is New Orleans.  If cultures are collections of stories, then New Orleans has a library unlike any other place in the United States.  The histories, the human landscapes, the food, the celebrations and music, the way people interact: it means something very specific to create a school culture in this context.  And yet the conversation surrounding education in New Orleans focuses not on the particularities and strengths of the local culture, but how to develop an educational culture external to it.

This is the logic of many of the schools the New Orleans public charter system: based on millions of data points and analysis, create school cultures that help prepare students from marginalized communities to engage with the broader world; to allow them to think of achievement as a norm and college as an expectation rather than an exception.

It's noble-sounding.  Yet it's being carried out in some dubious ways: by non-profit and for-profit management companies with business-minded frameworks, experts and administrators with little or no background in education, and teachers like me who, having replaced thousands of local educators, have never lived in New Orleans, are fresh off the elite-college circuit, have no intention of making education into a career.

It's all well-meaning, but is that enough?

Thoughts on Occupy NOLA

I tried getting this published but it was a long shot.  I wrote this almost a week ago at this point so it may be outdated already, but here are some initial thoughts on our local Occupy movement:

It's an exciting time to be a cynic.  The past few years have validated some of our most prominent fears and expectations: a global financial crisis, rising food and commodity prices, pro-democracy movements against oppressive and persistent despots, corporate infiltration into federal governance, ongoing energy dominance of oil and coal companies, and the continued breakdown of community-based support, services, and organizations.  Just to name a few.

In these many and threatening lights, it's no surprise that a whole lot of cynics find themselves gathering in plazas, parks, and squares around the United States and beyond.  And while cynicism may be a reason to gather, it’s well understood that cynicism burns faster than any carbon-based fuel.  Occupiers are fast at work on the stuff of long-term sustenance: hope, ideas, positivity, and resolve.

Last Thursday night our local chapter, Occupy NOLA, gathered for the first time at Duncan Square Park, deliberately and defiantly in the shadow of City Hall.  The crowd of at least 250 had none of the tension that I usually witness at protests, none of the rebellious uneasiness I expected from a nascent movement, one that wants to believe it can change a society.  Patience seemed the operative emotion.  Many in the crowd seemed to understand that what they were about to undertake would be long, slow, awkward, painful, risky, and maybe even ungratifying.

Could it be any other way?  Leaving aside for a moment the task of re-thinking an economic system or a society, consider only the interpersonal difficulties: each participant brings a different set of frustrations; each has in mind a different personal and collective agenda; each carries with them part of the cultural baggage that together we are trying to shed.  Collectively each group of occupiers represents thousands of combined years of cultural learning.  Learning another way will take more patience than we can imagine, assuming we ever get past the un-learning.

That process began the moment the General Assembly got underway.  In three hours the GA, as it’s otherwise known, was able to agree on a consensus-based voting model, affirm a commitment to non-violence, establish a makeshift sanitation plan, and form about a dozen working groups to move forward with issues such as security, food, media, education and anti-racism.  Some occupiers clearly agonized over the pace, but given the size of the group and the enormity of the task, getting anything done was an accomplishment.

Credit is due to all of the organizers and facilitators for their persistence, patience and grace.  Not only did they pull off forming an incredibly difficult organizing task, they conducted the GA in an orderly way while ensuring the safety of all participants.

I make a point of giving them credit because what follows are a series of critiques aimed at initiating a discussion around ways that Occupy NOLA could be more inclusive, and ultimately I hope, more effective.  I make these critiques with the understanding that for the lead organizers there was enough to worry about without having to be constantly self-critical and self-reflective, and with the acknowledgement that these ideas originate from mistakes I have made and continue to make in my own work organizing.  I hope these thoughts might serve as part of a framework for occupiers as they go about the difficult work of movement building.  I also want to acknowledge that I have not been able to participate since the first GA, and that my critiques are informed by several friends who have.

Curiously what first alerted me to trouble was the fact that I felt very comfortable with how facilitators were conducting the GA - the hand signals, the consensus model, the different phases of each discussion, the language and format of “facilitation.”  It all felt very familiar.  I’d seen it quite a bit during college: in a worker solidarity group, with students organizing around environmental issues, at a co-op where some friends lived.  It functions very well in those settings, especially to the extent that it mimics seminar discussions, the bread and butter for humanities majors like myself.  The “process,” as it was referred to at the GA, seemed to be working, not too surprising given that most of the group looked less than a decade out of college, and many that spoke sounded like they’d spent more than a little time in the academy.

The use of the “process” probably felt comfortable to those who had encountered it before, but may have been alienating to those who had never been around it.  The facilitators introduced the process without offering much explanation for why we were using that particular mode of communication, and some people may have been left wondering.  To the unfamiliar eye it might have appeared slow or saccharine.

All of the ideas presented by the facilitators were very good ideas.  The rub is that they originated from a small group of people and not from a more inclusive process that could have offered occupiers more ownership over the outcomes.  Nobody seemed to strongly disagree with the decisions that were made, but it’s still possible that a number of people felt little or no stake in those decisions and therefore felt less desire to participate.  And even though a fair vote happened, those in attendance did not reflect any large swath of the city of New Orleans nor of the 99% that the movement claims to represent.  As far as that was true, the votes were not fully democratic.  Even though the ideas were good, going forward it might be hard to convince people who weren’t represented – most notably black New Orleanians and Latino immigrants – that they should go along with what was decided, or that they should participate at all.

The form of Occupy NOLA raises questions about participation in several ways: the highly specific language, politics and symbology of the group; the fact that it’s most accessible to people who have the time, equipment and experience to camp out; and the form and content of the media used to initiate and communicate about the occupation.  It’s not that any of these things absolutely require revision or hinder inclusivity, but occupiers should think about how to offer spaces and voices to people for whom this movement doesn’t necessarily lend itself.

Finally, there needs to be some kind of way to break from process at absolutely crucial moments.  At the first GA one of the few black men in the group began speaking about the need to move along and get to what he thought were relevant issues.  He vented his frustration about the process but had no outlet to discuss that frustration because another person raised a point of process and the group moved on.  His views were silenced by quick answers and strict adherence.  There may arise a point where breaking from process could alter the course of Occupy NOLA for the better.  There may have already been one, or several.

If occupiers are committed to the idea of democracy then they should trust that the GA can police itself in these moments.  If the group decides that it should drop what it’s doing to address someone’s personal concern then by our own democratic logic we should follow the group’s will rather than the facilitator’s.  If democratically the group decide to stay on point, let that decision come from discussion among people in the crowd, and let it be the result of a temperature check – a mechanism used to check the groups feeling about an issue – or a vote.  It’s not fail-safe.  People will still be silenced.  But at least that silencing won’t be knee-jerk in the way that it appeared to be in the first GA.

I’m not calling for any sort of dramatic overhaul or reset of what’s happened so far at Occupy NOLA.  Anything that’s going well should not be disrupted, and any missteps that have been taken should be treated as opportunities to learn and grow.  What is needed, I think, are many acts of individual and collective self-reflection.  One of the goals of the Occupy movement, as I understand it, is a critical analysis of the economic and political structures that have caused our massive wealth divide and a host of related issues.  We should look outward towards Wall Street or towards the Orleans Parish Prison, but the movement would also benefit from an inward analysis, one that examines questions of privilege, access and participation at Duncan Square and beyond.  If part of what we’re trying to accomplish is some sort of re-shaping of society then first we need to consider how our present society has shaped us.  What about us re-affirms aspects of that society?  How can we recognize those things within ourselves, then begin to alter them?  If we’re all a little more deliberate about how we’re thinking, behaving and communicating then a more self-critical and socially critical group will follow.

It’ll be fascinating to see how this experiment plays out.  When a group claims to represent 99% of this country, the possibilities for ideas, actions, and demands are endless.  Yet as much as we’re tempted by grandiose and exciting possibilities, we’ll only get there by remaining grounded, patient and deliberate.  We’ll need to be open to criticism.  We’ll need to accept mistakes with resolve and without guilt.  We should exercise humility, acknowledging the impossibility of knowing the consequences of all we do and say.

We should also remember that we’re in New Orleans.  This city has a specific history written into the larger narratives of American injustice and inequity, a history dating much further back than August 2005.  New Orleans faces its own unique challenges.  It also boasts unique sets of people, resources and organizing traditions that offer the experience and wisdom to move forward with what we face locally and nationally.  Undoubtedly this city’s incarceration rate, level of illiteracy, income inequality and schooling issues are symptoms of much larger national and international problems.  Yet locating and remedying those larger causes may require that occupiers first build momentum and capacity by organizing and coalition-building locally around what’s already happening here.  Occupiers should build on and learn from past and current efforts in New Orleans, lending support and solidarity not only to those around Wall Street, but also to those around Broad Street, Galvez Street, and Claiborne Avenue.

Walking on Eggshells

I've had a number of discussions over the years about the use of language, how it relates to our thoughts, and ultimately how it affects the way we treat people.  These discussions involve things like the telling of racist or sexist jokes, representation in television and film, and the use of particular types of language that some might characterize as jargonistic or sensitive.  Many of these discussions took place at Pomona College, where people often felt anguish that they had to "walk on eggshells" in an atmosphere of political correctness.  What follows are just a couple of thoughts in response to that and related sentiments, triggered by a recent conversation with a friend:

• Nuancing speech, or what some might pejoratively call "political correctness," isn't just about protecting feelings.  People will often defend the use of a racist or sexist term because "I have a black friend and she thinks it's ok."  Those people have a point: we can't read minds; we can't know if every type of person represented by a particular trope will or won't approve.  But if the whole point of considering our language is only to become practiced at knowing what words to say when, then we've missed an opportunity.  We could go one step further: to actually try to change how we think.  Our patterns of language have huge influence over our patterns of thought.  An example: the word "criminal" triggers all sorts of associations in our mind related to masculinity, sexuality, race, socioeconomic status, and a web of other ideas related to them.  The more often we use particular language, the stronger the associations become.  Many of those associations are not of our doing - they originate in the media we consume and from the imaginations and experiences of those around us.  We learn ideas about people that might have minimal basis in our own experience.  If we're only concerned with protecting feelings, we're not challenging the way we've been taught to think.  We're not asking where those ideas originated, nor how they perpetuate.  Another goal might be to release our minds from oversimplified, monolithic, and potentially harmful representations and patterns of thought.

• Humor that stereotypes is another example of how our thoughts and our language relate.  Again, it's not enough to hold our tongue to avoid upsetting someone.  It's also that we should learn the complex histories of representation; for example how people of African descent have been represented in European minds and in Eurocentric thought, how that plays out in Hollywood and in news media, and how a "harmless" joke can perpetuate harmful and caricatured representations in our minds.  Rather than just asking people to refrain from that kind of humor, I think it's productive to suggest that they learn about some of that history of representation.  When I realized that even "harmless" jokes reinforce those tropes in our subconscious, the jokes themselves became less funny, and really not even worth repeating.  If you think you're immune to that subconscious reinforcement, congratulations, you have more control over your mind than any human ever.  Or maybe you're kidding yourself.

• All of this subconscious mind stuff related to language and representation might seem kind of moot unless you actually look at our society.  Our ideas about people matter.  They matter in courts, in job interviews, in electoral politics, in schools... they matter everywhere.  It's not only that our society produces some of those ideas, it's also that those ideas produce our society.

• What does it mean when people become upset that they're made to feel like they're walking on eggshells?  I think such a complaint often says less about a community's tendency towards censorship or superficial sensitivity and more about certain individuals' unwillingness to endure the growing pains associated with nuancing their speech and thought.  This is no real burden compared with the burdens created by a society that results from unjust, uncomplicated, and destructive ways of thinking.  

• People are complicated as hell!  The world is full of people!  Communicating in a thoughtful way should be challenging!  We should feel like we're walking on eggshells!  And after enough time, after enough faux pas and moments of shame and naivete, the shells beneath our feet will do what eggshells always do in the presence of our remnants: they'll compost.  They'll turn into soft, kind soil.  And that's where the real growth happens.

11 Questions on September 11th

As I scanned the web this morning for peoples' thoughts on September 11th, I found that almost nothing I read was resonating**.  It seemed that every piece was trying to offer an explanation, a cohesion, or a theme to how we should remember or explain what happened.

There's comfort in trying to create a narrative about an event so devastating and inexplicable.  It's our tendency to want to attach meaning to things, to console ourselves that even this can fit into the stories of our lives; even this can have some sort of conclusion.

I'm tempted to do the same - to offer up what today means for me, how I explain it and fit it into the story of the world as I see it.  But for me there's still too much to sort out.  The thoughts spiral and intersect and ultimately offer nothing clean-cut, no answers.

But I do have questions.  In my hesitation to conclude the narrative of "Ten Years Later," 11 questions are my small act of commemoration:

1. What if, amidst our anger, sadness and mourning 10 years ago, we had also taken the time for self-examination, to consider our accountability in what happened?
2. What if we had sacrificed our immediate sense of justice in the name of a more persistent justice?  What if we had tried to forgive, as many families of victims have done, as many targets of post-9/11 discrimination and violence have done?
3. Would this have happened had we asked for forgiveness for our historical roles in decimating the natural resources, political capital, and quality of life of people in so many countries?
4. What couldn't we have done with the trillions that went to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
5. If something like this happened again today, would our leaders act any differently?  Would we?
6. Has our revenge created a more peaceful or safer world?
7. What have we learned about how our media represents such events and the people that become associated with them?  How much was the anti-American sentiment in the Middle East exaggerated to fit the story, and how did that exaggeration shape our attitudes?
8. Who in our country benefitted from September 11th - politically, monetarily, publicly?  Where are they now?
9. How did September 11th take on such meaning beyond itself?  How did it come to dictate aspects of the legal and prison systems, peoples' attitudes towards Islam, political discourse, media framing and coverage, and the entirety of our foreign policy?
10. How long before we understand the consequences of all we've done since, and all we will continue to do in the name of September 11th?
11. Who doesn't remember where they were?

One final word on a complicated day: to forgive is not to forget.  Forgiveness is not a thing earned by the offender, but a thing offered for the sake of the one who has been hurt.  When I say we should forgive what happened, I ask it only for our own sake.  We should forgive for the sake of self-reflection, of moving on, and of healing.  Forgiveness does not excuse what was done or negate our ability to react to it.  Rather, it enables us to react with love, deliberation, humility, and an eye toward a future long after our lingering feelings have subsided.  Culturally and politically speaking, it's the only thing we haven't tried.



**one article did really resonate: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/10-years-after-911-the-go_b_954477.html

Reflections from the eye of TS Lee

It's difficult to fathom that my relationship to this city has everything to do with hurricane Katrina.  The storm's aftermath began my family's relationship to New Orleans, and now years later I'm beginning to call it home.  There are hordes like me who found New Orleans in the time since - young people who've migrated here for the reasonable rents, exciting bar and music scenes, collaborations with non-profits, and perhaps the sense of purpose that comes with inhabiting a place in dramatic flux, the rare place whose permanence is brought into question.  In our minds, perhaps, each of us believes our presence here is an act of committed preservation.

There are also the non-profits, the charter management companies, the TV and film producers, the celebrities, all of whom have flocked here to make their mark or their dollar or both, many with questionable results for the people who've lived here much longer, who called it home before and after the storm and floods, who may or may not have asked for help in this form, who may or may not appreciate the influx of outsiders who've suddenly taken an interest.

Katrina altered or destroyed so many lives here.  The wreckage is still evident in lower-income parts of the city.  Memories are still vivid.  One of my co-workers yesterday shared his experience of witnessing the downed trees, flooded streets, houses lifted and dropped several blocks away, and the dogs, dozens of dogs, pitbulls hungry barking on street corners.  Six years after the storm his voice still carried the storm's ominous weight, like a ship sinking slowly.

The irony isn't lost on me: without that unnatural disaster**, I'd likely never have found myself in New Orleans.

I'm not entirely sure what moved me to come here.  In part, I think, is my belief that you can learn an awful lot about a society and a culture when you spend time on or around its margins.  I felt that most strongly working at the prison garden, and I've felt it here in each of my visits.  I've spent most of my life in places that hide much of the nature of our society and culture - Westchester County and Pomona College are paradigms, places that represent achievement and prosperity yet obscure the commensurate exploitation and exclusion - and this city seems a little more honest.  Not that Katrina was the cause of much of the marginalization here - it existed long before and will continue to exist long after - but it did exacerbate it, expand it, and bring it to light for me.  Nor does my experience here necessarily give me a view into that marginalization.  That's up to me to locate and engage with responsibly.

Since I am necessarily an outsider here - and perhaps an extremely temporary one - I think it's only appropriate that I try to defer humbly to the customs, values, and cultures that were here long before August 29th, 2005.

This place will teach me if I let it.



**make no mistake that an appropriate system of levees - the one that was planned decades ago and never completed - would have prevented the storm surges that flooded the city, caused billions of property damage, lead to thousands of deaths, displaced hundreds of thousands, and ruined so many lives.  This is to say nothing of the complete failure of the immediate response, ongoing rebuilding funds, and insurance coverage in the years that followed.

Instant Gratification: Fending Off a Bad Habit

[Insert rant about television and computers, visual culture, lack of concentration, less reading, less patience in young people blah blah blah - not to minimize it, but just to spare you]

Today I felt impatient.

I spent a good working day searching for a place to live for the next 11 months, and it's a very different beast than I had imagined.  I spent the first three hours scanning the webs, making phone calls, and sending e-mails before it even occurred to me to get out of the house where I'm temporarily planted.  Three hours to realize that my default expectation was that apartment shopping is a computer-based activity.

(side note: this is an example of what I mean when I talk about cultural narratives - some combination of factors in our culture influenced my life to create a certain set of expectations.  The story in my head was something like: e-mail a renter, see the place, love the place, move in by Wednesday.  A benign example, but illustrative of how stories matter, and operate in complicated ways!)

Disappointed at my naivete and that I had so generously fed the i-gratification habit, I took to the streets.  I parked my car in the depths of the Bywater and spent the next two hours walking up and down, block after block, calling real-estate postings as I passed.  I felt a tinge of frustration and self-doubt, followed by another wave of self-disappointment.  Less than 24 hours in my new city and already a slip in my resolve.  Ridiculous.  He-who-laments-the-thing-becomes-the-thing.  I actually had to pause to remind myself that finding a place to live actually takes time and persistence.

And then an internal wake-up call - how removed my life is from experiences of sustained hardship: long-term unemployment, involuntary homelessness, hunger, illness, crippling debt, and many things far less serious.

As I sat with my iced latte in a chic cafe with free wifi, exhausted after two hours walking in the Louisiana sun, I took a moment to be grateful.  Grateful that I have a job, that I will probably have a place to live by September 1st, that I was able to pack my bags and move somewhere new and exciting, that I will probably find some good people in this town, that I've lived so well that one day of apartment hunting actually felt a little hard.

Goal for day two: develop a thicker skin.

A Culture of Convenience, or why I'd rather sit in traffic

note: I've removed the name of a product from this entry because this is a blog, not an advertisement.

Today I gave my mother a fresh stomach ulcer to mingle with the dozen-or-so others she's developed because of my impending move to New Orleans, Louisiana.

This one seems less severe than the "get your car inspected" ulcer, the "find a job" ulcer, and the "what neighborhood are you going to live in?" ulcer (the former two have since healed).  This one's only a "you should get an electronic toll transponder for the drive down" ulcer, but this one may linger.

For the cavemen and women who read my blog, the "transponder" is a brilliant little device that attaches to the windshield of your car and allows you to amble through toll booths without having to do the roll-down-window-while-fumbling-for-change-while-maneuvering-vehicle-through-traffic, difficult by acrobatic standards but bread-and-butter for so many NY-area commuters.

The technology is an example of my favorite kind of design: simple and incredibly useful.  It probably saves the average commuter many hours of life otherwise spent in traffic, and has saved countless millions of hair follicles from full-scale double-handed assault.  I use one regularly when I drive in my parents' car.

Having one would be a no-brainer for a daily commute to Queens or Northern Jersey, but for occasional use, I'd rather sit in traffic.  My reasoning on this one is obtuse and heady, but bear with me.

We're a culture addicted to convenience and ease.  So much industry and advertising is dedicated to making lives easier: electronic razors, restaurant delivery, e-mail, internet shopping, supermarkets.  Goods and desires are more accessible, inexpensive, and centralized than ever before.  With the right amount of equipment, money, and dedication, it is actually possible to survive without leaving bed for weeks.

I'm pointing out an extreme just to illustrate the point, but I think it's fair to say that many people live with far less inconvenience than was possible even a couple of decades ago.

Spare me the point-counterpoint here - it's obvious why in many ways this is a cultural current that most people are more than happy to ride.  But might there also be unintended and/or unfortunate consequences in a culture of convenience?  (spoiler alert: yes)  If we see less and less of the little inconveniences like traffic tolls, pharmacy trips, or snail mail (note the re-naming), how will we react to larger, less avoidable inconveniences like losing a job, breaking a leg, or the Department of Motor Vehicles?  On a cultural scale, what does it mean that we dedicate so much energy and resources to making our lives just a tad easier?

We have a choice, I think.  We can choose to see little inconveniences as purely dreadful - in some people I think this mentality actually causes extreme amounts of stress or anxiety - or we can see them as opportunities to practice a couple of important skills: patience and positive thinking.  If we train ourselves not to sweat the little things, the big things might not seem so devastatingly big.  If we can transform an hour stuck in traffic into an hour of quality conversation with a friend, maybe we can learn to see losing a job as an opportunity to find a new one that's more resonant with our passions.

Culturally speaking, a shift away from convenience, or at least a pause in the shift towards it, could open up people and resources to something more worthwhile.  I'm not going to push this point too much because the whole "worthwhile" question is a HUGE can of worms, and honestly, how often does our culture produce equitable/sustainable/healthy outcomes when we have an excess of something?  (read: corn, oil, bankers)  Still, always good to connect the personal to the cultural.

By no means am I suggesting that we shirk all convenience in the name of personal growth or some ethereal notion of cultural enlightenment.  We've all been trained to expect some level of comfort for most of our lives and un-doing that training would be a huge pain and probably a pointless one.  Becoming some kind of primitivist might help someone learn patience, but it might also make that someone come off as preachy or out of touch.  A person won't become an example of positive thinking if nobody is willing to bear witness.  One might find it enjoyable to live with fewer and fewer conveniences, but I think it's better to do such things out of actual gratification rather than stoic principle - joy is far more contagious than stubborn self-restraint.

Much gratitude for reading my elaborate rationalization on why I'm taking a pass on ease (you see what I did there, right?).  In the depths of my skull somewhere my unconscious is laughing maniacally because it knows that, in truth, I just can't be inconvenienced to drive all the way to Nyack to get a damn toll transponder.  No wonder I give my mother ulcers.

Re-writing the Narrative

Putting the cart well before the horse, I hope this blog will be: a combination of storytelling and cultural criticism; deeply unsettling yet hopeful; thoughtful and mildly entertaining; fodder for frustration and food for thought.


Here's a few themes that I hope carry throughout:

• That as people and as a culture, we have huge untapped potential to be happier, more peaceful, more generous, more compassionate, more nuanced, and more responsible
• That many of the ways we behave and act as people and as a culture are related to stories, implicit and explicit, that we learn through media, conversation, and lived experience, and that operate on us constantly in ways we cannot even begin to comprehend
• That by being self-reflective and culturally-critical, and by telling different kinds of stories, those based on the values that we wish to embody, we can begin to shift our lives and our culture
• That we have far more power to transform our world and our lives than we think, that we don't need a degree, a change in career or more money to do it, but that it will require risk, deliberation, and humility

My hope beyond hope for this blog is that it will shift, in some miniscule way, readers' perception of the world.  This is, in part, why I've chosen the title "Re-writing the Narrative."**  I want this blog to tell a story: not about how the world is, but rather about how we might choose to see the world.

I hope it compels you.

Much gratitude for your attention,

Sam

**"Re-writing the Narrative" is also the title of my senior thesis, a story about the first month of an 11-week road trip I took in the summer of 2010 to visit a number of community-based organizations around the US and Canada.  Happy to share upon request.