lumière des étoiles

Don't the moon look lonesome, shining through the trees?
2004-10-19 9:30 p.m.

Those are the lyrics to my favorite Jimmy Rushing song. They remind me of my dad, like all old Jazz does. I was thinking about him today when, after picking Steve up and heading over to Barnes and Noble, I discovered Violet, a new family magazine started up by Kiki Mingus, Charlie Mingus' daughter. Now my dad was no Mingus, but he was a good bass player and a great Jazz musician. As I flipped through this premiere issue, I really liked what I saw - and I loved the way Kiki Mingus talked about her dad and included his story so much in her own.

She wanted to start a "family" or maybe "mother's" magazine for "the rest of us", she explains in her editor's letter - a tag line so over-used to explain the start-up of new magazines that it immediately turned me off. But in being bold enough to address issues of bi-racial families, which she was a part of growing up and is now a part of as an adult, and issues of class and work with social consciousness, the magazine does truly seem to offer something that's missing. I will never be interested in mommy/family magazines that only tell me what's best for colic or how to whip up a quick and nutritious dinner for four.

What was great about Violet was the fact that it seems to award identity to the women reading it, championing their healthy investment in their selves beyond just the ubiquitous five-minute cup-of-tea-break that standard mommy magazines tell women that’s all they have time for and all they’re allowed. “Now that you're a mom,” so many of these standard mags say, “it's time to abandon who you were and assume a new identity – the busy busy busy selfless mom!” That's so dangerous and I've always hated it - which is why I'm so digging Violet.

Kiki Mingus does this in kind of circuitous routes – she includes a few pages of her father’s old post cards and letters to her. She also talks a lot about growing up the daughter of such a prominent Jazz musician, and about the ways her dad got her to love, appreciate, and even revel in art and music. I feel her – and can relate completely when I think about my own dad.

So all this seems innocent and touching enough, but it goes beyond sweet nostalgia. Kiki’s able, by using her own example, to reinforce to the moms reading that it’s ok, good, even, to retain your old memories, your old self, your old identity and to spend time on it and yourself, even after you assume the self-sacrificing role of mom. It’s ok and even good for you to allow yourself the time to enjoy those memories through out the day, to spend time re-constructing them, sorting them out, living them again. And it’s not one bit selfish to indulge that way – your kid won’t turn out ill-developed because you’re focusing on yourself and your most significant memories for an hour or two. This is great – cause I think that 5 minute power-yoga crap just ain’t cutting it for most moms.

I was fortunate enough this afternoon to be able to listen in on Steven trying to convince his father not to vote for W. That my in-laws currently reside in a swing-state is the reason for our insistence that they think twice. “This is not the year to vote for the socialist party, mom”, Steve said into the phone. And to his Dad, “Nem. NEM! Meow meow meow NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND meow!”. Of course he wasn't meowing, but my Hungarian is still so god-awful that he may as well have been. In any case, Steve explained his more-than-valid personal reasons for wanting W out of office - not the least of which is No Child Left Behind and the havoc it's wreaking all over our public school system.

He teaches in a semi-suburban, semi-rural area, but it's classified as "urban" because of low family income levels and the host of problems that accompany them. The kids he works with - most of whom are not classified as learning-disabled, are behind where they "should" be according to government standards. In accordance with this NCLB act, these students must pass series of standardized tests to "prove" that the school is "doing its job" in educating them properly. If the students can not pass said series of tests, the schools' budget gets cut in circuitous ways.

I think the idea might have been emphasizing higher standards and weeding out bad teachers - this is not necessarily a bad thing. But how taking money away from schools whose students obviously need it most is supposed to magically fix the widespread destruction of our schools is beyond me.

So let's just say the kids at Steve's school can't pass these tests, despite the fact that he is an excellent teacher. What will happen is that the district budget will get cut, potentially forcing the school to "down-size" and cut "non-essential", non-tenured faculty. Where there are three fourth grade classes now, for example, the school might suddenly be faced with having to have two. So Steve's class size goes from 17 to 28, and in the process also loses the aides or ICS teachers who were hired to help special needs students.

Urm, if such good teachers can't make easy, "marked" progress with the students when they do have resources and smaller class sizes, why on EARTH would we think they will when you take those away?

Or maybe that's not the point at all. Maybe the point is to punish teachers like my husband if those kids can't pass the stupid tests. Because surely, he deserves such punishment. Yes, we should make his job HARDER, or even impossible, when we see that his students aren't filling in the right little circles on their multiple choice math tests.

I've seen him, night after night, staying up until 1 am working on stuff when he knows he has to be up at 5:30 the next morning to get to school on time. I've seen him teach and know how dynamic he is - how he's developed an amazingly productive methods with which to get his students paying attention and interested in learning. I know how good he is at helping them understand math, science, and basic language arts concepts. But Steve cannot also be his students' parents, and can't really extend beyond the classroom and into their homes. IT'S NOT HIS JOB TO. Yet here are where a lot of the students' problems stem from. Is it a shock that certain students can't pass standardized tests when we find out that since their real parents are in jail, that they've been shuffled from foster home to foster home? Is it surprising that a kid has a really hard time learning how to read when we find out that he sometimes has to go without dinner the night before?

Of course not. But let's forget about all that and blame the teachers. It's just so damn easy. I mean obviously none of them do their jobs.
Sigh.

So hence our political campaign - I remember how bang-your-head-against-the-wall awful it was to teach in an "urban" school. The bureaucracy is enough to send anyone running for the hills to find a new line of work. This is no way, might I add, to recruit new teachers. And don't we always say we need the best of the best?

We're keeping our fingers crossed that indeed, "Help is on the way".

Had a good weekend, after a stressful, hurtful end-of-the-week that I'm not going to talk about here. I'm just so over people fighting through their blogs. I spent some much needed time with my mom on Friday - she took me to see a concert that was a little Jazz, a little opera, and a little "world music". It was brilliant - I always forget what it's like to hear live, professional musicians and then when I do, I'm constantly thirsty for more.

Thomas had his farewell Oktoberfest - he moves at the end of the month after ten years at the same place. It was kind of sad, but we threw the usual lit-pumpkin off the roof, and I had a great time talking to Sylva and Kim. When I needed it, they really gave me a confidence boost by telling me that they miss me and really want to re-connect. That would be just divine.

Tomorrow Me, Nicole, Thomas, Kim and Steve see Ministry at BB King's - looking forward to the odd, mixed crowd they always draw and Thomas' antics. Last time he saw Ministry, you see, everyone "lost" him for "about an hour", and then "found him" in the basement with a fractured leg. He has "no idea" what happened, but says "those days are over". We'll see. I just love those kids, they have the best stories ever.