The Pleasure of Privilege

At the school where I work, the children rule. Starting back in the ‘60’s, we took the notion of child-centered education to an extreme, to the point where we’ve never had a teacher’s room and the kids are served lunch first. If oxygen masks dropped in an emergency, we would reverse our airline training and put their masks on while we sputtered for air.

The notion of no hierarchy has carried over into other areas of school culture. Although our teacher’s salary increases by increments according to the number of years at school, almost four decades of service still won’t get you a parking place in the lot, a stool at the kitchen counter or a sense that your voice carries a bit more weight when it comes to discussing major decisions. In short, the idea of privilege due to age, experience, background or accomplishment is a foreign one in my community.

So imagine my delight when I printed out the boarding passes to my flights to North Carolina and noticed that my seat on the first leg was in first-class. Sweet!! I hadn’t requested the upgrade, but someone up high in United decided that due to my many loyal  years of choosing the Friendly Skies and the fact that I had recently suffered through long flights of cramped economy middle seats with the reclining seat in front touching my nose, not to mention the three-hour crying baby (would they allow one in first-class?), that I was worthy of three hours (to Chicago) luxury. Who was I to argue?

Was it my imagination that the woman at the gate warmed up five-degrees more when she noticed my seat number? Did I imagine the mixture of jealousy and admiration from my line-mates when I turned left to my wide cushioned chair instead of right into the low-class economy torture chamber? Did I feel any guilt when the offer for wine came before we had even taken off and the free meal was served? Did I feel I was worthy of the attention? In short, “Hell, yeah!!” I’ve certainly paid my dues and though in my heart of hearts, I’m all about the circle holding hands with everyone equally important and available, I’m ready for a little privilege and deference in my 6^th decade here.

Yesterday I saw Woody Allen’s delightful film To Rome With Love and one of its many charms was the fantasy of the lowly clerk randomly selected to be famous and all the pleasurable perks and papperazi pains that came with it. Suddenly, everything he does, from how he shaves to which shoe he ties first, becomes of magnified importance just because. Because, as supermarket magazines testify, we need stars beyond the ones in the night sky to admire and fawn upon and live vicariously through, thrilled by their love affairs, enthralled by their jet-set vacations, heartbroken (while secretly pleased) at their inevitable downfalls via drugs, divorce, depression.

Without giving away too much, the film gives us random fame and takes it away and has us pondering whether protected privacy is preferred to public pampering. Most of us will never get to make the choice. But what if each person were granted a day in their community to be instantly famous just because. Interviewed, fussed over, preened and pampered, admired by alluring beautiful women or hunky handsome men (heck, why not go further and allow a one-day free pass to sex with admiring groupies?), driven in limos or flown first-class or given restaurant seats instantly, the whole nine yards of celebrity life. Get it out of our system and go back with renewed appreciation (or dissatisfaction!) with our normal lives. Names just randomly chosen by lottery and off we go.

Meanwhile, my three hours of pampered privilege went by way too fast, some of it wasted sleeping. Now I’m about to board the second flight, back rubbing shoulders with the folks. Ah, well, it was nice while it lasted. Thanks, United, for making me feel so special. Now about that school parking space…

The Juicy Parasol of Freedom

Here’s a unique way to celebrate Independence Day. Go to Youtube and type in “Louis Armstrong Dizzy Gillespie Umbrella Man.” This remarkable clip from The Jackie Gleason Show features two of the key jazz innovators turning a simple song into a masterpiece of intricacy, nuance and hard-swingin’ joy. But the highlight is when Dizzy pops his P on “parasol” and sprays Louis with a little spit. Without missing a beat, Louis works “Your parasol sure is juicy, boy!” into his solo.

Everything about the clip is a summary of the genius of jazz, a musical “declaration of independence”— musicians who can sing what they play and play what they sing, who urge each other on to greater heights of self-expression, who find the notes not played in the melody and play them. But the juicy parasol moment is the height, showing how the jazz musician is wholly present, aware, responsive and in the moment, able to act and re-act while creating something new note by note in full view of the audience. Think of a unicylist riding on a tightrope juggling fire while carrying on a conversation and you get an idea of what an extraordinary art form this is. It is expressive freedom born from endless hours of discipline and practice, but with joy and spontaneity always in the foreground. A hard-won independence freely given to all who take the trouble to earn it anew through their efforts.

Then there’s that other document called “The Declaration of Independence” drawn up by Thomas Jefferson. He and his fellow founding fathers were not only interested in political freedom, but also freedom from superstition and fatalism and feudalism. He was a prime representative of that era called the Enlightenment, not a Buddhist Enlightenment, but in some ways the opposite—the celebration of the analytic, rational mind, of science and scientific thought that would free us from ignorance and pave the way to an enlightened civilization. Visiting Monticello this last Spring, it was clear that Jefferson was a lifelong practictioner of scientific inquiry, meticulous observation and technological innovation. On the day he signed the Declaration of Independence, he also recorded in his journal the details of the day’s weather pattern. Something like, “Signed a world changing document. Temperature rose two degrees.”

Jefferson, for all his genius and eloquence and humanitarian values, was a good example of how the rational mind never can wholly run the show. What can be more irrational than writing “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” while slaves worked in your field, a field stolen from the Native Americans who once lived there? The Fathers missed a great opportunity to declare a truly inclusive freedom and their failure gave birth to a civil war and a great deal of human suffering in the centuries to follow.

One such descendant of continued oppression was born on July 4, 1900 in the poorest neighborhood of a ghetto, never finished school past 5^th grade, sold coal out on the streets, was sent to a juvenile reform school at 12 years old for two years, married a prostitute at age 18. His childhood was a sociological nightmare, but he went on to become one of the most influential voices of the 20^th century. His name was Louis Armstrong.

Well, recent research shows it was really August 4, 1901 that Louis was born, but for years it was the grand mythological date of Independence Day at the beginning of the century and that feels right. As Dizzy once said of Louis, “No him, no me” and perhaps every jazz musician today can say the same. And yet so many American school children still don’t know who he was or have heard his ebullient trumpet and raspy voice floating freely over the chords of the song.

So on this July 4^th celebration, those of you with children should go beyond mere fireworks and do two things:

• Read part of the Declaration of Independence to them.

• Play a Louis Armstrong recording.

Okay?

Back in the U.S. of A.

I’m sure no one is following a story line here, but I’ve mentioned various times that my ex-pat-in-Argentina-daughter was coming home for her cousin’s wedding and staying for the month of July. Needless to say, her papa (that’s me) is very happy to see her and enjoy once more her energy, her hugs, her insults and the like. But it has been especially fascinating to watch her react to “Life in the United States” after 16 months away.

Like most people who choose to live abroad, she has been disappointed in some aspects of American culture and appreciative of certain qualities of Argentinian culture that are missing in the U.S.. As a guest in their country, she has been sparing in her criticism and accepting of their ways, however strange they may appear. I expected her culture shock to be the usual litany of all the things wrong with the U.S. of A— the non-stop grinding of the war machine, the misguided education debates, the expensive (though improving!) health care system, the ‘isms’ that keep people out or put them down or plow them under.

But instead, she’s been running around like a kid in the candy store, exclaiming, “The shower’s hot right away! All the lights work! Look how clean this street is! And the farmer’s market!!!! I want to buy EVERYTHING!!! Okay, tonight is sushi, tomorrow Thai, then Mexican…I have a lot of catching up to do!!”

It was a surprising and refreshing perspective and as we approach the 4^th of July, a good reminder for me to appreciate that though there are major large things that feel hopelessly broken, there is an underlying sense that things work here and an expectation of accountability if they don’t. I’ve always been fonder of Italy than Germany, Bali than Singapore, enthralled by the refusal to be reduced to mere efficiency and enjoy a bit of chaos, create a calendar with more festival days than business ones. I love to tell stories of the bus in Ghana that leaves “when it’s full” or the Aborigines who danced at the Museum Opening in Australia and defied the timetable because they were “only halfway to the waterhole” when the time was up.

But when the car breaks down or the computer crashes, the charm starts to fade and I’m quite happy to return to the land where just about anything is readily available with a warrantee and a guarantee, a Customer Complaint department and a refund policy. It was interesting when our hotel in Bolgatanga was out of both power for lights and water for washing and toilets and the hotel clerks seemed puzzled that we were concerned or expected a lower rate. It makes a good story, but not the best traveling environment.

Cultures are like people, no one with the perfect balance of all the qualities endlessly competing with each other for center stage. The health of a culture, as with a person, is the constant negotiation between the factors, awareness of the light and shadow, endless balancing and re-balancing. It also takes an a priori value that things should work, whether they be a ballpoint pen or a school system and a determination to fight city hall.

Both people and cultures can take a fatalistic view, from “it’s God’s will” to “that’s just the way things are” and while they continue to complain, miss the next step of action. There’s a little known Mother Goose rhyme:

For every evil under the sun

There is a remedy or there is none.

If there be one, try to find it.

If there be none, never mind it.

In American culture at its best, we have the expectation that things should work and a determination to seek action when they don’t. Of course, we don’t agree on what “working” means, we go too far and try to fix things that are unfixable (like Siblings Without Rivalry or Gender: A Socially Constructed Paradigm), don’t go far enough to fix things that we could so easily (schools, schools, schools). But on the eve of Independence Day, it’s nice to catch a little bit of my daughter’s renewed enthusiasm for peanut butter, the Sing-a-long Grease at the movies, the bike lanes on the streets and such things that we take for granted seen anew from a returning ex-pat’s eyes. Hooray for the U.S. of A!

Fireworks in the Brain

The 4^th of July came early this year. First, there was a week of granddaughter Zadie out in the world lighting up everyone she passed like a Roman candle. The sparklers of her smile effortlessly lit up the mirror neurons in anyone who had the good sense to look at her and pay attention. No fireworks in the sky, but inside the observers, brain cells were celebrating the Declaration of Interdependence, everyone connected and lit up by Zadie’s smile and laugh.

I think I’ve mentioned mirror neurons before, those messengers of empathy and compassion that populate the frontal lobes and other neighborhoods in the brain and make us smile when the baby does—and vice-versa—and make us tear-up when a speaker’s voice cracks. The discovery came when scientists observed the same reaction in the brain of monkeys watching someone pick up a piece of food and actually picking up a piece of food themselves. Though scientists are bickering about enough experimentation to justify the science of it all, we don’t need science to tell us how infectious tears and laughter are.

As you might expect, a wedding is an occasion when mirror neurons go on alert and work overtime. And so it was at the ceremony of my nephew Ian and his bride Madeleine, starting with her choking up while reciting vows. A flash of white handkerchiefs could be seen in the congregation faster than you could say “mirror neuron.” And again at the reception when Madeleine’s Dad told a beautiful story about all the good years he had had with his daughter, most especially reading her stories at night. From Mother Goose rhymes to The Three Billy Goats Gruff to Little House on the Prairie to Dicken’s Great Expectations, they moved through the years deeply ensconced in the land of imagination together. You could feel him reliving those magic moments in front of us all and when his voice started to crack, the handkerchiefs flashed again, men and women, young and old, bride’s side and groom’s side, alike. It was like the finale of the 4^th of July.

He saved the day, as people often do, with just the right moment for humor, telling how after Dicken’s, he crossed some line to a long story of soldiers in the American Revolution slogging through the backwaters of Maine for chapter after endless chapter. He knew he has lost her after that, but by then, it was time for her to venture out and begin the journey to replace father with husband. Meanwhile, the laughter leavened the tears and now it was time to cut the cake and dance. We did and a fine time was had by all. 


P.S. My daughter Talia caught the bouquet! Eligible bachelors, give her a call.

The Circle Game

“Birth, copulation and death.

Birth, copulation and death.

That’s all the facts, when it comes to brass tacks.

Birth, copulation and death.”

Today my nephew gets married. The families are gathered, the toasts have begun, the processional walks down the aisle rehearsed and all are a’twitter awaiting the moment when a kiss seals the deal. Last night at the rehearsal dinner was a slide show, a quick review of the bride and groom’s 28 years, from the baby photo to the happy couple’s recent camping trip. I had participated in so much of my nephew Ian’s photo collage, meeting him at one-day old, setting him loose in my yard as a preschooler with the basket for the Easter egg hunt, cheering him at the school walkathon (I taught him until 4^th grade when he moved from San Francisco to Sebastopol), traveling with him to Ireland as a teenager, meeting him in Japan as a college student, eating with him around the Thanksgiving table and singing with him at the annual Christmas caroling as a young adult and just generally seeing him through all his various haircuts and life stages. He was my first nephew, used to call me “Unk Dunk” and now I’m about to play the piano as he walks down the aisle into his married life.

And so these moments like stones in the stream, places of rest when the constant motion stops to mark a moment, reflect, gather the community and surround the folks passing through their rite of passage with love, remembrance and good wishes. T.S. Eliot said it all succinctly in his limerick-like way—birth, marriage (sanctified copulation), death. With little Zadie with us, my nephew’s impending marriage, my mother-in-law’s impending exit, all three very much present with me now. If we live well, every moment is sacred and cause for celebration, but some are threshold points that turn a life this way and not that and deserve ritual attention and group hugs.

In the slide show, there were photos of my sister’s wedding and now she and her husband will stand where my mother and father once stood. I played the organ for that wedding and will play piano for this one. Last week, I saw Zadie nursing on the couch where her Mom used be nursed, took her to the caroussel in children’s playground in the park where I used to ride the painted ponies with her Mom. Couldn’t help but sing Joni Mitchell’s Circle Game:

And the seasons they go ‘round and ‘round

And the painted ponies go up and down.

We’re captive on the carousel of time.

We can’t return, we can only look behind

From where we came.

And go round and round and round

In the circle game.

It’s a dizzying, colorful, whirling ride, up and down, round and round, with the brass band playing and the drums beating and the triangles ringing. Amidst the serious and solemnity of the occasion, a good time to remember “Wheeeee!!!!” And don’t forget to grab the brass ring!

Portland Town

“Where will I live?” For much of our human history, this question doesn’t exist. We are born into a place much as we’re born into a family, culture and religion— it’s all decided for you. But as a 20^th century American with choices, the decision where to settle gets put out on the table as we dream our future. Often it’s work that decides or following a sweetheart, but sometimes it’s that feeling of encountering a place and knowing somewhere deep in your bones, “This is the place I have dreamed of.”

Most people I know have developed this habit of keeping the antennae up as they travel. They visit friends and in the midst of conversations, some secret part of their brain is thinking, “Wow! Nice affordable house, great neighbors, quaint shopping district down the block. But don’t know if I could handle the weather. And the traffic on the bridge is brutal!” And so on. I listened to my 31-year old daughter on the phone with her husband describing Portland as she searches for her next home and felt myself comparing and contrasting along with her even as I feel wholly settled in San Francisco.

Fact is, Portland is an impressive town. (Oregon, not Maine, though the latter is impressive too!) Especially in these past three days of summer without a drop of rain. Like Budapest, Istanbul, Salzburg, it is bi-sected by a river that neatly divides the city into quadrants. Three of the friends we are visiting live in the Northeast section, which is pure suburbia with rolling lawns, impressively tall trees, large houses with twice the square footage and half the price of the unreal estate of San Francisco. But it is an urban suburbia without the sterility of pre-fab houses and an Updikean flat energy. It has character, each house its own architectural wonde, and an urban energy that buzzes even as it offers a tranquil evening chatting with neighbors on the front porch.

We drove to another neighborhood in the Southeast to a little spot named Share-It Square, where neighbors had made a conscious effort to craft a sharing community even as each had the independence of their own home and private property. There is a tea station on one corner, children’s toys open to anyone to play with, a poetry corner, large wooden tablets to post different announcements on and so on. Across the river, we ascended to a place called Council Crest and looked out over the city with Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens in the distance. Acres of pristine park with hiking trails and a gondola tram. I have long thought that the health of any city is directly related to its parks and Portland is impressive in that regard, from the sprawling Arboretum with its remarkable Japanese gardens down to the world’s smallest park, allegedly built for leprauchans! Well, that’s what the guidebook said and it went well with the bumper sticker, “Keep Portland Weird.”

Then there’s the inevitable downtown, both the old and the new, with the usual office buildings and chain stores with one lustrous jewel—Powell’s Bookstore. This has long been the Granddaddy of independent bookstores, as larger or larger than Borders ever was, but with the small cozy bookstore feel. I found the book I had searched in vain for in San Francisco and then made an astounding discovery— my own book The ABC’s of Education on the bookshelf!!! Though I have written eight books, they mostly circulate through Orff dealers or come out of my suitcase at workshops. Now I feel like a real author!! (And for any readers of this blog who are curious, this is the book I feel most proud of and that I think is of the most interest to the non-music teacher reader. Order from Powell’s!)

There are other treasures in this marvelous town. Like the Kennedy School, an old elementary school converted to a place to stay, eat and go to the movies. The rooms to stay are the old classrooms, complete with blackboard and cloak closet, the old cafeteria is the new, hip restaurant and the auditorium the movie theater. The halls feel like school halls from the ‘50’s with class photos on the walls. And speaking of schools, there’s an old “hippy” school called Catlin Gabel where I’ve given many a workshop in the barn, several universities, including the eccentric Reed College that counts among its alum Gary Snyder, one of my favorite poets and thinkers. Go west and you’re at the coast, east and you’re hiking Mt. Hood. Bike lanes in town are numerous, people are friendly and though ethnic diversity is low compared to San Francisco, it has a broad-minded feel and interest in the world far beyond its borders.

In short, a nice place to visit and a nice place to live. Well, at least when it’s not raining for nine months straight. 

Old Friends

From three weeks of work and travel into the social whirlwind. Started with a “Welcome to San Francisco!” party for granddaughter Zadie, old friends from the school, neighborhood and beyond paying their tribute to the little darling and catching up on our own news as well. Then piled into the car for the two-day drive to Portland, Oregon and the family reunion at my nephew’s wedding. Zadie was a heroic traveler, strapped in her car seat for some six hours straight until we tumbled out in Ashland, Oregon and spent the night with an old school colleague and Kerala’s 2^nd grade teacher. Another five hours the next day, stopping at the gas station where an attendant took care of us—no self-service in the entire state of Oregon!—driving through the “Grass Seed Capital of the World,” seeing Mt. Hood in the distance as we approached Portland and got snarled in Istanbul-style traffic.

Dropped Kerala (and Zadie) at her college friend’s house and went on to my own college friends, where we passed a lovely few hours sitting out on the front and back porches on a summer night, under the enormous trees ubiquitous in the Portland neighborhoods, telling our new and remembering our old stories. Called one of our gang in New York and went through the list “What do you know about so and so?” Today we’ll visit another person who lived in the small village in Kerala, India with us some 32 years back and we’ll show all the photos from our trip back there last year.

The stories that come pouring out in these catch-up visits are enough to fill any novelist’s

idea bank. Big deals and losses like car accidents, cancer, divorce, troubled kids, losing parents and then the little things like the addition to the house or tree that fell down, the whole catastrophe told over wine or tea around the kitchen table or sitting on the front porch. Decades of histories between us, friends who used to sit around and spin out future dreams now grey-haired with faces marked by grief and disappointment, gratitude and joy, survivors all and none of us done yet, more dreams to reach for, from the upcoming Hawaii trip to hopes for grandchildren. I was reminded of that line from Gary Snyder’s poem, The Night Herons:

“…the joy of all the beings is in being older and tougher and eaten up. In the tubes and lanes of things, in the glorious cleansing treatment plants."

New friends are refreshing and a delight, but there is nothing like old friends who knew us back when and are still interested in knowing us now. In the words of poet W.H. Auden, may we “stagger forth rejoicing!”