matching tracksuits

If there is a town with kitsch as the central design premise, it is Myrtle Beach.

As a kid, I’d always wanted to go there. All my friends went there during the summer, and for us southwest Virginians, it was at least a seven-hour journey. It was not a place where one merely spent the weekend.

I finally went to Myrtle Beach this weekend for a middle school conference. It was everything I expected.

All decor seemed to have a heavy-handed marine theme, especially for the restaurants

and the stores. My companions and I wondered about the warmth of being invited into a shark’s mouth for a little shopping

Given the fact that all such shops are peddling to tourist, it seems somehow perfectly appropriate.

The kitsch extended all the way to the oceanfront, with hotels painted colors that only rarely occur in nature.

And then there were the mini-golf courses. We counted at least twelve on the main road, each with a different theme applied to the same goal: knock a golf ball through some obstacle.

“Who knew that the market could support this number of courses,” I muttered as we passed by yet another.

But we weren’t there for entertainment but for education, and we all received enough information to make us wish we could turn back the calendar to the beginning of the year and start again. In that sense — as well as the collection of mini-golf shots — it was a greatly successful weekend.

Romeo and Juliet

Every year I teach this I learn something new about it. This time, I noticed some symmetry in Juliet’s lines when she learns that Romeo has killed Tybalt and Romeo’s response to the opening scene’s brawl. Juliet descries Romeo in III.ii:

O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!

Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?

Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!

Dove-feather’d raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!

Despised substance of divinest show!

Just opposite to what thou justly seem’st,

A damned saint, an honourable villain!

These oxymorons mirror what Romeo says in I.i:

Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.

Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!

O any thing, of nothing first create!

O heavy lightness! serious vanity!

Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire,

sick health!

Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!

And I was struck, ever more forcefully, by Romeo’s utter immaturity. He whines and cries in III.iii, learning of his banishment, as if here were a toddler who’d had his toys taken away from him. In fact, that seems to be all Juliet is in that passage.

As I Lay Dying: Meditations on Return by Richard Neuhaus

This book opened my thinking in many ways. First, it introduced me to the writings of Simone Weil and inspired me to buy one of her books, Gravity and Grace.

The Faiths of Our Fathers: What America’s Founders Really Believed by Alf Mapp

We often hear claims about the Founding Fathers’ religious views, with those claims fairly accurately reflecting the religious and political beliefs of the speaker: conservatives claim they were all traditionalist Christians; liberals claim they were deists with only a token belief in God.

A few surprising things I learned:

• Ben Franklin was positively polytheistic, believing in a supreme god who was over a lesser god, the creator of our universe.
• Thomas Jefferson’s books were not place in the Philadelphia Public Library’s circulation as late as 1830 because of a belief that he was an atheist. He was, briefly, in his youth. Eventually, he became something of a Christian, though he rejected all notions of the supernatural. He even edited his own version of the New Testament, removing all reference to miracles.
• Benjamin Franklin was a guest of the Hellfire Club at least twice, though according to some sources he was merely spying.
• George Washington refrained from taking communion. There is some conjecture that he did so because he felt “unworthy”, as defined in First Corinthians 11:25-29, with verse 29 being key: “For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”
• John Marshall was famous for his Christian ethics and charity, but like Washington, he didn’t take communion.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

It used to be one of my favorites. When I learned about the charges of plagiarism, the book lost a lot of its sheen. Still, the combination of zoology and spirituality makes the book worth it on a basic level. (I read this during our daily Silent Sustained Reading period at school. I wasn’t necessarily intending on re-reading it, but I needed to set the proper example, and that was the the only book at hand.)

1. Re-read
2. For school

The Girl enjoys playing with the chess set I brought back from Poland. (If I remember correctly, a gift from Nana and Papa, when they came for our wedding.) She has invented her own little version that involves us using single pieces to push our opponent’s single piece around the board for a few moments. She loves the game, but I’ve yet to discern the sublime objective.

Occasionally she just gets all the pieces out and puts them on the board. There’s usually a pattern: black pieces on black squares; white pieces on white squares.

A perfectly impossible position, but notice: the white king is in check, forking the queen.

It’s another example of the similarities between toddlers and older children with autism: pattern, pattern, pattern. Everything has its place, and to disturb that order is to invite chaos, in more ways that one.

We’re more like that than we’d like to admit. A colleague once commented that we’re all on the autism spectrum; it’s just that some of us have very mild cases. Mine manifests itself in my obsession with seeing patterns in floor tiles and then feeling a compulsion to walk in accordance with said patterns.

That’s probably why I looked at L’s work, smiled, and said proudly, “Very symmetrical. Well done.”

It promised to be a lovely morning: after a day of snow, the forecast was for cloudless skies Saturday morning. I opened my eyes and realized I had to get outside with camera and tripod as fast as possible.

But it was hardly any fun alone. Since we finally had snow, K and I were both eager to get the Girl out into it.

Once outside, L was keen on imitating K and me: in short, she began cleaning. First, seeing us knocking the snow off the car with a broom, she needed to help. But weightier obligations awaited her in the back.

The deck.

When we had a snow an ice day, L enjoyed knocking the ice off the banisters and deck chairs, and she was eager to get to work. In the course of a few minutes, she’d just about knocked off all the ice.

Yesterday, she applied her expertise to snow. She banged it a few times as experience had taught with the ice, then knocked it off.

If only we could keep this urge to clean in imitation going for another fifteen years or so.

As it was, the cleaning bug lasted only a few more minutes. She knocked some snow off trees and shrubs, then headed to the front.

The great sadness was that the snow was too dry to make even a small snow ball, let alone a snow man.

Still, snow angels seemed doable.

“Watch and learn,” I told the Girl, then gingerly lowered myself onto the ground. I’d forgotten how quickly the snow invades shoes, sneaks up jackets and settles into just about every article of clothing.

L took a more direct route, and with a flop was wallowing in the snow.

She didn’t mind the snow working its way down her boots, up her jacket, around her neck: by the time we forced her back inside, she was covered with it.

Not ice. Not sleet. Snow — actual snow — began falling just as school let out this afternoon and continued until well into the evening.

Such a rare occurrence in South Carolina that it became the evening entertainment. Some quiet music (Madeleine Peyroux), red wine, and a view of the snow falling.

Certainly all my students are disappointed that all this happened on a Friday, and a Friday before a free Monday (Presidents’ Day) to boot. No chance of a snow day.

It’s a fairly dry snow, piling up lightly and promising a fun morning with the Girl tomorrow.

I have decided to complete the “52 Books in 52 Weeks” challenge. I shouldn’t be much of a challenge at all, given the amount I read for the classes I teach and the fact I’ll be starting grad school (again) shortly. Still, I thought for a year I’d keep track of everything I’d read, regardless of the reason or, for that matter, the “quality.”

January’s list was varied, to say the least:

The Bluford books really shouldn’t count, I tell myself. They were something I read because some students were reading them. At the same time, I learned a great deal from them.

The series is aimed at African American students, and many of my black students say they can truly relate to the characters and situations.

In the case of Someone to Love Me, that is truly tragic. It tells the story of Cindy, a high school freshman who has only a distant relationship with her mother, who is constantly going out with her boyfriend Rafe (I believe that was his name — some shortened form of “Raphael”). She is constantly leaving her daughter at home with a couple of cats and a freezer filled TV dinners while she goes out on the town, eating out, buying new clothes, and generally acting selfishly irresponsible. When an elderly neighbor invites Cindy over for a hot dinner, she relish it: “It had been years since Cindy had eaten such wonderful homemade food.” Perhaps the most damning passage in the book. The girl goes on to get involved with an abusive older boy and has to face her mother’s anger — and physical abuse — when she tries to convince her that Rafe is a dealer. It is an emotional, sordid affair from page one.

If this is in any way the reality of any of my students, it’s little wonder they have difficulty focusing on school work.

1. Re-read
2. For school
3. Bluford series (for school)

I’d left it on the counter as I’d cooked dinner earlier tonight, and as I picked up the bottle of sesame oil, I suddenly fell back through the years and found myself standing in my kitchen in Lipnica Wielka in the late mid-90s, holding the bottle of sesame oil I’d inherited from Roy, an American returning to the States. Standing here in Greenville, I closed my eyes and for a few moments, I could almost feel myself back in that odd kitchen: the little refrigerator in the corner; the old wood-burning oven that I’d covered with a tablecloth and pressed into service as a dish-drying counter; the overhead light hanging from a wire, casting a harsh yet dim light throughout the room.

I imagined myself putting the sesame oil back in its place. I’d been so happy when I realized, a few weeks after moving into the apartment, that everything in the kitchen finally had a home. It was another sign that the small village in southern Poland was becoming my home. The rice lived a shelf up from the herbs and seasonings, which also housed the sesame oil. Everything had its place, including me.

I imagined myself putting the sesame oil back in its place and wandering into the living room, sitting down to look over lesson plans for the next day. My rock star status mitigated many of the challenges of being a new teacher. I had an advantage over every other teacher: I’d crossed an ocean and half a continent to teach the kids. I was from the land of 90120, Coca Cola, and highways. The honeymoon lasted longer than one might have expected: although I was soon just another teacher, I never became just another Polish teacher. “I learned how to be a different kind of teacher from you,” my Polish counterpart English teacher told me when I left. I enjoyed what I was doing; I was teaching by choice. The kids recognized that.

I imagined myself putting the sesame oil back in its place and wandering around the apartment, feeling lonely. Despite the incredible friendships I developed in Poland, I often found myself alone, and that solitude sometimes bore down upon me.

I imagined myself putting a bottle of sesame oil in a box to give a Polish friend before I left in 1999, thinking I’d never return. A vegan in a land of meat and potatoes, she appreciated different cuisines and figured she could do something with the oil.

I imagined all these things tonight, and for a moment, a familiar nostalgia and longing slid up beside me, brushed me, and moved on. Such an experience ten years ago would have sent me into a depression that might have lasted the evening. It eventually sent me back to Lipnica. Tonight, it brought a smile and chuckle at the power of sesame oil.

A Monday trip to Cypress Gardens.

I’m obsessed with cypress knees.

I would have asked the guide about them,

about what causes them, about whether they appear in other species,

about their function.

But I was sick in the car.

Nice pictures from K, don’t you think?

There are two parts of downtown Charleston, according to tour guides. It’s not a question of “The Haves” and “The Have-Nots” but rather “The Haves” and “The Have-a-Hell-of-a-Lot-Mores.” That’s where the houses along the battery lie.

After all, who else could pay the property taxes of such houses? The annual rate for most of these houses equals a solidly middle-class salary.

If driving a $100k Mercedes is a conspicuous sign of wealth, these houses make tourists scratch their heads in wonder. “Who could afford such a house?” we ask. Apparently, plenty of people.

Just a few blocks away is the prison. It closed in the 1940s, never having had electricity or running water. The last execution was in the 1930s: the state had changed its method of execution to the electric chair, and having no power, the Charleston prison was unable to continue executing criminals.

The Girl was impressed, but more so with the birds that were flying around her

and the waves splashing below us. We weaved among the tourists, and on one occasion became an object of tourist fascination: an Asian couple saw L marching down the street, giggled, and took a quick picture. A local, out walking his dog, observed that L was “all wrapped up” and thus “cute as a button.”

We continued on our way, though it was difficult not to look up. It’s not quite like being in a Gothic cathedral or Manhattan, but the impulse too look upward is undeniable.

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And look back: I noticed a placard announcing that we were in “Rainbow Row” and it struck me: “All the houses we’ve passed have been different colors.” It made me wonder if there is a similar tract in San Francisco.

The rest of Charleston went about its usual business. Cadets from the Citadel were out, walking in packs, strolling with their girlfriends, or harassing random girls (at least that’s what some of my captures look like).

Locals stood talking.

And everyone made their way here and there on a lazy Sunday.

Today at Boone Hall plantation, an experience I haven’t had since visiting Auschwitz several years ago: to stand in the center of a hell-on-earth and wonder how it’s even possible. We wandered around the plantation while waiting for a tour, weaving in and out of slave quarters.

The irony of America has never been more palpable. We are country that, from its inception, was about freedom. Yet our wealth was created on the backs of slaves. When people exclaim that, as twenty-first century whites, they are not responsible in any way for the actions of their ancestors, they are absolutely right. But for three hundred years, whites in America have built upon the foundation of those very slave holders and, until very recently, had a clear advantage for being on the lighter side of the color divide. Our free country was built, in the first century of its existence, at the expense of others’ freedom.

The fruits of that brutal labor still exists. At Boone Hall, the number one product was bricks. Those bricks went into many of the houses in Charleston and so provide a literal foundation for at least one American city.

And so we made our way through the house and grounds, seemingly free individuals in a seemingly free country. Our chains are less obvious, and less insidious. In fact, I would say most of us don’t even realize we’re shackled to our way of life, our point of view, our idiosyncrasies, our ambitions. Perhaps that’s not a bad thing: after all, this kind of slavery can hardly be called such in comparison. Yet we saw sixteen or so months ago that when our way of life, our point of view, our idiosyncrasies, our ambitions start to sink, we feel the weight.