not so grounded

Use Your Inside Voice

I'm a parent, not a teacher, but recently joined the debate about conflicting merits of external rewards and intrinsic motivation. (As always, complaining about stifling systems, not the fabulous teachers constrained by them.)  My daughter, Maddy, attended a Montessori school ages 4-14, one that not only purely emphasized the intrinsic coin but also embraced a structure that allowed -- demanded, in fact -- all the time a teacher needed to create democratic, participatory, tailored, intrinsic learning.  (With one exception:  their middle school teacher said the kids could collectively cut his hair -- their choice among several reward options -- upon successfully pulling off a presentation night for parents; Maddy's philosophy professor dad cried as he listened to his 13-year-old eloquently perform and explain Plato's Allegory of the Cave.  Their teacher's hair was a mess for months afterward.) 

Admittedly it was a tiny school in a tiny town with full autonomy, and the shoe-string budget such freedom usually implies.  But more than half her classmates had one LD label or another.  (Several kids were recent transfers after disastrous experiences in other schools.)  And the kids flourished. 

Despite having never taken a test (standardized or otherwise) or received a report card until 9th grade, and despite her own reading comprehension LD, my daughter subsequently soared in her traditional high school and her current freshman college year, her teachers routinely calling her the dream student -- self-motivated, assertive, self-aware, and full of critical thinking (including when she told both her sophomore English teacher and me that her B-level work was really all she felt interested in doing).

So it was a gut-wrenching shock when my stepson, Alden, entered my life and I became involved in his traditional school experience, full of stickers, silent lunch and select-member pizza parties (not to mention grades, report cards and end-of-year testing).  Alden's just as happy, secure and self-poised as Maddy.  He's technically smarter, too -- he can grasp new information, concepts and intricacies with lightening speed.  And he's far easier to engage - takes about 2 minutes for him eagerly to jump into something new & interesting. AS LONG AS someone else initiates or requires it. 

Compared to Maddy & her Montessori alum, he just doesn't know how to find & follow his own curiosities or work tough things out for himself.  He doesn't understand the learning process:  getting curious, investigating a little, feeling dumb for awhile, things beginning to click, then mastery.  At 12 he still resists unless required, he looks for external rewards, he demands exact instructions not so much to guarantee perfection but to make it as easy as possible, and he still considers our computer or video game limits as punishment. 

Don't get me wrong -- my daughter said, "I'm bored" more often than my stepson, and I bribed her big on three occasions with stellar results (when she wanted to quit swimming lessons, age 5, and dance, age 14, and once on vacation when she & her best friend had melted down into fueding puddles.) 

But when I mentioned to Alden that at his age Maddy & her friends organized & held a wildly successful poetry slam fundraiser -- for passion, not a school assignment -- he was utterly bewildered.  "Why did she do that if she didn't have to?" was his reply.

Join My Virtual Book Club (It's Free)

I'm hosting a free virtual book club, sponsored by the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare to highlight the keynote speakers at the Council's annual conference in May.  We'll be reading President Bill Clinton's Giving, leadership fables by Patrick Lencione and works that blend memoir and advocacy in mental health and addictions. 

No charge, no membership required, heck you don't even have to be familiar with behavioral health.  Just sign-up and then join any or all the book club gatherings. 

I'm really excited.  The idea's been brewing awhile and though I'm not sure how we're gonna handle a lively discussion among 1000 or more folks (so please be patient & sympathetic!), I think it'll be really fun. 

Here and There All At Once

At the eastern entrance to I-40, on the outskirts of Wilmington, NC, an official green highway sign reads, "Barstow, CA 2,554 miles."  As I drove past it Friday, I happened to be talking to a colleague who lives near the western entrance of that same freeway.  On Monday I will fly over Barstow, in fact, when I head her way.  The fourth trip so far in my 9-bed September, my own absurd strategy for measuring the relative zaniness of my travel schedule.  I will sleep in 9 different beds between September 1-30, only one of which is technically my own. 

I am a "seasoned" traveler.  I know, for example, to avoid winter layovers in Denver or Chicago, that summer thunderstorms can paralyze east coast flight patterns, and that Houston and Atlanta are best avoided altogether.  I know I can get a quick nitrate-free spicy sausage near gate C-20 at Phoenix Sky Harbor. I know the women hired to clean the Charlotte Douglas rest rooms live on tips and a paltry $2-3.00 an hour. 

These are ridiculous things to know (except that women cleaning our airport toilets go home after 8 hours of unappreciated work with approximately $20 -- that fact is appalling.)  And while they engender a certain misguided travel pride, I cannot escape this fundamental dissonance:

At the same time my professional clients need a heightened personal presence, so do my family, friends and community.  California staff need hands-on help to improve some thorny processes, women cleaning bathrooms need generous tips, Appalachian farmers need folks to buy their delicious tomatoes, and my home needs a family dinner.  All at once.  We are past that euphamistic breaking point and need genuine, live, loving, consistent human connection.

This is not suggesting my presence is important.  Rather, I believe we all increasingly need to be both global and local, in multiple time zones, conversations & cultures and contributing to the wellbeing of many layers ... all at the same time.  

I don't know how to do that yet.  Oh I post, update, text and skype with the best of 'em, and I don't blink at a cellular call across opposite ends of a freeway or continent.

But I feel a universal tug to be all places at all times, as if the worn tethers securing my identity to gravity and locale are unravelling.  As if the seams of a self I once concretely defined as only my own, as only in this place or with that person, are being gently removed stitch by stitch.  I feel increasingly boundless, just beginning to imagine that maybe I can be Here and There at once. 

Sure, I'm momentarily freaked about a possible personal implosion.  But ultimately I'm comforted by a growing belief that I am -- we are -- so much more than these individual bodies & lives suggest.  That perhaps being Here and Everywhere all at once is our original blueprint.  That at some point I will, in fact, help a west coast clinic improve its health services, pick dinner fresh from my neighbor's garden, and nestle up to my husband in our own bed ... all in the same day.

 

Denial

I should write something heartfelt about Maddy's recent (finally!) high school graduation, considering I've been blogging on & off about it the whole year.  But I don't wanna.  A moment this big deserves all the procrastinating distance I can muster, thank you very much.  That it previews my encroaching fiftieth birthday, all the more reason to skip right over events that so rudely carve impenetrable monuments to the passage of time.

So instead, I'm writing a book.  And not about Maddy or Time or the Universal Truths we mid-life women share. 

Nope, I'm writing a book about psychics.  Cause it's fun and different and 'cause it successfully replaces empty nest realities with best-seller fantasies.  And denial works for me. 

Okay, I confess, it's also a goal, since I figured a goal might make my 50th more exciting.  I've never written a book, and previous stabs have been pretty awful.  So what the hell.  Trial-by-error I'm figuring it out.  It's fun, too, since a book has so much more room than a magazine article.  It's like jumping from an expedition sleeping bag to a California King. 

But since that borders too close to uncomfortable metaphor (passing my adventure torch to Maddy while I begin my 2nd half between luxurious, spacious Egyptian cotton ...) I shall return tenaciously to my distractions.

Beyond the Story

Enjoying some literary downtime on my recent Santa Barbara business trip, I attended a writing workshop and dinner with LeeAnn Howe, at the invitation of our mutual friend Marisela Marquez (my UCSB client and a close buddy from grad school).  She led us through a miraculously simple yet powerful series of writing sequences that inspired me immensely, even though I didn't really follow the directions. (Note to teachers:  I never really follow directions.) Then a small group of us women had delicious mole enchiladas, chili verde and Tecate's at Del Pueblo Cafe.

We were asked to write about an object of meaning, to explore our own stories through this catalyst.  LeeAnn chose the stones in her heirloom ring.  Perhaps the ring also has Indian significance, for she's an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and much of her work embraces Indian stories and themes.  Part of her fabric as a person, a woman, a writer and scholar.  In fact, everyone at the following dinner has an identity she allows to enrich her individual personality -- lesbian, Indian, Japanese-American, Chicana, women of color ... 

Except me. 

I guess I could, sort of, although my dry-spell fantasies sure confirmed my mainstream sexual preference and my ethnic ancestry's a few generations back.  Three of my four grandparents came from Europe, aged 3 or 5, wide-eyed and perhaps a little seasick, holding tightly to their parents hands in a blurred mishmash of strange languages and faces, stepping through Ellis Island amid confusing paperwork and beleaguered immigration clerks who changed their Polish or Italian tongue-twisters to names easier on the New York ear.  My other grandparent was mid-point through an equally unique lineage -- four of her five grandchildren (including me) mark five-generations born in Brooklyn, certainly a whole culture in and of itself.  My mother was raised Jewish before converting when she married my father, the Episcopal seminarian; I was the preacher's kid who attended my 2nd cousins' bar mitvahs, the Goyeh who's Cousins Bea and Arthur had concentration camp tatoos.  My father, the priest, had gratis memberships to the most exclusive clubs in our Long Island suburb, but they would have banned my mother had they known her heritage. 

But I never wear these things.  I know for certain that my discipline for diversity and tolerance moves lightingly straight with the fact that my best friend and I weren't allowed to swim together in the country club pool.  But, I think my bewildered fury preceded the insult, and, besides, beyond that I'm wary to Identify.  With anything. 

Mostly, I am wary of Stories, particularly my own.  They seem to interfere with, more than illuminate, who I am.  Even my strangest personal adventures seem inconsequential backdrops to my ever-sharpening unique qualities.  I'm fairly reserved, smart, well-spoken, determinedly naive, a fierce friend, clear to articulate, and a staunch defender that everyone should be able to invent her or his own rules and life.  I increasingly believe my stories merely illustrate these things, not shape or define them.  And, quite honestly, I can't imagine why anyone, including me, would care about the narrative tragedies and triumphs of my ancestors or my past. 

I honor others' stories, but honestly -- running the risk of stepping beyond correctness -- they don't interest me nearly as much as the essence of the story teller.  I admired LeeAnn Howe because of her obvious commitment and skill at inviting forth the deepest nuance from her workshop participants, not really 'cause she's one of only half a dozen full professor Indian women in the country, inspiring as that is.  I embrace Marisela's Chicana identity marvel at her melodic Spanish.  But I love her because she is kind, wise, smart and has one of the deepest hearts I know.  And I bet she's been like that far longer than our 24-year friendship.  Far longer than her stories, too.

I get that story telling allows us to express our essence in ways that closed ears might hear.  But I'm eager for the time when we know each other without the need for such accompaniment.  

Goodbye - Hello

Started a new blog, Goodbye - Hello, all about Maddy's last year at home.  Not sure where it will go (or where she will go, for that matter) but thought I'd be more structured than inundating my poor friends with rambling emails on the subject.

Home Again Home Again ...

Just returned from 3 weeks away, from home in the Blue Ridge Appalachians several thousand miles north west to western Washington.  Our family of four crashed with close (and very kind & accommodating) friends in Bellingham. We did tons of cool stuff (photos on FB):  watched 3 pods of frolicking Orcas, kayaked past bald eagles and their nests, skylight train to Vancouver, very fast dips in glacial water ... wild flowers, volcanoes, big ol' juicy oysters, nightly Mallards ice cream (Maddy always got basil), and camping camping & more camping.  (Okay, a little too much camping for the rest of my family ...)

Three weeks is a great amount of time to be away.  Cleared my head, my perspectives, my priorities, my schedule, my stress.  For three weeks I did as I pleased.

Interestingly, I worked a lot.  And loved every minute of it.  This trip, more than any other, allowed me to enjoy my professional life seamlessly.  I worked whenever & wherever I dang well felt like it, played just the same. Completely unencumbered by physical location - just my laptop, wireless, blackberry and iPod (free Kindle app, favorite reading tucked into my pocket).  Calls got made, work got submitted, bills got paid, I yakked with friends, I kept up with our dog-sitter ... all while walking new streets enough that they grew familiar.

I suspect I sound delusional.  That vacations are supposed to Unplug, not ramp up the Plugging.  But I felt exhilarating freedom, permanently released from an office, a house, four walls and a land line.  Untethered from a permanent address that defines where I technically belong.  From the static practice that I am a local Here and an interloper There.  That one place is home and all others are not.  

To be sure, I am delighted to be back in my own bed, watching the summer rain dance on the poplars by my windows.  But it's also nice to know that in only a few weeks the arid western vistas grew just as sweet.  Imagine how different the world would be if everyone felt Home no matter where we were?

You Go, Oprah!

I can't decide if Newsweek's grotesque photo of Oprah demonstrates that she has finally hit a mainstream nerve or that Newsweek is far more frightened about its future than I suspected.  

Either way, this week's cover story confirms for me the magnitude of the intellectual and cultural shift sweeping this country.  And the sad irrelevance of traditional publications.

I could certainly offer contrary facts, statistics, and stories to counter Newsweek's indictments against Oprah and her messages.  But I'll leave that to others who, I'm sure, will flood Newsweek's mailboxes.

Instead let me just say that despite the fact that I'm the magazine's primary market (48, advanced degreed, entrepreneur with substantial disposable income, an educated and prolific reader), this issue shows the desperation of an elite losing things far more fundamental than the value of their 401(k)s.

Here are some different truths:  vast swaths of the world believe that our thoughts and intentions shape our reality, for example, and we no longer feel compelled to wait for the physics industry to catch up.  In 2005 the Centers for Disease Control reported that 65% of us routinely access "alternative" healthcare; the Institute of Medicine then revealed that we spend more out-of-pocket on those alternatives than on visits to our primary physician.  We recognize bioidentical hormones do not benefit from double-blind studies because they are unpatenable (ie unprofitable, ie unable to generate the revenue necessary to fund those studies), not because they are ineffective.  So we're using them and experiencing life-changing improvements.  

We're moving forward without Newsweek and its peers.  In droves.  And this issue suggests their fearful sense of abandonment is palpable. 

Newsweek may gloat sardonically in its intellectual superiority, dutifully reporting facts, all perfectly checked, that demonstrate collapsing securities markets, melting polar ice caps, and clashing political enemies.  But they miss the real story.  They miss the fundamental demise of the paradigms and epistemologies that cause all those horrors.

That is the story Oprah bravely explores.

I do not always agree with her.  I, too, bristle sometimes at what I believe is her misplaced enthusiasms.  And I certainly regret that she must weave evocative material between banal celebrity interviews.

But the real secret is Oprah remains steadfastly relevant, and Newsweek does not.  Unfortunately at a time when we most benefit from national dialog, Newsweek chooses to be a gasping periodical in a dying industry, regurgitating the same empty story week-after-week, with writers and editors -- no matter how skilled and well-intentioned -- increasingly talking only to the shrinking pool of people just like themselves.

There's a whole new world out here, far larger than Newsweek's antiquated universe.  Maybe if they took some bioidentical hormones they'd finally feel well enough to find it, join it, and share that story.

Change in the Air

It's a lazy day, this post-Thanksgiving Sunday.  Cold, rainy, all my family curled up in the living room, still in our pj's.  Darling Daughter just returned from Santa Barbara, visiting friends and doing the full college tour at UC-Santa Barbara, and she's telling tales.  My niece is laying on the couch.  Sweet Boy's watching a movie.  The dogs are asleep. The girls are begging John to make them breakfast, and suddenly I smell bacon.

I'm trying really hard not to feel poignant about all this, not remember Lindsey's only here another six weeks and Maddy's old enough to look at colleges and choosing nothing closer than 3,000 miles from home.  (She has two college criteria, in addition to a good dance program ... no trudging to class in cold, snowy, rainy weather and, she argues, since college is the best chance to explore somewhere brand new, completely unencumbered, & on her parents' dime, she might as well go someplace as different from home as possible.  She's always been scarily rational & fearless about these kinds of things.)

So taking her lead, I won't get melancholy about all this impending Change, especially since melancholy never actually wards off the inevitable.  (And I remember Lindsey and my friend Liz are weathering their first holiday season without their mothers so I don't have much cause for sadness in comparison.)  I'll enjoy their company & this exquisitely lazy day instead.

And I think I've got 'em convinced to go with me to the gym.