tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54878134454935942632024-03-05T05:51:01.024-08:00PooplosophyAn intellectual space for those who have none, conceived and created by Mothers with BrainsAntonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.comBlogger50125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-25802162514487932332018-10-20T10:19:00.004-07:002018-10-20T10:19:41.571-07:00The Lands Belong to Us<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Letter to the editor published in the <i>Daily Inter-Lake</i>, October 15, 2018</div>
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In the 1400s English commoners fought battles and staged riots protesting the loss of their grazing and farming commons to wealthy landowners. The commons had been part of the public domain until the nobility started fencing them off for their own private use. It’s taken the British people six hundred years since those battles just to earn back the right to walk on that land. Not even to forage or hunt on it, just to walk on it. </div>
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If politicians like Jennifer Fielder (Montana) and Mike Lee (Utah), and the people who support them, achieved their goals and forced all public lands out of federal control, it wouldn’t be long before the only people who would be able to ranch, farm, hunt, or fish in America would be private landowning billionaires. Every loss of the commons, whether it’s the loss of a stream access law or the shrinking of a national monument, brings us closer to losing some of the greatest freedoms we have.</div>
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I can’t imagine fishing in the Missouri River Breaks, or going hiking in the Great Bear Wilderness, and not feeling gratitude for the foresight it took to keep these places in public hands. Those lands don’t belong to the federal government in the way we usually think of ownership. The government is simply a trustee; the lands belong to us, the American people. I feel sorry for anyone who is unable to understand what a gift they are, and how much we would lose by giving them up.</div>
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Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-62835594681339678512015-01-28T20:08:00.001-08:002015-01-28T20:08:14.853-08:00One-act Play: "Dog with Sock. And Poop." Or, "The Sock in the Poop."<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><i>Enter stage right: Dog (pseudonym). Sneaks nose into Child 1's hand. Eats sock. Subsequent action determines that dog has also previously eaten Child 2's sock, which had been placed in snowboot for safe-keeping.</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Child 2: "My sock is in Dog's poop?"</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;" /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Parent: "Not yet. Your sock is in Dog's tummy. It will probably be in his poop tomorrow."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;" /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Child 1: "I miss my sock!"</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br style="color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;" /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">Child 2: "I miss my sock!"</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>Parent: "I know, I'm sorry. But it's just a sock."</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Child 2: "He shouldn't have eaten my sock."</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Parent: "He's just a dog, dear. He didn't know."</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Child 2: "It's in his poop?"</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Parent: "Tomorrow it will be in his poop."</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Child 1: "WAAAA!"</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Child 2: "They'll have to get it out of Dog's poop?"</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Parent: "No, I don't think we'll really want it back, honey."</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Child 2: "They have to get the poop out of the potty?"</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Parent: "It'll probably be outside, dear. Dogs don't poop on the potty."</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Child 2: "If I eat Dog, he'll be in my poop?"</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Child 1: [Snoring]</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Parent: "I suppose so."</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Child 2: "And we'll have to get him out of the potty?"</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Parent: "Well, if you eat something, it's usually not alive, so . . ."</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br />Child 2: "My sock will be in Dog's poop when I'm at school?"</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><br /><i>Scene continues ad infinitum, or at least until 24 hours later, when Family has determined that Sock has probably passed through Dog by now and will not be recovered. Suggest scene ends with oblique references to loss and materialism. Also to not leaving loose socks around dogs.</i></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;"><i>Addendum: Child 2 has discovered the power of eating + poop. Viz, when wanting to annoy Child 1, Child 2 informs Child 1 that Child 2 is going to eat Child 1's favorite toy. Favorite toy will then -- da da DUM -- end its life as Child 2's poop.</i></span></div>
Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-74691415731488016652014-07-07T06:50:00.000-07:002014-07-07T06:50:00.318-07:00Is It Over Yet? (When I Was too Depressed to Smell the Lilacs)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One of the things I loved about the <a href="http://pooplosophy.blogspot.com/2014/06/bread-loaf-orion-environmental-writers.html">Bread Loaf-Orion Environmental Writers Conference</a> was that there was a lilac tree just outside of the building I was staying in. Our lilacs had already gone over, but these were only halfway done, so I got an extended lilac season this year.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ4qv38mgdVZDl8MyrvOlF7Jw-drWHqao-gPXccZdWMFNaVqUSo0AuJXFVU1rq6tnzkcRyLV7qfU_CejesSLbbWT4nXdPL7v1X9CueOVHK4-lP0rOF25XabX8LFaUBbYAS4sRojqGtlts/s1600/Lilacs.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ4qv38mgdVZDl8MyrvOlF7Jw-drWHqao-gPXccZdWMFNaVqUSo0AuJXFVU1rq6tnzkcRyLV7qfU_CejesSLbbWT4nXdPL7v1X9CueOVHK4-lP0rOF25XabX8LFaUBbYAS4sRojqGtlts/s1600/Lilacs.JPG" height="239" width="320" /></a></div>
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Lilacs were one of the early clues, a couple of years ago, that I was not just mother-exhausted, not just tired of living in a place I didn't love. There was something more going on.<br />
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Years ago we planted two lilac bushes at our house, and once they got large enough to produce flowers above deer-chomping height, they made gorgeous, fragrant bunches of blossoms.<br />
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Only I wasn't smelling them that year. I missed lilac season. I was too busy, couldn't be bothered, I don't know. I didn't take the few steps from our deck or the garage to bury my nose in lilacs, and not doing so made me feel . . . sad, depressed, resentful. Maybe other things.<br />
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I've always wavered between pansies and lilacs for my favorite flower -- pansies for their variety and fun, like playful flower-kittens with balls of string, and lilacs for their scent and abundance and their proclamation that spring has truly come. Life feels good when the lilacs are around. They're a sign that things are about to get slow and lovely and luxurious with time and sunshine and days of laughter.<br />
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When you can't appreciate that, can't feel it -- when I can't -- there's something wrong. And that year, I couldn't. Nor could I the next year. This year I made intentions. Every time I have to go out to the damn car to haul the kids somewhere (I can't wait to live in a walkable community; having to drive absolutely everywhere is no kind of freedom at all), every time I took the compost out, every time I did anything outside with the kids, I took a minute to step over and smell the lilacs. It was a bit of fake-it-till-you-make-it action, but I think it worked.<br />
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Having an extra week to stop, smell the lilacs, and smell them again, to remind myself of dark days and better ones to come, that was a gift.</div>
Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-80921038004055834042014-06-30T16:54:00.000-07:002014-06-30T16:54:00.077-07:00The Competence Project: Drifting in a Walnut Shell<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
That title is a very oblique reference to the original Hans Christian Anderson version of <i>Thumbelina</i>, which involved Thumbelina sleeping in a cradle made of a walnut shell. That story always freaked me out a little bit as a kid, not sure why. I didn't have any natural aversion to Cinderella-type stories, so maybe it was something about her minuscule vulnerability. Maybe even as a child I was searching for inner strength.<br />
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None of this has anything to do with this table-in-progress, except that it incorporates driftwood and black walnut. Last fall I was fed up with my copy editing work, frustrated with my parenting, and generally feeling glum and at sea. And pointless. So I emailed <a href="http://www.danielmack.com/">Dan Mack</a> (the woodworker and artist I've taken the most classes from) to see if he had any classes or studio days opening up. It turned out he was doing a found objects workshop on the banks of the Hudson River that coming weekend, so on a Sunday my husband and I took the kids and he had them rambling around poking in the water and playing with sand and collecting rocks and sticks while I essentially did the same thing except with some direction. Or not. Dan likes to encourage people to find their own relationship with nature.<br />
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I found these:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV7OfmiPv8_j_dFzblqitEF-ZG3WTxu_AkUuP8p64J51NROyOzwd-s_DtbxD1NUrHRiZogqBG-LFrrRIDyicTZSdlOrq7M-OR257eZOGgbWZ-CH1COgoHDgGVeSAq19T21w7ONzK6eG7o/s1600/IMG_6498.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV7OfmiPv8_j_dFzblqitEF-ZG3WTxu_AkUuP8p64J51NROyOzwd-s_DtbxD1NUrHRiZogqBG-LFrrRIDyicTZSdlOrq7M-OR257eZOGgbWZ-CH1COgoHDgGVeSAq19T21w7ONzK6eG7o/s1600/IMG_6498.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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Four driftwood sticks, which I kept trying to place so they would eventually make a table (I seem to be obsessed with little tables), and he gathered them like a driftwood nosegay and helped me screw them together and level out the bottoms.<br />
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It sat in our garage for a very long time because I couldn't find the right kind of top for it. Driftwood is so brittle -- I learned that to my regret in my very first class -- so it couldn't take something too weighty.<br />
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A few weeks ago I was at the sawmill and I found these slices of black walnut in the scrap pile:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLgjrTrQSJuFh1XHU5LZvp3OYdi9mZBHLg9kxwxbmzBOwfaLnXhzYb-lnnQJDwNKYOUrdC0ZAMUmsDZrS8FARG0LS9Y89GU6Rxx0ZsHXlkW0xMK6gThCCNhn2LUHjhafesR0cHJJauEc8/s1600/IMG_6494.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLgjrTrQSJuFh1XHU5LZvp3OYdi9mZBHLg9kxwxbmzBOwfaLnXhzYb-lnnQJDwNKYOUrdC0ZAMUmsDZrS8FARG0LS9Y89GU6Rxx0ZsHXlkW0xMK6gThCCNhn2LUHjhafesR0cHJJauEc8/s1600/IMG_6494.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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The owner always encourages me to take scrap if I can use it (part of <a href="http://www.newyorkheartwoods.com/">New York Heartwoods's</a> mission is to reduce waste). I've got three pieces of flat walnut, and one would seem like the perfect top for this table, so I'm sanding them down (eventually -- there's that whole kids and job and life set of wrenches that run into my projects) to see how they'll work.<br />
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What to do with the rest? Cutting boards would be great (I'd love to make some of those) except for the big holes in the middle.<br />
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It'll be a while before I finish this again, as I'm hauling the kids back to Montana (yay! home!) and don't intend to leave for quite a long time. Hey! We're building a house. Soonish. Well, after we sell our cookie cutter in New York. So that'll be fun.<br />
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Until then, small projects. And look! A cat!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4eHKdAHaWdLFDb5YqGkEDo41D0h9gh54DzH-BfGBRlVwFzXbGpOL8Dfxv6eH1sWCvp85WJ9EyE4DFwY8fTheLiO7Rx2KbdVWv228EK_kwS9cBu5FNFtcetLlxgzMy6XlC2Su4lORaDzE/s1600/IMG_6500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4eHKdAHaWdLFDb5YqGkEDo41D0h9gh54DzH-BfGBRlVwFzXbGpOL8Dfxv6eH1sWCvp85WJ9EyE4DFwY8fTheLiO7Rx2KbdVWv228EK_kwS9cBu5FNFtcetLlxgzMy6XlC2Su4lORaDzE/s1600/IMG_6500.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-59947643730826391272014-06-23T13:30:00.000-07:002014-06-23T13:30:00.031-07:00Cedar in Plane Sight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When I first sanded down my <a href="http://pooplosophy.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-competence-project-middle-ground.html">maple table</a> I said I never wanted to own a planed piece of furniture again. A plane is a tool -- either a machine or a hand tool -- designed to straighten and smooth wood before its final sanding. Because I'm looking for rootedness or groundedness or whatever the heck it is, planing wood seemed too far removed from that to be satisfying.<br />
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That was true until last week. When I showed up at the mill we were tasked with ripping down into 4-, 6-, or 8-inch widths cedar planks leftover from an artist's installation up at the <a href="http://www.stormking.org/">Storm King Art Center's</a> sculpture park. (I have learned, by the way, that we do not "cut" wood. We rip it.) The cedar had been taken from her family's farm down in Tennessee and was already milled. She wanted it cut to size and then planed so she could make crates out of it for deliveries.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1Fo2FHQiK1CRxRJyaYe21qEgYtjZr149E7yz97j20xftudJjvolrjkSyLSC_VUGpyM8Id0YSCGxjfPHspGoIOynehSvgsz3XfFmCst2xOeNjKJ_R_wKclJsJ0stGpUdZXOoyi-nRX9OA/s1600/IMG_6504.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1Fo2FHQiK1CRxRJyaYe21qEgYtjZr149E7yz97j20xftudJjvolrjkSyLSC_VUGpyM8Id0YSCGxjfPHspGoIOynehSvgsz3XfFmCst2xOeNjKJ_R_wKclJsJ0stGpUdZXOoyi-nRX9OA/s1600/IMG_6504.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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I've always loved cedar, the way it smells, the way it looks. We have a big bag of cedar shims sitting in our closet, which we'd bought at a hardware store in Tennessee several years ago and were going to get around to making shoe racks or something out of. (My husband and I have conversations sometimes about how lazy we are together. We're bad for each other's health and productivity. But we have so much fun.) Cedar has a reputation for keeping moths at bay, which is why blocks of it are often put in drawers or storage chests. It also supposedly has antibacterial and antimicrobial properties among a million other uses (some of which I maintain healthy skepticism of), and makes great outdoor furniture because it's resistant to decay.</div>
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In raw form I think it looks lovely. But planed, with a layer of wood skinned off to expose the inner colors, it's really beautiful. We ran it through the saw and the planer and the planks came out with these deep, bright purple and cream colors.</div>
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Unfortunately, I also discovered that I'm highly allergic to cedar. My childhood allergy tests probably say this anyway, but with the dust flying in my face I became aware of it all over again, sneezing my head off even through the high-end filtration face mask. Time to break out the Claritin, since clearly the homeopathic remedy I've been trying (quercetin, with extra Vitamin C) has had no effect. I hate having hay fever. The truth is, in another age I probably wouldn't have survived even if I <i>were</i> competent at survival and sustainability skills. If severe allergies didn't kill me, childbirth certainly would have.</div>
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The plane's crazy noisy, though. Even with our awesome earmuffs the screeching was pretty penetrating. If I'm going to invest, I think I'll go for the hand plane. And then I can just do that for hours and forget about getting on the rowing machine. Except not with cedar.</div>
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Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-26978711803218519912014-06-18T09:00:00.001-07:002014-06-20T15:21:00.094-07:00Bread Loaf-Orion Environmental Writers Conference: A Retrospective<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last week I became a Bread Loaf convert. Specifically, a <a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/blwc/BLOrion">Bread Loaf-Orion Environmental Writers Conference</a> convert. Every writer should attend this conference. Actually, not just writers. The conference was nearly 7 days of workshops, craft classes, laughter, and lots of in-depth conversation between poets, essayists, and fiction writers, but also people like soil scientists, mussel biologists (or people married to one), ethnoecologists, environmental science professors, geologists, oceanographers, and so many more. This cross-seeding of disciplines was the key to its success. That, and it benefited from not having any fellowships (except need-based) or work-study positions as the regular Bread Loaf (or the Mother Loaf or No-Orion [Norion] as we took to calling it) does, which removed any competitive, hierarchical atmosphere, to the benefit of both accomplished and beginning writers.<br />
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It was the most satisfying writing conference I've ever attended. Our teachers gave an astounding amount of attention to our workshop submissions, meeting with us individually to go through what we'd written and continuing conversations about our work and ambitions in various areas, whether in writing or research. I will forever be indebted to <a href="http://www.worldwithoutus.com/about_author.html">Alan Weisman</a>, whose books I have always loved, but whose talents and attention as a teacher and mentor have begun to heal my bruised writer's heart. (Sidenote: more about that subject forthcoming in <a href="http://fullgrownpeople.com/">Full Grown People</a>.)<br />
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But pictures! Because this blog is where I attempt to curtail my babbling tendencies. Speaking of babbling, this was my favorite part of the conference:<br />
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This stream is a short walk through an open field -- where the editor-in-chief of <a href="http://www.orionmagazine.org/"><i>Orion</i></a> magazine, who is an ornithologist, led birds walks early several mornings -- and right in this spot I could sit under these old woods on a large flat rock and listen to the water rushing and tumbling. I haven't done that in many years. It made me awfully homesick for Montana but I think I might have fallen in love with Vermont just a tiny bit that day.<br />
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Being able to walk in the woods helped compost and root the madly rushing ideas that made the conference so invigorating. Two people in my workshop and I got not-quite-lost coming back from Robert Frost's writing cabin, tramping through deep woods and a lot of muck. We found this map. Luckily they were better at reading maps than I am because it made me dizzy.<br />
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What was awesome was that we were slogging around in a lot of mud, which was a new experience since another member of our workshop was a soil scientist and his essay was a fascinating look at the life and biology of mud; one of we three walkers was a serious birder and taught me (who knows zilch about birds) to look for them and at them in new ways; and while he was trying to show me where elusive birds were I was remembering the essay of another workshop member, which was about his guiding experience in the Tetons and teaching people to see in new ways.<br />
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I've been at good writing conferences before, but nothing that recharged my brain synapses in quite this way.<br />
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I also just oiled my beloved boots, which was necessary because I forgot to bring my waterproof sandals with me and my boots spent the entire conference either soaking on my feet or like this:<br />
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By the way -- fires! It was chilly and rainy the whole time so they lit fireplaces in all the buildings. The parts of me that aren't Russian are completely Scottish at heart. There is nothing that makes me happier than being able to walk in the rain and come back inside to a fire (even if not peat).<br />
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Except, also, of course, this.<br />
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Neither of those people is me, but good conversation, long walks, and soul-restoring scenery sums up what makes my life feel most whole. Seven days of this and I feel like a much better writer, but also a better friend, thinker, human being, and inhabitant of the planet.<br />
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Driving away from Bread Loaf on Sunday, I was surprised by a feeling I thought I'd never experience again: that a new place had found a home in my heart.<br />
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Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-70910769055288023002014-06-16T10:00:00.000-07:002014-06-16T10:00:06.276-07:00Getting Ripped<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've been volunteering at a local hardwoods sawmill. <a href="http://www.newyorkheartwoods.com/">New York Heartwoods</a>, to be specific, which is run by, of all random things to find in nowhere upstate New York, another woman from Montana, and specializes in salvaging downed and diseased local hardwoods and milling and kiln-drying them for woodworkers, artisans, retail stores . . . you get the idea. Aside from the fact that I feel completely incompetent (hence the Competence Project), spending a few hours there makes my week. I wish I could rewind all my school years and career years and go back and learn how to do something useful like this. I mean, I correct grammar for a living. Much as I enjoy grammar, it's not, in real-life terms, all that <i>useful</i>.<br />
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The very first day I was there was back in January, and we rode the tractor over to a neighbor's collapsed barn to salvage 8-foot beams for a local woodworker. If you <a href="http://newyorkheartwoods.tumblr.com/post/73990549065/salvaging-barnwood-and-awesome-handhewn-oak">click here</a> you can see a photo of us doing just that. I am the person in the blue coat pulling something out of that really precarious pile of barn wood.<br />
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That something was a barn beam. The thing about old barn beams is that they often have a lot of nails in them. Very old, very rusty, very long, and very, very sharp. I was bracing the beam while it was being chainsawed down, and it slipped on my leg. See those nails? It was one of those.<br />
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My very first day branching out (so to speak) in an effort at competence? I ended up driving to the doctor's office for a tetanus shot. These are my only pair of jeans. My husband repaired them that evening because I loathe sewing and only do it under duress. He didn't know that what he pulled out of the sewing box was silk embroidery thread over seventy years old that had belonged to my great-grandmother. What a convoluted world.<br />
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Did you know that tetanus shots make your teeth hurt like hell? Nobody told me that. I thought I needed a root canal. And underneath this ragged seam is a dull line that very much resembles my C-section scars. Except less painful because I didn't rip any staples out of this. Hands down, I'd rather get scarred by ancient nails poking out of barn beams than go through pregnancy again.</div>
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Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-56701398258069452752014-06-12T10:00:00.000-07:002014-06-12T10:00:04.613-07:00That Birch Is Buggy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My friend who co-runs a local organic farm said I could take some of this birch. That's misleading. I happened to be at the farm with the kids on Saturday and saw the huge pile of cut birch logs on my 2nd-3rd-4th attempt to take my 3-year-old to the Port-a-Potty. She screamed every damn time. My friend invited me to take her behind the decrepit trailer to pee on the grass, which is where she herself goes. "Just -- if you hear a noise, don't worry. That's just a cat in the trailer." The followed a long explanation as to why the cat lived in the trailer and why he was noisy. I think his name was Jack but can't swear to it. Suffice it to say he was actually noisy and the toddler twitched around to see what was going on and got pee on my Keene sandals. Like that even phases me anymore.<br />
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Anyway. All this birch. Gorgeous. It wouldn't fit into my station wagon so I had to come back later, which meant my husband had to give me a brief lesson in using his Sawzall. (I ended up bending the blade. Sorry about that.) Look! Helpful children!<br />
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Got it back home and into the garage. Was doing some copy editing work and got an email response from Dan Mack about an open studios day I wanted to attend. I'd mentioned that I've been forming, slowly and over several months, ideas for a live-edge, slab-top dining table. "My friend said I could take a whole bunch of birch and I was thinking of using it for the legs. Would that work? It seems sound, but I don't know about how well it holds weight."</div>
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His response: "Oh, birch is terrible. Bugs usually. Like bananas in a plastic bag."<br />
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Not exactly the feel I was going for. Ah well, it was adventurous day out and now I've got this in the garage and don't know what the hell to do with it. I should take it to the sawmill and kiln-dry it but that seems like a lot of effort. I don't know if I can get my laborers to reload it into the car.<br />
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Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-42758741271520590982014-06-09T06:00:00.000-07:002014-06-09T06:00:01.886-07:00Writer's Life Project, a Blog Hop, or Hoppy Blog<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I was awfully flattered to get an email from <a href="http://debraliese.com/">Debra Liese</a> asking if I'd like to participate in "Writer's Life Project," a blog hop in which writers get to talk about our current projects, our writing endeavors, and how we work. I usually try to resist the urge to casually engage in this kind of conversation because I've learned that the more I talk about my writing projects, the less I do them. But I live in a rural area and have little opportunity to chat with other real-life writers about my work, so this is a rare opportunity.<br />
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Debra and I connected after she read my essay <a href="http://fullgrownpeople.com/2013/12/16/acts-faith/">"Acts of Faith"</a> on <a href="http://fullgrownpeople.com/">Full Grown People</a>, about my atheism and intermittent longing for faith. (It also has Russia in it. Russia is a great backdrop for a lot of my work.) We've exchanged many emails since then, about atheism and agnosticism and faith and our mutual love of L.M. Montgomery's <i>Emily of New Moon</i> series (if you like <i>Anne of Green Gables</i> at all, you'll like Emily Starr's story even more) and I'm an enthusiastic reader of her work. Her blog about creativity, which is published on Pyschology Today, is titled <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ink">Ink: Creativity for Cowards</a>. Right up my alley!<br />
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Enough babbling. If you want to read my essays, many of them are accessible through my <a href="http://antoniamalchik.com/">website</a>. The point here is to answer these questions, which I'm thrilled to do because they're topics I think about a lot. So let's go digging in the scrap pile:<br />
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<b>1. What am I writing or working on?</b><br />
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Since last year I've been working on <i>Against the Grain</i>. It's a memoir about my experience of modern motherhood, which included a deep depression for nearly a year, and about trying to regain a sense of self without resorting to medication. I resorted instead to what I privately call my "competence project." It started with teaching myself to can and preserve food for winter, in response to thinking about the competence of my pioneer ancestors, and my Russian grandmother, and how I failed to live up to their standards. I branched out to making myself slaughter a rooster (ugh), taking a chainsaw and logging safety class (yikes), and several other endeavors, and have mostly focused on rustic woodworking, which I fell in love with. For this, I switch between woodworking, writing, and volunteering at a local hardwoods sawmill. Think Claire Dederer's <i>Poser</i> crossed with <i>Shop Class as Soulcraft</i>.<br />
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At the same time, I dug out an old manuscript: <i>My Russian Condition</i>, a travel memoir about my lifelong relationship with Russia. Finding it wasn't as crappy as I'd concluded it was several years ago, I've been revising it.<br />
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I am a regular contributor to <a href="http://fullgrownpeople.com/">Full Grown People</a>, which focuses on personal essays and is my favorite nonfiction magazine (not least because its founder, Jennifer Niesslein, is the kind of editor all writers dream of), so I've always got something new in the works. I'm also working on a very long-form essay titled <i>My Jewish Problem</i>, about my Jewish blood, lack of Jewish identity, and the resilience of anti-Semitism. And I write a lot on sustainability and environmental issues. This week I am attending the <a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/blwc/BLOrion">Bread Loaf-Orion Environmental Writers Conference</a>, which is very exciting and where I hope to learn a lot.<br />
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And until an agent snaps up my mystery novel and finds a publisher excited about the series I've planned on the strength of it, I'll continue tinkering with <i>The Commutative Property of Addition</i>.<br />
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<b>2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?</b><br />
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In my nonfiction, I focus hard on a few things. One is running a deep plumb line into any idea that comes my way. I get frustrated when reading essays that have beautiful language and innovative metaphors, but in which the thoughts still stay at the surface level. I might not always find the most sparkling phrasing, but I don't let up on an essay or book until I feel like I've excavated the subject from every angle I can personally explore. As a kid, I was deeply devoted to geology and paleontology; my writing has a similar devotion to bedrocks and geological layers and long, long perspectives of time and humanity. I do adore analysis and logic, and using those skills to heighten a piece of creative work is both a challenge and a privilege.<br />
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In my mystery novel I'm aiming for the literary mystery sphere, a cross between Louise Penny and Kate Atkinson. Is it different from what others do? It's a very character-driven work, with a strong sense of place. I draw on my past experience as a travel writer, and the protagonist is in fact a travel writer. Her sidekick -- the Nero Wolfe to her Archie Goodwin -- is a mathematician, which I wanted to do because I was a mathematics undergrad and have a deep passion for the subject, and you can't beat it for forcing people to think logically. Plus, they're estranged half-sisters with serious issues and troublesome mothers, which is great fun. I think so, anyway. And it takes place at a paleontology dig in Eastern Montana. All my favorite things!<br />
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<b>3. Why do I write what I do?</b><br />
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Is that a trick question? Maybe not. I wrote the mystery because I love reading mysteries, and also, frankly, I thought it might be a good way to make a living as a writer. Still, I couldn't have done it if I didn't enjoy the genre and wasn't enthralled with my characters and the setting.<br />
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Nonfiction is more complicated. Like all writers, I write what comes to me, what inspires me. But I also have issues I care about to such an extent that they help define who I am: environmental degradation, women's rights, child abuse of varying stripes, education. My writing can range from journalism-type articles on teaching mathematics to more literary works on psychological abuse or, to pick a recent example, musing on the effect that a lack of sidewalks (and having to drive everywhere) has on both our physical health and our mental ability to think flexibly and find common ground.<br />
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I've been driven by environmental issues a lot recently, maybe because I have kids or maybe because I have always believed in having a relationship with the earth beneath our feet and the air we breathe. And it's become clear that even the best scientific research or most poetic writing isn't making a dent in the public consciousness. So my focus is veering: how does a writer help create a geological shift in the way we relate to the planet and to each other?<br />
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<b>4. How does my writing process work?</b><br />
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Is that another trick question?<br />
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Okay, years ago when I was fresh out of my MFA program, I had all sorts of regulations for myself: how long to write, when to write, how many words to produce per day. I have yet to find a fellow living, breathing writer for whom any of those systems actually work.<br />
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In any case, it all flew out the window once I had kids. Because like many people, I started my writing life setup like this, thinking this scene is exactly what it would look like until I ended up with dementia and in a home where my ungrateful children had put me. Lovely, right?<br />
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After my first child was born, this is what my work space turned into:<br />
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Here is my saving grace: twice a week, for seven hours, I have a nanny come. I know, I know, it sounds like an immense amount of time. Most of it, though, is eaten up with my day job as a freelance textbook copy editor or doctors' appointments or oh-crap-I-forgot errands. I sacrifice as many Thursdays as I can to going to the local hardwoods sawmill because that's where I'm doing my competence apprenticeship and also my sense-of-self restoration and also I really like it. But I get a lot of writing done around those edges anyway. Because I'm copy editing during the days, I'm at my desk, so when inspiration strikes or I stumble across helpful research I'm right there, no other distracting tasks to finish. I just turn off my work timer and switch windows. It makes a big difference. I usually have one of my book or essay documents open, and quickly bypass the inner Censor/naysayer without blinking. That's something I've only learned to do through years of training, like being an athlete. The rest of the time I get up at 4 or 5 in the morning. Because I homeschool and work part-time and am a stay-at-home mom, getting all of it done would require early hours even without the writing. Not that I'm saying I <i>do</i> get it all done. But those early morning hours are when I access my most honest writer self.<br />
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And lastly, I have finally, after many years and attempts, found a writing group that fits where I am in my writing and what I'm working on. We meet once a month via Google Hangout and workshop two essays. Everyone in the group is a stellar writer, takes their writing seriously, and works hard to support the endeavors of others. Reading their work inspires me to produce more and make it better.<br />
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I could go on for<i>ever</i>. Which would be boring. So now I'll hand this off to two writers I've known and admired for a long time:<br />
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<a href="http://www.karriehiggins.com/">Karrie Higgins</a> and I met several years ago through <i>Creative Nonfiction's</i> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23cnftweet&src=typd">#cnftweet microessay contest </a>on Twitter, where we both participated regularly. Since then we've exchanged a book's worth of letters (even some real ones) and Karrie has become not just one of my favorite writers, but one of my favorite people. She writes about psychogeography, family, abuse, environment, the concept of faith, being a gentile in Salt Lake City, and so much more with a plumb line and dedication that frankly leaves mine in the dust. Not only did her stunning essay "Bottle City of God" win <a href="http://www.cincinnatireview.com/#/home/">Cincinnati Review's</a> Schiff Award in Prose (the issue is coming out soon! Go get it!), but she <i>makes her own ink</i>.<br />
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<a href="http://carolynswildblueyonder.blogspot.com/">Carolyn McCarthy</a> and I went through the MFA program at Emerson College together. We met in a travel writing class and continued to take several nonfiction classes together. She was one of the best writers in the program, a natural storyteller and observer and with a knack for choosing the most perfect, sparest words for every description. Before coming to the program, she had worked teaching English in Buenos Aires and as a backcountry guide in Patagonia. After graduating, she was granted a Fulbright scholarship to document the way of life of pioneer families in rural Patagonia, a timely project because massive dam projects now threaten the area and that way of life. She was trekking and writing a lot, received a grant for her work from Banff Mountain Culture, and then got a job as a Lonely Planet writer. She's written for magazines like <i>National Geographic</i> and <i>Outside</i> in addition to authoring 12 Lonely Planet guides. Carolyn is an amazing person, one of my most valued friends, and her creative writing remains some of the most memorable I've had the privilege to read. <i>And</i>, she built her own writer's retreat in Chile. Talk about competent.</div>
Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-25812711168232882342014-06-05T10:00:00.000-07:002014-06-05T10:00:01.648-07:00Un-Competence Project, with Carpenters<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I stole this log. That's what my son says. Someone had cut down a tree by the side of the road and left the chunks in the ditch. I drove past it once, then twice, then turned around and stopped. I could barely lift it. If I were a decent photographer, you could see how big it is. I'm awfully impressed with myself getting it home. Except my son kept saying, "Mummy? Are you going to get in trouble? Mummy? Should you be taking that? Isn't that someone's wood?"<br />
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My mother-in-law happened to be visiting that week and spent some time trying to figure out what it was. She scoured the Internet for bark descriptions and tentatively settled on sweet gum. An architect friend of ours guessed cherry, but the bark is completely different from the cherry I scavenged elsewhere.<br />
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The other day I was inspecting some of my black walnut scraps nearby and happened to notice motion in the log. Big black ants. Carpenter ants. My modern home-loving husband is <i>thrilled</i> with this revelation. You should have seen his expression. I rolled it out of the garage and to the woods, but am going to have to do some inspections tonight. And I'm bummed. What pretty tables it might have made, ants and all. Do they have carpenter ants in Rivendell? I never used to wonder but now I do. The owner of the sawmill I volunteer at said I could throw it in the kiln, but I don't know how I could get it back into my car. Self-sufficiency requires so much effort. And driving time.<br />
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Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-21168895174389905252014-06-02T10:00:00.000-07:002014-06-02T10:00:04.113-07:00Clean House? Not if You're Riding the Rails<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I recently published an <a href="http://fullgrownpeople.com/2014/04/22/crunchy-floors/">essay</a> on <a href="http://fullgrownpeople.com/">Full Grown People</a> about my slightly OCD relationship with housecleaning. There was no need to go into specifics about the cleaning schedule or the minutiae of my twitchiness. I would have liked to include a section about the book that taught me how to clean -- <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-When-CLEAN-Survival-Series/dp/B001PQH16O/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1400724206&sr=8-2&keywords=what+to+do+when+your+mom+or+dad+says+clean+your+room">What To Do When Your Mom or Dad Says . . . Clean Your Room!</a> </i>-- but couldn't find a way to work it in. I love this book. Someone gave it to me when I was a child, and I still use the methods covered in it because they tap directly into the childlike love of having a routine and creating chaos at the same time. When my house, or a room, is a real mess, I chuck everything possible into some central location (as a child, it was the middle of my floor; these days, it's the kitchen counter), clean every single surface, and then start putting things away where they belong. The book is out of print, which is a real shame because I've never seen anything better.<br />
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I also didn't have an appropriate place to mention our Clean House playlist. There's a lot of fun music on there, and all of it shows my poor taste. But hyper-anal cleaning sessions require frequent dance breaks.<br />
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Except that wasn't the point of this post. The point is, Wednesday is our usual Clean House day. My kids are so used to it that sometimes my son (who's 6) will actually do his required duties (it's not rocket science -- all toys off floor and tables and put away somewhere, and Legos organized; sometimes he earns a bit of money washing the windows or the kitchen floor) almost before I'm done with breakfast. That sounds awesome, except that his purpose is to nab Angry Birds playtime before I have a chance to sit him down with arithmetic or have him read a <i>Little Bear</i> story to me.</div>
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That also wasn't the point. The point was, this happened.</div>
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It actually happened three weeks ago. These tracks go out of his room, into the hallway, and off into every other bedroom. I have to wait for Gordon to pick me up in his express before I can go anywhere. My son has pretty much aged out of the obsessive track-building phase (it's all Legos and Minecraft now), so it was nice to see what might be one of his last inventions. And I don't mind chaos at all, as long as the base state is clean to begin with. But after a week . . . or two . . . or three . . . I'm starting to get really twitchy and itchy and have trouble sleeping. Last night I had a nightmare about the weeping angels on Doctor Who. <i>I need to vacuum this floor.</i></div>
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Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-14732145568198061922014-05-29T10:00:00.000-07:002014-05-29T10:00:05.958-07:00The Competence Project, Bowl Me Over<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Ha, ha. Isn't that a funny title? If I were still on Facebook, I'd have just been blocked by several friends. Oh, wait, you haven't read the post yet. Even less funny.<br />
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I'm a sucker for all those gorgeous wooden bowls you see at farmers markets, the kind that look like they were carved straight out of the stump of a tree and yet smoothed by silkworms. (Does that simile work? Probably not.) So I asked how a rustic woodworker would make those things. "You need a lathe" was the answer, and evidently not an option for rustic woodworkers. I haven't vowed allegiance to any particular kind of woodworking; this just happens to be the teacher I have access to, and he's awfully good. Why we can use drill presses and table saws and sanders, though, and not a lathe, I haven't worked out. Nor could I see how the option he gave me -- an axle grinder -- made the piece somehow more authentically rustic. I mean, an <i>axle grinder</i>. Here I am working it. You know what I'm thinking? "This is freaking insane. Please don't let me lose my grip on this and slice off someone else's fingers." Also, my mouth was full of wood flakes. They went well with the (organic[raw]) almonds and (organic[unsweetened]) dried cranberries I'd brought for lunch. <br />
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When I finished, I found that my hands were abraded to the point of bleeding, all over, from the flecks of wood flying everywhere. What I had started with was a cedar knot that was just lying around the workshop. Dan sliced the bottom off with the table saw (he didn't trust me with the table saw yet, quite rightly; he shouldn't have trusted me with an axle grinder, either), helped me clamp it tight to the table, and I dug out the middle with the grinder.<br />
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Like the pine-top table, it took me a long time to work out a shape to finish this in. There's so much flexibility with raw wood. It's limiting in a way, no rules to follow. But fun. I could see myself living as any number of Tolkien characters with the stuff I'm making. (The proliferation of raw wood products, barely finished and oozing forest, is starting to concern my husband, who prefers antique, highly varnished furniture off-limits to cats and, um, children.)<br />
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More of my crappy photography. These were taken with an iPhone. I don't like iPhone photos. The colors always seems wrong. (Actually, I just don't like the way the iPhone takes pictures of <i>me</i>.)<br />
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I finished this with the same stuff I use on my skin -- a homemade lotion of beeswax and almond oil. (Learning to make lotion was, of course, another competence endeavor, and depressingly easy. I can't believe how many years I've paid significant chunks of cash for a product that, if made at home, costs little, uses only a few [or even only two] all-natural ingredients, and takes about twenty minutes. I can make it while dinner's cooking and I'm watching <i>The Big Bang Theory</i>.) Actually, I finished it with that first and then re-cooked the lotion and added coconut oil to make it more human-skin absorbable. (What atrocious syntax.)</div>
Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-56184461720589796152014-05-26T10:00:00.000-07:002014-05-26T16:02:37.616-07:00The Competence Project, Living with Ugly<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The table on the right here was actually given to me as practice by the workshop teacher, Dan Mack, who by the way does <a href="http://danielmack.com/portfolio/index.html">magical things</a> with rustic wood furniture in addition to teaching and writing books on the subject. I think I chose the legs -- it's been a while -- but he chose the top, this odd trapezoid of pine (table on the right). The legs are a) on the left, something I can't remember but think might be oak; b) on the right, driftwood; c) at the back, peeled maple.<br />
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Anyway, it took me over a year to finish this thing because I couldn't figure out what shape to make the top. I didn't like the trapezoid option, but I'd already drilled the holes for the mortise and tenon joints and they didn't leave much room to get inventive with the shape. In the end I went for something pretty basic and mostly just sanded down the corners to round them out.<br />
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It matches our floors almost perfectly. Isn't that hideous? But I like the bottom, even though I can't look at it most of the time. It reminds me of a glacier valley, or the colors of rocks under a rushing river in the Rockies. And the shape looks nice from the side. Turning the legs around was a big improvement over that wide-legged stance. That reminded me too much of so many men on the subway taking up all the space.<br />
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All in all, I'm not thrilled with this table. It doesn't have the weight I'm looking for, for one thing, which I'm sure is a psychological problem. (Part of this whole competence project, I've realized, is a craving to feel more rooted or grounded or something; I should just wait a few decades and they'll have a pill for that. Or an app.) But it's not bad. Maybe it needs staining to bring its disparate parts together.<br />
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Or maybe I should pretend it's a high-fashion model. The legs have that kind of ultra-skinny catwalk look. Except with the knock-kneed cutesiness of a Care Bear.</div>
Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-12198543596925568792014-05-21T14:01:00.001-07:002014-05-23T07:18:01.560-07:00The Competence Project, Middle Ground<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A little over a year ago I started work on these two tables. I talked myself into thinking the one on the right was like a man standing wide-legged and dominant, but with a delicate top; and the other was a woman with a leg kicked out and a grounded, authoritative weight for the top. Gender role reversal. Except actually I was just at a workshop trying to figure out how to make a stool and these were the result of screwing around.<br />
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I really fell in love with the trunk slab, which is a chunk of maple that the teacher had found cast off in scrap at a local sawmill. If I weren't such a crappy photographer you could see the deep saw marks on its top.<br />
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It took about five months for me to finish the maple table. Because I have a job and kids and really important stuff like my novel and memoir and loads of essays to finish and peaches and tomatoes to can and even more important stuff like making sure I never miss out when a new season of <i>Doctor Who</i> is released. Also my husband had to buy me an orbital sander for my birthday, which allowed me to see what that slab of maple actually looked like.<br />
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I am totally in love with this table but leave further commentary to your own imagination. It makes life worth living. I've shown my love for it by already marking it with my 5 a.m. coffee cup. Oops.
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Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-56311809962319644442011-05-17T12:01:00.001-07:002011-05-17T12:22:09.362-07:00Storysurfing: The New Writer's ActEvery time I've participated in some kind of online writing forum over the last few years, there is always a long, hotly debated, and unnecessary thread about what makes a "real" writer and "real" writing. Because blogging makes publication so accessible for everyone, there are a precious few who would like to define "writing" as something other (almost anything) than putting words on a blog. Many participants (usually the unpublished ones) get very hung-up on whether or not they're "real" writers.<br /><br />And then there's the self-descriptions of those who are writing, or writing and publishing, or writing and posting. You look at an author's mini-bio, and they're described in one or two of the following ways: short story writer, essayist, novelist, biographer, blogger, reviewer, journalist, writer, storyteller, author, nonfiction writer ... all of which clutters up people's ideas of what a writer is or does, and limits the writer's own perceptions of what he or she is doing when inspiration strikes and they make the effort to put words on a page.<br /><br />Any "real" writer knows in his or her bones that the essays, stories, novels, and blogs are all different consequences of engaging long-term in the same activity. No matter what your final product is -- an essay in <span style="font-style:italic;">Harper's</span> or a blog read by your friends or oral narratives told at a storytelling festival -- they all come from the act of attempting to take experience and shape it into story. It doesn't matter whether that story is fiction or nonfiction, short or long, read by millions in book form or ten people looking at a blog.<br /><br />We need a new word for this act, to cut through all the crap about what constitutes a "real" writer, and I've had one in mind for a long time: storysurfer.<br /><br />Why storysurfing? This act, that of reaching into or out to experience, life, memory, and trying to shape it into a narrative that might resonate with others, reminds me a great deal of windsurfing. You are at the same time pulling and being pulled, letting go and holding on, riding the elements and letting them take you. That's what writing is, the whole act. All those titles above -- essayist, novelist, blogger -- they just describe the <span style="font-style:italic;">product</span>. The act is its own thing, separate from the end result and separate even from the experience it's pulling on.<br /><br />Beginning writers will often hear, if they're taking a workshop or in an MFA program or reading a creativity self-help book, that "a writer is someone who writes." But there's more to it than that. It's not just putting words on a page. Storysurfing is a full-body act. A storysurfer is someone who rides life, and harnesses their experience to the page.Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-50629381437599493992011-04-12T14:10:00.000-07:002011-04-12T14:32:48.481-07:00Dear Vida: Why I'm not helping up the submissions percentage this weekThe much-discussed 'count' by <a href="http://vidaweb.org/">Vida: Women in the Literary Arts</a> shows a saddening lack of women writers represented in literary publications, daily publications, book reviews, etc. Here's one sliver of a reason why:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">9:30 a.m.</span> The children have breakfasted and nursed, been toileted and diapered, medicined and vitamined, swept off and wiped. The baby is down for her reliable morning nap (the afternoon one is hit-and-miss, and requires long periods of holding and rocking). The 3-year-old is playing happily with his train tracks on the floor after I spent 20 minutes helping him set up an elaborate layout with plenty of bridges, tunnels, curves, and switches. <br /><br />I've had two cups of coffee and even the breakfast dishes are washed. The new album from Bright Eyes is playing. So while Alex sleeps and John plays, I sneak out a story that I've been writing and rewriting for <span style="font-style:italic;">5 years</span>, and am hoping to send to a journal this week. (Even though I still feel shaky in fiction, creative nonfiction being my strength, and this journal has off-handedly rejected several of my nonfiction essays. But they mentioned on Facebook that they're looking for stories, so I keep working. When I can.)<br /><br />I sit down on the rocking chair slightly out of sight, rest the clipboard on my knee, and uncap a pen.<br /><br />John looks toward the kitchen. "Mummy, I want a hug." Gripping Percy the green engine, he trots over and climbs onto my lap. <br /><br />Five minutes later, and again ten minutes later, I ask if he's ready to play with his tracks again. "No," he says, running Percy up and down my arm, "I just hugging now."<br /><br />And in no time flat it's time to get the baby up and make lunch.<br /><br />Of course I'm going to put the story down and give him a hug. There's a tug, an "I wish I could just have half an hour and then get lots of hugs," but there isn't really a choice. Does this make me not-a-writer? Are you a writer only if you push away the hug and stick to the story? No. It just makes me a writer who doesn't get things done very quickly. A writer who is always tired, and always trying. I'm betting a lot of women writers who are also caregivers find themselves in a similar position.<br /><br />(I did attempt to keep working by offering to read John the story I was working on. While he was patient enough, and I always do a fair bit of editing while reading aloud, it is a bit hard to engage in serious rewriting when you've got your "This is George. He was a good little monkey and always very curious" voice going on.)Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-56065593150089016852011-03-09T07:12:00.000-08:002011-03-09T08:07:59.070-08:00On the Purging of BooksLast week I did a little book purge. If you're a book lover, you've probably done this. This weird thought process: "Why did I keep that again? Oh, right, because I thought referring to a bunch of first-in-series mystery novels would hep me finish my own. But this was crap. Don't care if she's famous now, I yawned all the way through it. Chuck ...<br /><br />"I'm never going to read <span style="font-style:italic;">these</span> again. But I need to keep them because when the kids turn into ravaging book hordes they'll be curious to read everything. Even the lesser novels of Isabel Allende and Michael Ondaatje (even great writers turn out mediocre books sometimes). When you're into a writer, you don't care. But then ... do I <span style="font-style:italic;">really</span> need to keep <span style="font-style:italic;">Wyoming Stories 2</span>? It was awful. Why have bad Annie Proulx around when I don't even own a copy of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Shipping News</span>? Why <span style="font-style:italic;">don't</span> I own a copy? ...<br /><br />"These are disposable. But when guests want to down a thriller in bed, it's nice to have something to feed them. And they can take them away (though they rarely do). And if one of the kids is into thrillers I'd rather keep the paperbacks than try to remember the names Daniel Silva and Robert Ludlum. ...<br /><br />"I can't get rid of that. The author's a friend. And not that one. It's out of print and good for reference. And those were gifts. So depressing when you get a used book that someone wrote a loving note in. Reminds me of that awful Paul Theroux memoir, and the bit at the end about finding all the books he'd gifted to his friend V.S. Naipaul, with personal notes written inside, for sale online. At least I didn't keep that book, though I did keep the Naipaul."<br /><br />And on and on. If a book doesn't come alive for me, why should I keep it on my shelves? Why should I finish reading it in the first place? If you don't like a book so much the first time around, why keep it for years just in case? That's what libraries are for.<br /><br />Last weekend my husband gave me time for a nap and brought me a cup of tea (husbands like Ian = good). I, of course, need a book to doze off the way that some people need a sleeping pill. I wasn't in the mood for either of the current books I'm reading -- <span style="font-style:italic;">Wait for Me</span>, an autobiography by the Duchess of Devonshire, and <span style="font-style:italic;">Pioneer Women</span>, letters and journals of women settling the Kansas frontier, by Joanna Stratton -- but I took one look at the pile of to-be-read books and they just made me feel more tired. <br /><br />Last year, in the space of about 8 months, I read at least 6 really crappy or just mediocre novels and memoirs. I wasn't ready to take the risk again, of wasting the time and energy to figure out if a book was worth reading, and resenting the author of a crappy or mediocre book for stealing my precious free reading time. <br /><br />Out came <span style="font-style:italic;">The Hobbit</span>.<br /><br />Talk about comfort food. My older sister gave me <span style="font-style:italic;">The Hobbit</span> to read when I was 8 years old, followed by <span style="font-style:italic;">The Lord of the Rings</span>. I read them all at least once a year for over 20 years but have been neglecting them recently. There was a time when I'd get partway through <span style="font-style:italic;">The Return of the King</span> and start crying because I'd forgotten how large the appendices were and there was less of the story left to live through than I'd thought.<br /><br />The book purge was prompted by my reading through all 4 of those Tolkien books last week. I took a look at our well-filled bookshelves and wondered just how many of those books I would ever read again, or read with as much pleasure. Why keep any books that I <span style="font-style:italic;">know</span> I won't read over and over? There aren't many authors who fit that bill: Jane Austen, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.D. Salinger, L.M. Montgomery. Dodie Smith, Kathy Tyers, Anthony Trollope, J.K. Rowling. C.S. Lewis, Norton Juster, Dorothy Sayers, Wilkie Collins. Colin Thubron, Jan Morris, Margaret Atwood, Susan Cooper, Fyodr Dostoevsky. Some others.<br /><br />The first book I ever got rid of was <span style="font-style:italic;">The Great Gatsby</span>. I hated that book, partly because I'd moved schools several times and had had to study it 4 years in a row (#1 way to kill a kid's interest in a story: force them to study it rather than just read it). But also I just don't think it's very good. Or maybe it just doesn't speak to me. Not a big Fitzgerald fan.<br /><br />Books look pretty. Well-stocked bookshelves make for a cozy room, and for book-lovers impart an odd sense of security. Maybe there will always be a struggle, wondering what we should keep and what to give away. Book are old friends, even the lesser novels of well-loved authors, even the ones we might have grown out of. But I think what it comes down to is that the ones worth keeping are the ones that inspire us, one way or another. <span style="font-style:italic;">Anne of Green Gables </span>might not suck me in the same way it did in my early teens, but I still enjoy reading it. And I might no reread <span style="font-style:italic;">Motherland: A Philosophical History of Russia</span> again anytime soon, but I was engrossed in it and marked it up and dip into it now and then when I'm curious about something.<br /><br />Our books are like an encyclopedia of the kind of reader we are, and how that reader has evolved. For me, they also represent the kind of writer I'd like to be. Most of the books that I keep out of love are the ones that people continue to read a hundred or two hundred years, or more, after they're published, not because they're forced to, but because the story comes alive no matter how old it is.<br /><br />Which is why I finally gave away <span style="font-style:italic;">Wyoming Stories 2</span> and bought a copy of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Shipping News</span>. Good writers can write crappy books, but they can also write great ones that last for generations.Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-48010846410996192010-11-18T04:07:00.000-08:002010-11-18T06:47:54.453-08:00Mindful Parenting: Childrearing is a Job. Pay Me and Get Over It.It's hard to know where to begin. Do I launch into a critique of Erica Jong's rambling, contradictory <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704462704575590603553674296.html?mod=wsj_share_facebook">column in the Wall Street Journal</a>, in which she criticized attachment parenting -- essentially, it seemed, because it put too much pressure on mothers? How about pointing once again to the Salary Survey study that found stay-at-home mothers, if they do 10 common activities per week (including preparing meals, minor housecleaning, and driving kids around to various activities), <a href="http://swz.salary.com/momsalarywizard/htmls/mswl_momcenter.html">are worth nearly $118,000 per year</a>? How about the studies that show that <a href="http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/why-does-anyone-have-children/">people who have children are unhappier than those without</a>? Or last year's factually incorrect <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/04/the-case-against-breast-feeding/7311/">attack on breastfeeding in The Atlantic Monthly</a>, in which Hanna Rosin sacrificed scientific fact in order to justify how pissed off she was at society's lack of support for breastfeeding and other beneficial parenting practices?<br /><br />I will start, instead, with one statement and one little story. The statement: conditions for parents, families, and mothers in particular are never going to improve if the only people given voice in the media are the ones criticizing others' parenting choices.<br /><br />The story: Last night I got really pissed off at my husband, simply because he offered to help me. <br /><br />You see, I haven't made much money since our son was born 3 years ago. It's a long story, which I won't go into here. But this week, for the first time since he was born, I am taking on paying work in my job as a copy editor and proofreader of textbooks. As our house flooded recently and we could use the extra income, my husband was happy to hear it. Last night we were discussing how many hours I could do per week, given that our son is in preschool 3 days a week but we also have a daughter almost 5 months old who needs my care. <br /><br />"I can't do it the days I have John home," I said. "It's just not gonna happen." I've explained to my husband (and friends without small children) that using a computer with our 3-year-old around is just an exercise in frustration. I can't even check email, much less concentrate on a detailed proofreading job I get paid to do. Forget it. <br /><br />He said, "Maybe I can help a bit in the mornings on those days, and you can do an hour or so of work." <br /><br />Ah. <br /><br />Of course I knew, and I know now, that this was a generous offer. My husband is emphatically not a morning person. But he is a modern father, one who cooks dinners and cleans the bathroom and, before we had the second baby, took our son out on weekends so I could have Saturday mornings off. And one who wants to support me in the choices I make regarding our life, my life, and our children's care. However. Behind that statement (and I emphasize that my husband never intended this meaning, and was simply trying to be thoughtful and helpful) is an unspoken point that all of the other work that I do <span style="font-style:italic;">every morning</span> is worthless compared to something that actually earns money. Being the one to get up at 5:30 when our son says, "I all done sleeping," playing with him, helping him poop on the toilet and wash his hands <span style="font-style:italic;">with soap</span>, making the granola we all eat, packing a healthy, tasty lunch for both of them, writing notes to our son's preschool teacher and speech therapist. Making breakfast, sweeping up spilled granola, nursing our baby daughter, making coffee, washing the dishes, writing checks for bills, making our son brush his teeth, changing our daughter's diaper, reminding our son for the zillionth time to say please and thank you. God. Let's not even talk about the rest of the day. Or my often smothered efforts at writing essays, novels, stories.<br /><br />None of those things have ever earned an offer of help in the morning. (Since so many people like to criticize women for complaining too much, I emphasize once again that my husband is awesome. He just can't deal with mornings. My brain checks out after 6 at night, so we balance each other.) <br /><br />Then again, I don't earn an income for any of those things. And in this fact lies the tangle that mothers these days have found themselves in. Because while some of us read books and practice what I think of as 'mindful parenting,' other mothers attack us for treating childrearing as a job, a job for which we are not paid.<br /><br />"When I was a mother, all we had to do was keep the kids alive," I've heard. "If you're breastfeeding exclusively you're only doing it because you've been brainwashed to think of yourself as a cow." (Okay, that's a paraphrase.) "If you treat childrearing as a job, then you're taking it too seriously."<br /><br />So, essentially, those of us who actually spend the time and effort to consciously do a good job of mothering? We suck. And we make life suck for all the other mothers who feel guilty for not doing what we try to do. We should all just wing it, all just throw out the research of the last 50 years, ignore the benefits of breastfeeding and attachment parenting, put our kids in preschool, take our kids out of preschool, spend more time listening to them, spend less time listening to them -- basically, do <span style="font-style:italic;">whatever feels like it takes the least effort.</span><br /><br />None of the critics has actually come out and said this, but that's what it boils down to. If any of your childrearing choices feel like they take mental effort or thought, then you'd better stop. Because it means you're taking it all too seriously.<br /><br />Yeah, that attitude has worked real well for humanity up until now. You can see how well we're all doing. No greed, no wars, no poverty, no wasteful use of non-renewable natural resources. Life's just roses all over the world.<br /><br />You think the state of the world, the condition of humanity, the choices that the powerful make, the struggles we have for equality and justice have nothing to do with how we are raised? <span style="font-style:italic;">They have everything to do with how we are raised.</span><br /><br />Those who criticize some of us for treating mothering as a job have a misconception as to what that job is. My children are not my job. My job is to understand my children in the best way I can, to provide an environment for them to become the most complete human beings they can be, and to instill in them certain lessons that, if we adults actually followed them, would make the world a livable place for everyone: share, let everyone else have some, wait your turn, say please and thank you, wash your hands <span style="font-style:italic;">with soap</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">listen</span> (if adults just listened and paid attention to others' points of view, we could probably solve about 80% of our problems), don't hit, clean up after yourself, apologize when you've hurt someone, don't take more than your fair share, everything you do has consequences, good or bad, listen to your intuition, trust yourself, respect your choices, respect others' choices, if you've done something you regret, then own up to it. Goodness knows how many others I'm not even aware of.<br /><br />The most important of all these lessons is respect. And here is where the job comes in. Before my children can learn to respect others, they need to respect themselves. And in order to do that, I have to help them understand that I respect them. I think this is the lesson that sticks in the craw of many critics. Somewhere in the back of our minds still lies the mantra that children should be seen and not heard, that their needs are unimportant and subservient to others' needs. Even I was raised somewhat that way. When I say that I try to listen to and respect my children, too many people hear "I let my life be ruled by my children." <br /><br />Not. What. I. Said. <span style="font-style:italic;">Listen</span>.<br /><br />When my son says that he wants to watch more Curious George when he's already had several episodes, or play with my computer, or squeeze his baby sister, I try not to say just plain 'no.' That's all it means. I don't let him do these things. I don't let him negotiate for them. But I do take 20 seconds to focus on what he is asking for, show him that I understand what he wants, and explain why it isn't happening.<br /><br />Sometimes in response he'll throw a fit and have to go into time-out. But over time the lesson does sink in -- both the lesson of what is allowed and what's not, and the lesson that I will listen to him, respect his wishes, and explain when they're not possible. And I use the same lesson to teach him respect for me: that sometimes Mummy has to work, that sometimes she needs quiet or some space, that he can't just take my things without asking for them, that I am a person, too, with wishes and needs of my own. <br /><br />If I expect my children to honor my needs and my space and my possessions (and, I hope, take those lessons to their interactions with others in the outer world), the best way to achieve that is to give them the same respect.<br /><br />This is a really hard job. It takes an immense amount of time and energy. I read piles of books and articles, looking for more tips on certain sticking points. I talk at length with other parents about their difficulties and problem-solving tips and frustrations. I practice a lot. I start over a lot. I have done more work in three years of parenting than I devoted to my Master's degree.<br /><br />Yes, I take this job seriously. And because I and others <span style="font-style:italic;">do</span> take it seriously, the world might possibly be a marginally better place in the next generation.<br /><br />Therefore, I think we should be paid for this job. I think the taxpayer should pay all stay-at-home parents a salary. You think I'm kidding? We pay politicians crazy amounts of money to solicit campaign contributions and future job offers from lobbyists in order to push through laws that they neither read nor understand -- I mean, we pay them to pass thoughtful legislation for the benefit of their constituents. How is that any different from paying full-time parents for raising the next generation in ways that are most beneficial to society?<br /><br />Of course, the danger is that many full-time parents might do a bad job. There's little quality control. But seeing as how the aforementioned politicians largely fail to do the job they're paid for (concentrating instead on aforementioned campaign donations, thinking up nasty things to say about people they dislike, and trying to make sure the other party can't do anything they want to do), and seeing as how I can think of a number of bank executives who did a really shitty job and still walked away with millions of dollars each, I don't see why it's such a stretch.<br /><br />The easiest way to put a stop to the "Mommy Wars" (for a critique on <span style="font-style:italic;">that</span> concept, read my post <a href="http://pooplosophy.blogspot.com/2009/06/declaring-war-on-mommy-wars.html">Declaring War on the Mommy Wars</a>) is to simply make full-time parenting a paid position funded by the taxpayer, like Congress or public schools, with Social Security benefits and a monthly check.<br /><br />Personally, I'm going to continue treating this as a job. Maybe if I raise my children right, the next generation will pass more family-friendly policies and will start giving mothers some compensation besides brunch on Mother's Day, rights to half our 'working' spouse's Social Security benefits, and really repetitive essays about our children's love being all the compensation we need. And maybe a day will come when that is true, too.<br /><br />[Note that during the time I spent writing this, I also made breakfast for 3 people, ironed a shirt, made coffee, nursed my daughter, showered and dressed, reminded my husband of tomorrow's haircut appointment, and 3 times took my son to poop on the potty and wash his hands <span style="font-style:italic;">with soap</span>. I'd like to see my husband do <span style="font-style:italic;">that</span> while performing the job he gets paid lots of money for!]Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-80523707601284569782010-06-01T11:25:00.001-07:002010-06-01T12:53:39.747-07:00Push me, pull me, leave me alone: What is wrong with hugging on your own terms?[This is Part II of the occupation therapy evaluation. For Part I, the evaluation experience itself and the crazy-making fixation on "school readiness," click <a href="http://pooplosophy.blogspot.com/2010/04/occupational-therapy-evaluation-what.html">here</a>.]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Evaluation Report: Are You Gonna Hug My Way?</span><br /><br />Today we received the evaluation reports. Among the thick stack of papers was the occupational therapist's evaluation, in which the topic Sensory Issues was labeled in bold.<br /><br />Having been involved in John's Early Intervention services for well over 10 months now, I have learned to be wary of these occupational therapists and their infatuation with 'sensory issues.' His first therapist kept mentioning them, even when he blatantly proved her wrong as she was speaking. It was a classic case of entering a situation with preconceived notions and refusing to let go of them despite all evidence to the contrary. (Such as: on separate occasions she spoke of his difficulty eating highly flavored foods while he chomped feta cheese, garlic chicken, and drank a full glass of grapefruit juice right in front of her.)<br /><br />In this evaluation report, the OT makes her concern with sensory issues as a general topic clear, while unfortunately muddying the understanding of them for the general population. Clear, because they're in bold and larger type than anything else. Muddy, because the description is confusing: <span style="font-weight:bold;">"Many children fluctuate between sensory sensitivity and sensory seeking behaviors and others may be sensitive to certain sensations but seek other ones. Each child's patterns may be highly unique and individual, and it is not uncommon for those patterns to change depending upon the context the child is in."</span><br /><br />And this is different from being a regular human being <span style="font-style:italic;">how</span>, exactly? It's very hard to read this language as other than "Kids like some things. Other things annoy them. Different things annoy different kids, and sometimes whether or not a kid is annoyed will depend on the circumstances." What can one say about this explanation except that hey, most of us have slightly more self-awareness than a head of cabbage.<br /><br />Here's an example of the sort of thing this evaluation concentrates on. With the exception of our current occupational therapist, all the ones I've met have had a thing about "tolerating imposed touch." They will poke John, push him, and prod him repeatedly, sometimes trying to push him over to see how he corrects himself. And then they act surprised when he eventually gets pissed off. Wouldn't you? I don't tolerate imposed touch very well. Hell, I'm pregnant and people are constantly putting their hands on my belly. I know exactly how John feels because mostly I want to punch them. In addition, he will "tolerate" this touch from some therapists more than others. His first one tended to get a very wise and know-it-all look on her face when he reacted strongly, which he did increasingly early in her sessions. As a parent, it was hard not to respond to her bullshit analysis with pointing out the obvious: "No, the problem is, he just doesn't <span style="font-style:italic;">like</span> you." And he didn't. I didn't like her either. <br /><br />I loved this question from both that original OT (the one we have now, I should say, is fabulous and John looks forward to their sessions) and the school evaluator: "Does he only hug on his own terms?" To which my response is, "What the fuck?" Do these people not consider the logic of what they're asking? To follow these expectations to their logical conclusions, children should be able to tolerate being touched or even hit by anyone. Of course nobody thinks about it that way, but where do you draw the line?<br /><br />To insist that a child hug and kiss on anyone else's terms but their own is extremely dangerous. How far do you expect them to take that? Do you hone your therapy to override their own instincts and self-preservation, much less any safety protocols built in by parents? I don't want my child to accept hugs, kisses, or touch of any kind from anyone if he's not comfortable, much less insist he give the same when he doesn't feel like it.<br /><br />The nice OT, when I asked her how this could possibly be good for children, explained that the question should really be "Does he like hugging," as in hugging from parents and close relatives, anyone they'd be comfortable around. Unfortunately, the way it's asked is open to gross misinterpretation and makes me question the safety of the therapy itself, at least when unmonitored by a parent (which the school therapy services are -- unmonitored, that is).<br /><br />So maybe that's a big of an overreaction. But I, personally, have never liked being touched when it's uninvited. And I certainly know when it feels wrong (try being a young female journalist in Australia and you'll get intimately acquainted with people trying to touch you inappropriately, and constantly). How much of this therapy would it take before a child starts to lose that sense, starts to mistrust their own intuition telling them this touch is simply <span style="font-style:italic;">not right</span>?<br /><br />I don't know the answer. But I do know one thing. There is no way I'm going to risk my son finding out.<br /><br />(Apologies if this post sounds a bit bitchy. But you try watching someone poke and shove your kid, and tap their joints and fiddle with them when they're trying to eat, as your child gets increasingly annoyed, irritated, and frustrated at his inability to make them stop, and see how well <span style="font-style:italic;">you</span> react to it.)Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-61279821389358092582010-05-11T10:35:00.001-07:002010-05-11T17:46:57.201-07:00For the Sake of Our Society, for the Sake of Our Kids: It's Time to End Standardized and High-Stakes TestingI've heard from a lot of people (most of whom responded directly on Facebook) regarding my family's <a href="http://pooplosophy.blogspot.com/2010/04/up-against-system-one-mothers-shock.html">recent experiences with public school evaluations</a> and standardized tests. In addition, I've been reading piles of books about homeschooling, peppered with narratives of families who chose to homeschool after the evaluation and standardized teaching culture affected their kids in gut-wrenching ways from the loss of a smile, to anxiety-driven insomnia, to very young children forced to take Ritalin to be allowed in school. <br /><br />The stories that have come out -- powerful, personal, some heartbreaking -- leave me wondering why on earth we put up with such a ridiculous, demoralizing, wasteful, and finally counter-productive system. There's only one answer, and I'm afraid it's unacceptable. We put up with it because we're too tired, too overworked, the top-heavy bureaucracy of the education system is just too immovably pigheaded, and so we give up and put our energies into the one thing that counts: navigating the system to ensure the mental and emotional and academic welfare of our own children, because that's the only place we have an impact.<br /><br />Not that there's anything wrong with caring for our children first. But if we can't change a system we know is wrong, what kind of society are we leaving for them, in the end?<br /><br />In a recent post on standardized tests (<a href="http://pooplosophy.blogspot.com/2010/04/teks-and-taas-standardized.html">TEKS and TAAS</a>), I mentioned the complaints of college professors that their students lack the ability to think independently: "These students, they moan, are always wanting to know 'what the teacher is looking for' in a paper. In other words, they’re so used to being taught to the test, that it comes naturally to them to write to the teacher."<br /><br />That's aside from the worried, stressed-out reality many kids are living in, whether it's in response to high-stakes high school graduation testing or twice-weekly spelling drills to prepare 2nd graders for high-pressure standardized tests. The book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Guerrilla-Learning-Education-Without-School/dp/0471349607">Guerilla Learning</a> (by Amy Silver and Grace Llewellyn) has an excellent chapter on the history of standardized tests, and how they have gained prominence in our schools. It has absolutely <span style="font-style:italic;">nothing</span> to do with our children's education, and everything to do with bureaucracy's need to formulate colossal busywork rather than doing anything real to improve the quality of education. Numerous studies have shown that standardized testing is self-referential -- while test scores might improve, education and learning do not. And, as one mother friend said, "I don't think you can standardize results for a young child. They can do great one day and terrible the next purely based on whether or not they had a good nap or ate enough lunch."<br /><br />The problem is, this busywork, and the industry that now makes millions off of it, is not only denying our kids real learning opportunities, but is actually causing them lasting harm.<br /><br />What sort of humans are we creating, in the pursuit of this hyper-testing culture? Nervous young creatures driven by anxiety and unable to think for themselves or engage in imagination because they are so used to being judged by an arbitrary metric that they don’t know how to function without it. No proponents of standardized testing answer this question: What happens when the testing stops? What happens to the kids we’ve trained when we throw them into the world and suddenly say, “Now think and do for yourselves, even though we haven’t allowed to do so for 18 years, and you have no idea of what it means to succeed or fail without a test score returned to you”?<br /><br />Where did we go so wrong? <br /><br />Our society is never going to be competitive in math or engineering, or ingenuity or philosophy or literature or justice, or in fact anything at all if the way we measure success keeps being driven by standardized tests. Because, as anyone with an ounce of sense knows by this time, the reliance on tests means that the tests are all we teach. And what use are the tests in life? Absolutely none. <br /><br />So if a lesson is in no way useful in real life, why is the school teaching it? Your tax dollars at work, spinning out reams of pointless paperwork designed to make your children nervous, fearful, and more prone to need anxiety medication as they grow. Is that what we want? A nation of anxious, sleep-deprived people who are unable to make decisions or solve problems without hanging on to a life raft of a standardized metric, without receiving a score that tells them whether they passed or failed?<br /><br />If you want a nation of people who are dependent on the rest of the world for solving problems and inventing new technologies, that’s a surefire way to do it—not to mention a nation of people easily led by any dogma, no matter how ignorant or narrow-minded, that happens to strike a chord with them. Ignorance and anxiety, as history has taught us countless times, is an explosive mix. This is not how humanity makes progress.<br /><br />In the case of students with special needs, the use of evaluations and tests seems counter-intuitive. Do the evaluations actually do much to identify those needs and how to meet them? It’s what the tests are supposedly designed for, but do they succeed? <br /><br />As with any complex problem that needs solving, the answer is no. What the evaluations do is allow providers to apply easily identifiable labels to children without taking into account each child’s personality, quirks, tendencies, or, indeed, actual needs. <br /><br />I realize this difficulty is hard to overcome. No one but the parent and perhaps future teachers truly has the time to get to know the child and work with who they are. They only have the time to work with a broad outline—those labels—of what this human might be. <br /><br />While the system might for the most part do little harm and sometimes quite a bit of good, there are two reasons it is hopelessly flawed. One is that in some cases it can do harm. Think of the child who really doesn’t fit the mold, and is forced to, or children who are under the care of an incompetent or uncaring provider. <br /><br />The second is that providers and parents could accomplish the same tasks without the use of evaluations. Any parent even mildly observant can tell the provider enough about their child to make the evaluation redundant (yes, there are crappy parents; I have yet to see any real evidence that standardized evaluations make up for that). And any provider worth their salt can easily discover all they need to know about how to begin working with a child within one or two sessions of observation and play. <br /><br />If the purpose of these systems is to simply standardize people, they succeed, at the expense of humanity. If the intention is to help children become their best selves, how widely they miss the mark. How will they, and we, pay for that mistake in the future?Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-3966981824694983542010-05-03T17:05:00.000-07:002010-05-04T07:36:37.189-07:00The Capacity for Genius: A Eureka Moment in All of UsA couple months ago I was talking with a friend about Einstein, whose biography I <a href="http://pooplosophy.blogspot.com/2009/10/did-einstein-have-phenomenal-powers-of.html">read last fall</a> (<span style="font-style:italic;">Einstein: His Life and Universe</span>, by Walter Isaacson). Actually, I was asking about general relativity, aspects of which I still have a lot of trouble grasping. (I do this to my physicist and mathematician friends, starting with my husband, in a futile hope that someone somewhere will suddenly hand me the key to fully comprehending the stuff in the way I wish I could, and which no amount of reading seems to do.)<br /><br />We wandered onto the topic of genius. The friend contended that Einstein wasn't necessarily the genius he's always sold as, but simply happened to be the right person at the right time to make "his" discoveries. It's an argument with which I agree, especially as it's clear that many other scientists had already made similar discoveries (but hadn't quite connected the dots yet), or were verging on them.<br /><br />This led on to the question of whether genius actually exists. And, again, I found myself agreeing with the friend's contention that there are no geniuses, only people who happen to be able to follow or take certain opportunities when they're fortuitously presented. <br /><br />On further thought, however, I would argue that in fact everyone is a genius, or has the capacity for genius. Two writers have bolstered this personal conviction. First there was Arthur Koestler's book <span style="font-style:italic;">The Act of Creation</span>, now sadly out of print, although you can easily find used copies. I originally picked this book up because I found his Sleepwalkers (about the lives and discoveries of Kepler and Galileo) to be a masterpiece, and thought this book would delve into the psychological activity behind the creativity in art, writing, etc. It was far more interesting than I anticipated, as it actually focused on the "ah-ha" or "eureka" moment of great scientific discoveries. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The Act of Creation</span> is far too long and involved to go into detail here, but what I found interesting was Koestler's investigation into how the "eureka" moment, like that of Darwin's, is often preceded by years, sometimes decades, of research and hard work. In other words, it's not a matter of genius at all but simply a matter of pursuing a passion or interest in a dedicated fashion until one day the pieces seem to fall into a new pattern and you're looking, possibly, at an entirely new discovery or shift in paradigm. Which is essentially what happened with Einstein. <br /><br />Koestler’s research would indicate that "genius" is actually a matter of having the time, ability, and drive to do or pursue something you're passionate about, with no promise of immediate results or of ever seeing a reward. <br /><br />This viewpoint is still limited, however, as our accepted concept of genius focuses only on the accomplishments that get mentioned in the public sphere. And genius is so much more than simply academic or creative intelligence. I've met people who are geniuses at dealing with babies, who know instinctively how to handle the toddler tantrums of the terrible twos; people who know how to live at peace with their world, who can cobble a delectable meal from the most unlikely and sparse ingredients; people who can manage the tempers and caprices of a boardroom or political field to help a group of people reach a needed goal; people who seem to make gardens produce unbelievable bounty with the daily stroke of their hand; people who inspire others to do great things with their own lives. Geniuses in every possible aspect of life, not just in the achievements that win Nobel Prizes or Pulitzers or even those that solve the biggest problems facing the human population and the planet.<br /><br />If genius is, as I think, a matter of doing what you're meant to be doing with your life, of following your passion, then we are all surrounded by geniuses every day; we just don't know it. And we all have the capacity to tap our own genius.<br /><br />The other author was Elizabeth Gilbert (author of <span style="font-style:italic;">Eat, Pray, Love</span>), whose TED TV talk on "<a href="http://ted.tv.magnify.net/video/Elizabeth-Gilbert-A-different-w">A different way to think about creativity</a>” proposed going back to the Greek and Roman concept of genius being a sort of daemon or “other” who assists the writer or artist or musician in making their piece of work as good as it can possibly be.<br /><br />(If you don’t watch the occasional TED talk, you should. The organization <a href="http://www.ted.com/">TED—Technology Entertainment Design</a>—has the sole goal of presenting weekly talks on Ideas Worth Spreading, whether they’re innovative ways to accomplish social justice, new ways to think about creativity, or discussions about brain science.)<br /><br />Gilbert’s talk was thoroughly enjoyable, aside from presenting a new and interesting idea. And if we took her advice and changed the way we think about artists—seeing their “genius” as some sort of separate entity that simply assists in their work—then there is no reason that the same concept can’t apply to everyone.<br /><br />The problem is, of course, that very few people will ever have the means to allow their genius to work its magic. Most of us are daily, hourly, grindingly involved in activities that are designed, yes, to earn us a living or scrape us a scanty life, but also to keep us from ever listening to the genius-creature whispering in our ear. The vast spectrum of human experience up to this point doesn’t allow more than a tiny, lucky percentage of the population to even consider what it is they love to do, or expose us to ideas that might inspire us. And even those of us who listen to flashes of insight are constantly derailed by the seemingly constant demands of simple daily life.<br /><br />None of this reality, however, changes the fact that we all have the capacity for genius. We can stifle it, deny it, run from it, strangle it, or fear it. But we can’t ever fully kill it.Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-79049163930294560592010-04-27T13:16:00.000-07:002010-04-27T13:22:30.073-07:00TEKS and TAAS: The Standardized Strangulation of ImaginationFor several years before my first child was born, I worked as a copy editor for a textbook company. A small place, we took on weighty loads of a variety of textbooks from every major publisher you could think of. Although we specialized in reading, spelling, and phonics for younger grades, I worked on high school science and literature textbooks, and even wrote a 6th-grade math/social science textbook (which you can <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=6gEXSlaaRfgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=antonia+malchik+depression&source=bl&ots=vDGz-EDO4n&sig=260q8duvhQ5Pju4o5TriWtni2eY&hl=en&ei=sUbXS_HiE8L88AaypdC9BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">read</a> to your horror and my shame on Google Books—there are reasons I wasn’t asked to do one again).<br /><br />Standardized teaching and testing was an intimate part of my life as a copy editor. Every textbook we worked on, from every major company, followed what are known as TEKS and TAAS, the learning and testing guidelines laid down by the state of Texas. (For those conspiracy theorists who always wondered whether the entire national curriculum is really run by the state of Texas, the answer is, essentially, yes. Texas buys its textbooks for the entire state, whereas most states allow their districts to choose and purchase individually. Texas wields enormous power over how our children are educated because it is simply the most important slice of the market for textbook publishers. So yes, the fact that the Texas board is <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/25/texas.evolution.teaching/">waging war on science</a> should worry you.) <br /><br />These guidelines are massive, thousands of little instructions and expectations, spanning all grade levels, covering requirements from the specifics of trigonometry in high school, down to the movement of large and small muscle groups in kindergarten. Let your imagination run wild as to how specific the requirements of your child’s education can get, and you can’t go far wrong.<br /><br />I used to take all the stupid requirements and niggly publishing quirks in stride, with a sense of humor, but when you see on a daily basis the reality of what we’re forcing on our children for several hours a day, the humor starts to erode.<br /><br />It wasn’t the New York State Regency exam that, in a multiple-choice question regarding the reasons behind most recent invasion of Iraq, failed to give as an answer/option anything close to the truth (that is, one that questioned the US government’s motives behind the invasion). And it wasn’t the failure of a high school history textbook’s glowing mini-bio of Henry Kissinger to note that he avoids traveling to Europe because he’s wanted for questioning on war crimes. It wasn’t even the exasperating project of writing that math textbook, during which I had to count the number of syllables in each sentence to make sure my writing was “age appropriate.” (Evidently the number of syllables per sentence in a paragraph is more important to your child’s education than information. Heaven forbid the lesson actually be <span style="font-style:italic;">interesting</span>.)<br /><br />What broke my heart, finally, was not the endless checking and cross-checking to see which sub-requirement a specific math problem or activity might cover in the TEKS, but the cross-invasion of standardized testing into reading lessons for kindergarteners. <br /><br />As most of us know now, we teach to the test rather than teach to help kids learn, and I saw no more striking or sobering example than lessons for 5-year-olds that focused on questions such as: “Good readers look for main ideas when they read,” or “As you read, identify the main and supporting characters in the story,” and so on with plot and climax and all the elements you expect to be quizzed on when you take the Iowa Basics or similar for the first time. These were tiny little books about, you know, mice and clocks. But the children weren’t allowed to focus on the funny story, the personalities; they weren’t allowed to let themselves go and sink into the weird imagination-river that makes reading, on its own, so powerful.<br /><br />I can’t think of a better way to kill a child’s budding curiosity about reading and books. And once you strangle a desire to read, imagination has little chance at all. <br /><br />Standardized tests used to be something we took every few years, an anomaly in our education, something by the wayside. Now there are 2nd-graders riddled with nervous anxiety because their “education” is constructed around frequent quizzes and tests, to prepare them to do well in major standardized tests in the 3rd grade. <br /><br />I can remember the first time I took the Iowa Basics, one of the country’s most long-standing standardized tests. It was in the 6th grade. Despite being one of the smarter kids in the class, the Reading Comprehension section took me longer than it should have because I got caught up and interested in the content, and had to go back to look for main ideas, supporting ideas, and so on. In other words, <span style="font-style:italic;">reading</span> for me, as it would be for any child given the chance, was a completely separate activity from the comprehension skill the test was looking for.<br /><br />Years later, editing those kindergarten textbooks, I felt ill. I come from an intellectual family of complete book addicts, yet the lure of reading would not have stood a chance if someone had stood in front of me day after day, telling me what “good readers do” and refusing to let me enjoy the story. But I might have gotten into the 99th percentile on the Iowa Basics rather than the 98th.<br /><br />Over the last few years I’ve read and heard the complaints of many college professors that the students coming in lack not only basic knowledge, but the ability to think at all. These students, they moan, are always wanting to know “what the teacher is looking for” in a paper. In other words, they’re so used to being taught to the test, that it comes naturally to them to write to the teacher. <br /><br />The younger we push standardized testing, the further back we seek to squelch true curiosity and the fierce love of learning that most children are born with, the less likely it is that the future’s college students will have any concept of what it means to enjoy learning, much less how to think for themselves. <br /><br />But personally, I’m more concerned about those kindergarteners, who will never care about the mouse, the clock, and the cheese, or that it’s a funny story, because they need to remember for the Thursday quiz what the main idea was. And the ridiculous thing is, I couldn’t tell them either. It’s a story. It’s fun. I’m sure that future lessons will include books with far less scope for imagination, and far more emphasis on plot and characterization.Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-21687293337582389112010-04-22T10:14:00.001-07:002010-06-01T11:39:32.615-07:00Occupational Therapy Evaluation: What Part of "I'm 2" Don't You Understand?[This is Part I of the occupational therapy (OT) evaluation experience. For Part II, the report and slightly scary obsession with hugging, click <a href="http://pooplosophy.blogspot.com/2010/06/push-me-pull-me-leave-me-alone-what-is.html">here</a>.]<br /><br />The saga of our 2 1/2-year-old son John's evaluations for special services from the school district continues. I waited to write about the occupational therapy and psychology evaluations until we got the reports back from the evaluators. But the paperwork hasn't changed the initial conclusions, which included: occupational therapy evaluation, strike 3.<br /><br />It was between the educational and occupational therapy evaluations that I started to seriously look into homeschooling. By the time this evaluation was over, I'd already signed up for the newsletters of two local homeschooling groups. That's how much this process is pissing me off.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Evaluation: Your Son's Kindergarten Experience Will Suck -- for His Teacher</span><br /><br />Actually, I'd thought the occupational therapy (OT) evaluation went much better, not borne out by the evaluation reports. But then I have a much longer acquaintance with John's personality and tantrums than the evaluator does. The evaluation was still, stupidly, an hour long, but it's all interactive--playing, basically. He did very well for about 35 minutes, did everything he was asked. Then he stopped playing along. The evaluator snuck that look onto her face and immediately asked that question I have learned to hate: "Is this typical, that he'll not want to do directed play anymore and will just stop cooperating?" <br /><br />What could I say? Yes. Specifically, if I'm in the room, yes. If he's without me, say at daycare, he will do everything he's told. I pushed a little harder with her and asked if they really expected kids of his age to finish these [extremely long] evaluations. She said at least with OT, when they start moving from table activities to floor stuff, probably most kids will be fine continuing to play along because the activities change. With her, she didn't say "attention issues," but talked about the "ability to engage in non-self-directed play" for long periods.<br /><br />In other words, do what they're told when they're told to do it. Speaking with several other early childhood workers in various parts of the country, I learned several things. One is that it's ineffective and inappropriate to start looking for attention issues at the age of 2. Everyone I spoke with, including two Soviet kindergarten teachers (who used to have parents trying to bribe them to get their kids into their classes) were shocked to hear of anyone expecting a toddler to "pay attention" to directed activities for longer than 20 minutes.<br /><br />I also learned that about 75% of children will be able to happily finish the hour-long evaluations. At first this number surprised me, but when I think about the bulk of humanity ... well, let's just say that people who change the world, for better or worse, are more likely to come from the other 25%.<br /><br />For John, a massive meltdown ensued while the evaluator looked on disapprovingly. Are these poor kids not allowed to get bored and tell people to piss off? Why would anyone continue doing something they don't feel like doing, if they don't understand why they're being asked to do it? Isn't that part of the definition of insanity?<br /><br />I talked with our service coordinator about my concerns yesterday and she, although an admirable person in many ways, talks the party line: "In a classroom setting he needs to be able to sit and follow instructions, and pay attention to what's being asked of him. If there are attention issues, trust me, you want to find them early." In a classroom setting! Which is years away! What part of "he's 2 not 5" don't you understand? I feel like I'm talking a different language.<br /><br />I notice, by the way, that not a single evaluator has asked how well he does with self-directed play. I'd be way more concerned about a kid who is unable to entertain themselves for an hour, than I would be about one who refuses to be told how to play for the same amount of time.Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-78999748066724330732010-04-22T09:51:00.002-07:002010-04-25T11:09:55.202-07:00Thoughts on 'The System': Have We Forgotten What It Means to Be Two Years Old?And this response to <a href="http://pooplosophy.blogspot.com/2010/04/up-against-system-one-mothers-shock.html">Up Against the System</a> is from my younger sister, whom we'll call <span style="font-weight:bold;">B</span>. My sisters' thoughts about this whole process are so varied, yet so complementary, it's impossible to take one set without the other.<br /><br />"I imagine John as, I don't know, the son of a sailor. I picture him out on the sea being wild and free. He has a certain quality that begs for independence. I would feel exactly like you do in this situation. I would want him to pass the tests, do well, and do what was expected, but I would also be angry that he was being fed such formulaic standards and labeled something based on a narrow view of who he really is. Perhaps he is behind in many ways. He was born premature and that gave him significant disadvantages. To me that means nothing about his future. I'm sure there are fascinating statistics out there and reasons why we should follow our formulaic methods of teaching toddlers, but the big picture is often not taken into account.<br /><br />My boyfriend had to do kindergarten twice. He had a muscle issue with his eye that made one eye stay crossed so they had to cut the muscle and he missed too much school to complete the year. Tragic right? Except that it isn't a big deal at all now. Even more tragic to me is the fact that he, another good friend, and many others I know suffered from poor school systems that didn't bother to nurture and teach them much at all. Systems that, had I been in them I never would've accomplished half of what I did academically. I don't know when our education system took the turn and stopped being about developing the minds of our youth, but it has. From these early childhood exams to the public school system it is all about teaching for tests that are standardized by what? .... the Texas board? <br /><br />What baffles me is that in the arts we understand what we need to do, but we never take those lessons and use them in real life. That may be confusing so here is my example. In Harry Potter and ... um... the one where he forms Dumbldore's army... the evil is the woman who comes and tries to rigidly standardize everything in the school. She teaches for the exams and provides no useful, practical skills for the students. We see this all the time in children's stories and movies, but yet in the real world we still commit these crimes.<br /><br />What I'm trying to say is that John has a long and bright future ahead. Whatever happens he is set up for success by parents who actually care and take notice. I have known so many amazing people some of whom were born that way and some of whom took a long time to find their intelligent self. It sounds to me like these people that John is dealing with are hard wired to think that the flip charts will give them all the information they need. I grant they will find some things out, but the other part of me wants to grab John, run screaming from the building for no reason and find the nearest muddy pond and start jumping in it. He is 2! I mean, really, he is a toddler and a boy. They destroy and build and hit and run and throw. They are mini-testosterone carrying monkeys that want to do all kinds of crazy things. I have met some moderately patient two-yr-old girls, but boys... never. They are destructos. They hear what they are told and then proceed to immediately forget it. <br /><br />I have also thought a lot lately about kids and forgetting how to be one. I think getting into being 2 when you are with a 2-year-old is a healthy thing we've lost. So, I try to be more like a kid. Our two nieces [ages 5 and 2] and I drew all over ourselves 'cause the two-year-old had a spot of marker on her nose. I figured she shouldn't be left alone so I drew on my nose. It snowballed from there. We had so much fun and there was nothing educational or constructive at all about it. Then the five-year-old and I made believe that we were a queen and a princess. Then she decided I was Sacajawea and she was the baby. Whatever... it was fun and meaningless. And healthy for us all."Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5487813445493594263.post-61575583982293839192010-04-22T09:51:00.001-07:002010-04-25T10:45:31.895-07:00Thoughts on 'The System': Meaningless Evaluation MetricsWith permission from my sisters, I am posting their very thoughtful responses to my post <a href="http://pooplosophy.blogspot.com/2010/04/up-against-system-one-mothers-shock.html">Up Against the System</a>, which is a revised version of a way-too-long email to said sisters. I asked to post their responses to me because my sisters are some of the most insightful and intelligent people I know. Not only that, they're both great writers with completely different personalities, outlooks, and writing styles. Their perspectives keep my own balanced.<br /><br />I am the middle of three girls, each 5 years apart. This first response is from my older sister, whom we'll call <span style="font-weight:bold;">A</span>:<br /><br />"The evaluation you describe is just plain bizarre. I think if they took a random sample of children and administered these "tests", almost the only ones who would "pass" would be kids who were developmentally delayed in a way that inclined them to passivity. It sounds like someone took bits and pieces of substantive research (like learning size relations is a useful step on the way to learning more abstract mathematical concepts) and utterly distorted them in the construction of a meaningless and misleading evaluation metric."<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">[A note from me on this point: I hadn't thought about what the purpose of each metric was. But if they were looking for a sense of abstract mathematical concepts, they could have either asked me, or learned through observation. Thanks to his day care, John knows what triangles and octagons are. On his own he has been able to apply this learning in abstract ways: he sees triangles all over the place, where I hadn't thought to look, and octagons too. This ability seems a much more direct way of indicating his grasp of abstract mathematical concepts.]</span> <br /><br />"If I were in your position, what would anger and upset me most would be the niggling fear that John's future experiences of education and evaluation will look just the same. I would fear that instead of having partners in helping him develop into his truest, best self, I would face years of struggling to counter the malign influence of the educational establishment. It won't be like that though. You will find schools and teachers you can believe in.<br /><br />I just pity the children who get caught in some of these inane diagnostic holes, and whose parents don't trust their own judgment, or don't have a support network to help them keep perspective. It's not that there aren't many children (smart ones included) who might benefit from various kinds of special help, but there aren't enough smart people to develop, administer, and interpret the evaluations. I now know enough parents to have seen several examples of stupid quasi-diagnoses arrived at by stupid (ahem, not insightful with regard to a particular child) teachers or evaluators."Antonia Malchikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11662184316714590116noreply@blogger.com1