Category Archives: On My Mind

On My Mind

What Scares Me

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My sixth graders have recently come up with a game. Before class begins, they hide just inside our classroom while I wait outside the door greeting each student as he or she walks in. While I’m doing this, the students inside the room jump out and yell, “Boo!” And then they laugh uproariously when I turn around slowly with my eyebrows raised, completely unfazed.

What my sixth graders don’t realize, among other things, is that part of teaching middle school means constantly being prepared for anything and taking it all in stride even when you aren’t.

The first time this happened, the kids asked in awe, “How are you not scared?”

I replied simply, “I’m not afraid of anything.”

They were stunned. One student spent two days listing off different events or activities that might scare me (i.e. a tarantula in my bedroom, climbing a mountain, skydiving) and consistently expressed surprise when I disagreed that each would be scary. While a tarantula in my bedroom might be uncomfortable and concerning and skydiving might be nerve-wracking and exhilarating, neither strike me as remotely scary.

“Things” don’t scare me. They never have.

Truth be told, however, I am more afraid now than I ever remember being.

Real Fears
With Donald Trump as the President-elect, there’s a lot to be afraid of.

And I am.

I am a woman, a naturalized US citizen (and I vividly remember the anxiety in our house when we applied for and received our Green Cards), and a religious minority. The vast majority Trump’s rhetoric and early policy proposals hit right where it hurts.

I have been inappropriately touched, spoken to, and spoken about on the subway. More than once. More than twice.

I have seen swastikas spraypainted on more than a few buildings.

My reproductive rights are at risk. As a result, so is my health. The affordability and accessibility of healthcare is uncertain.

My status as a person has plummeted and I no longer feel safe when I go running after dark.

I care deeply about the well-being of all people all over the world and of the health of the planet itself, so just about everything else Trump says is also cause for concern. My heart goes out to everyone who is a victim of the hatred caused by fear, which is a constantly increasing number. America promised to stand for the “tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and I will. I purposely smile every time I see a women in a hijab and men holding hands on the street.

Stand strong. I stand with you.

I am afraid of the rhetoric that half this country has deemed acceptable.

In short, everything about the recent US presidential election scares me.

And I need to keep bringing it up because I refuse to sit by and wait for history to repeat itself. We know what happens when fear gets the better of us. We fought World War II already. An estimated 50 million to 80 million people died.

Personal Fears
These are irrelevant compared to the much more significant discussion above, but I’m going to include them anyway. If my fears about the political state of this country and the world are enough for you, stop reading here. (No hard feelings! Come back soon!)

Otherwise, here we go:

I’m afraid of being alone forever. I’m afraid of never being able to express my love for others with the depth, intensity, and care that I desperately want to. I’m afraid no one will love me enough to keep me.

I’m afraid of not making a difference in this world. I’m afraid of not making it better.

Looking Ahead
My sixth graders ask, “How are you not scared?”

I am.

Bu my sixth graders don’t need to know. They are already far more attuned to racism, sexism, violence, xenophobia, anti-immigration sentiment, anti-LGBT sentiment, discrimination, prejudice, and other issues than I was at their age. They live in a world dominated by fear, and this is where that fear has brought us.

Afraid? Very much so.

Giving up? Not on your life.

Now more than ever, I am committed to understanding the concerns of those around me. As I do so, I will continue working to build a world that is truly sustainable, better, and more peaceful for all who call it home.

Please join me.

Fear is the main source of superstition and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. – Bertrand Russell

On My Mind

What I’m Reading

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I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. – Groucho Marx

I’ve never been much of a television person. Part of this stems from my parents’ rules about TV when my siblings and I were growing up. They went something like this:

  1. If it’s not on PBS Kids, you can’t watch it.

And then when we got older it was:

  1. You can watch Survivor with us and we’ll go over your spelling words during commercials.
  2. Well, if your homework is done you can also watch CSI with us after Survivor.

A few things changed when I went away to college and since I’ve lived in my own apartments, but I still don’t watch a lot of TV. The most TV watching I have ever done was the last year I spent on Westminster Road; my roommate and I watched the entire Mad Men series because she was convinced I’d love it. She was right.

Generally though, I much prefer to lose myself in someone else’s thoughts and learn as much as I can while doing it. Ergo, I read.

When we were little, my mum would take us to the library before every road trip. We used to drive to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina every summer (about a 16-hour trip including stops) and our family loved books in the car and books on the beach. My sister and I would pick out as many books as the library would let us check out at once. I think it was around 20. We’d coordinate and organize and by the end of the trip, we each would have read all of them.

The trouble with airplane travel, however, was that heavy books made for heavy bags. I remember at least one instance where all of our bags were overweight on an international flight because of the number of books we’d packed. Oops. As much as I do love reading from, holding, touching, cuddling up with, and flipping through physical books, my Kindle (the boring one without a backlight or wifi) is my most necessary travel possession.

Since I am an avid reader and have been purposefully educating myself this year, I thought I’d make a list of the books I’ve read over the course of 2016. (We won’t get into the sheer volume of articles, which number easily in the hundreds.) I make no zero to actually track any of this, so I’m sure there are a few books I’ve missed and a few that I actually read in 2015. I’ve read more nonfiction this year than any other year (literally ever) but the volume of reading is pretty typical.

Nonfiction
The Age of Sustainable Development – Jeffrey Sachs
Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World – Matthieu Ricard
The Art of Happiness – Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler
The Art of Loving – Erich Fromm
Being Peace – Thich Nhat Hanh
Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World – Leif Weinar
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed – Jared Diamond
College: What It Is, Was, and Should Be – Andrew Delbanco
The Consolations of Philosophy – Alain De Botton
Creating Capabilities – Martha Nussbaum
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead – Brené Brown
Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference – William MacAskill
Empowering Global Citizens: A World Course – Fernando Reimers et al.
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – Greg McKeown
Ethics – Benedict de Spinoza
In Defense of a Liberal Education – Fareed Zakaria
Inside Coca-Cola: A CEO’s Life Story of Building the World’s Most Popular Brand – Neville Isdell and David Beasley
Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality – Lisa Tessman
The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values – Sam Harris
On Writing – Stephen King
Peace Education – Nel Noddings
Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals – Tyler Cowen
Sustainable Well-Being: Concepts, Issues, and Educational Practices – edited by Frank Deer et al.
What Kind of Creatures Are We? – Noam Chomsky
Who’s in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain – Michael S. Gazzaniga
Zen in the Art of Writing – Ray Bradbury

Fiction
11/22/63 – Stephen King
The Beautiful and Damned – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Black Tickets – Jayne Anne Phillips
The Bridge of San Louis Rey – Thornton Wilder
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Course of Love – Alain De Botton
The Dharma Bums – Jack Kerouac
The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World – Haruki Murakami
John Dies at the End – David Wong
The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury
Mister Pip – Lloyd Jones
People of the Book – Geraldine Brooks
Rabbit, Run – John Updike
Sharp Objects – Gillian Flynn
The Stranger – Albert Camus
Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
This Side of Paradise – F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Currently, I have about half a dozen novels on my Kindle waiting to be read, three books on hold at the library, two books I need to return to the library, and my most recently purchased book in my night table drawer. Last night I started Horns by Joe Hill.

If you’re looking for me later today, you’ll find me with a cup of coffee in an East Village café keeping company with Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha.

I’ll update this list again by the time we say goodbye to 2016. Stay tuned and happy reading!

On My Mind

US Election 2016

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As you know, I try to keep this blog away from politics. There are areas of my life that are highly political and politicized, but this is generally not one of them. However, this election is important enough to me, to the United States, and to the world that I would be negligent as both a concerned citizen and an educator if I did not discuss it.

When I got to work today, for the first time ever, I cried in a school bathroom. And then in a dean’s office. And then in the faculty room. And then during an all-school assembly.

I am in shock. I am afraid. I am deeply concerned about the rhetoric that we are permitted. I am sick over the devastation and human suffering that we are allowing. I am watching the world change and I will forever look at it differently.

I still don’t know what to say to my students.

I spent the morning listening to the news and reading articles about what happened, what to do now, and what to do next.

This is an article from The Washington Post that evaluates modern (Clinton) and postmodern (Trump) values. I think does a nice job of explaining how society has shifted its priorities to bring us to where we are. Author Barton Swaim:

Intellectual historians refer to the period from 1600 to 1945 (more or less) as the “modern” period. It’s always risky to generalize, but truth in the modern era was something objective and knowable, and knowable through material and scientific means (thus not through divine revelation). During the second half of the twentieth century, however, that view of truth was undermined in various ways. Poststructuralism in philosophy, abstraction in art, twelve-tone serialism in music, absurdist fiction in literature — all these things, variously categorized as “postmodernism,” posed direct challenges to the older “modern” view of truth….

For two generations or more, American liberals have cheered postmodern attitudes in art, literature, music and philosophy. Now it has entered politics, and it’s time to panic.

We can panic, but we also need to act. This article from The New Yorker addresses what we are facing with a Trump presidency and how we must uphold the American ideals of democracy, fairness, justice, freedom, and compromise as we move forward. Author David Remnick:

The most hopeful way to look at this grievous event – and it’s a stretch – is that this election and the years that follow will be a test of the strength, or the fragility, of American institutions. It will be a test of our seriousness and resolve….

Trump was not elected on a platform of decency, fairness, moderation, compromise, and the rule of law; he was elected, in the main, on a platform of resentment. Fascism is not our future – it cannot be; we cannot allow it to be so – but this is surely the way fascism can begin….

It is all a dismal picture. Late last night, as results were coming in from the last states, a friend called me full of sadness, full of anxiety about conflict, about war. Why not leave the country? But despair is no answer. To call out authoritarianism, to call out lies, to struggle honorably and fiercely in the name of American ideals – that is what is left to do. That is all there is to do.

There is a lot to think about going forward. We have put the United States in a place that was unimaginable even yesterday. We can no longer stand by and wait for things to change. We must change them.