xxstream -- housewifery in real time

Happy Pi Day Mr. Jo

I wanted to write a post of tribute on Pi Day to my favorite teacher of all time. I had to Google "Pi Day" in order to know which day to publish this post. That's how bad I am at math. It reminded me of the time I asked innocently, "What day is cinqo de mayo?" If a number is involved, I will botch it.

Brad Johanson tried to fix this deficieny in me, or at least let me know I could fix it myself. He was that most dreaded of species -- the high school math teacher. I loved him anyway; everyone did.

PI DAY ODE TO BRADFORD JOHANSON

Dear Mr. Johanson,

I was reading THE Boston Globe Magazine about “Pi Day” and my favorite advice columnist Robin Abrahams (a.k.a. Miss Conduct) suggested sending a note to a favorite math or science teacher who made a difference in your life. I immediately thought of you.

I know you would probably not remember me (even if you were still alive) since I spent most of my time in your classes pressed back low into the seat of my desk, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. You see, despite your best efforts, your kindness, your quiet, calm way of trying to make math accessible to everyone, I really never quite got beyond the genetic deficiencies that rendered me stupefied by even simple computations and spatial thinking. I am still, actually, dumbfounded at the memory of those geometric proofs you so patiently tried to decipher for me when I was 15. Although I have no reason to suspect I have used proofing in any meaningful way since sophomore year of high school, I still remember the look on your face the day you took me aside and said, “Linda. You’re such a bright girl. I know you can do this.” Your fierce belief in me showed in your eyes.

I think I let you down. I never mastered proofing and the secrets of solving complicated algebraic equations senior year in advanced math mostly eluded me too. I want to apologize for sometimes relying on that nice former cheerleader/cum math whiz Annie someone-or-other who kindly helped me answer questions on occasion. If it’s any consolation I became a decent, honest student in college, although I must admit I was only forced to take two math classes to graduate with my degree in journalism.

I have thought about you in all the years that have passed. I have thought about your sly humor; the sailing field trips to which you invited all your students; the way you wrote numbers on the blackboard in a quavering right hand (on account, you told us, of the fact that the nuns who had schooled you forced you to write with your right hand instead of your left); of the way you never had to raise your voice to keep control in your classrooms since you had the love and respect of all your students (even the jocks and the burnouts). But mostly I have thought about the way you believed that everyone could be good at math.

I looked for you a couple times so I could tell you what a great teacher you were and how, even though I hope to never have to take another math course or work in a profession that requires an understanding of angles of any sort, you are still the best teacher I ever knew. No one at Deering High School could tell me what happened to you and last year I heard from a high school friend that you had died. This was confirmed in a Bowdoin College alumni publication that I found from 2004. I felt really sorry that I would never be able to say this to you in person. I wanted to tell you that something good has come of your teaching anyway: I can read a math book and help Abby with her algebra and even with the rudimentary geometry that she is doing. And I can tell her it’s fun and mean it. I can tell her she’s a bright girl and that she can do this.

The cover story in this week's Newsweek magazine is called "The Key to Saving American Education." This is the thesis of the article (pg. 25): In recent years researchers have discovered something that may seem obvious, but for many reasons was overlooked or denied. What really makes a difference, what matters more than the class size or the textbook, the teaching method or the technology, or even the curriculum, is the quality of the teacher. Much of the ability to teach is innate -- an ability to inspire young minds as well as control unruly classrooms that some people instinctively possess (and some people definitely do not).

You were among the former, in powers of 10. Thanks and Happy Pi Day Mr. Johanson, wherever you are.

Sincerely, Linda McGivern, '83

Harvey Milk (Snake)

Today I am going to recommend snake ownership as an antidote to Seasonal Affective Disorder, perimenopause, anger at one's offspring over academic chicanery, and, finally --last but never least -- pre-menstrual syndrome.

Fiona and Elias convinced me to go to Tri-City Aquarium and Pet Center (among the last of a dying breed of customer-centric small, locally owned pet stores, located in Somersworth, NH) last week to "get some food for the lizards." What they were really convincing me to do was to walk through the doors of a place where pets might be available for adoption, sale, lease or borrow. They think they can convince me, once they have espied a possible pet, to bring it home. (Historically they are proven right. Which is why I do not darken the doors of humane societies or pet stores unless it is absolutely necessary and never -- never! -- with children in tow.)

Anyway, I was feeling concurrently munificent enough to enter the pet store with children and strong enough to ward off the pleas for a new pet that would most assuredly begin soon after our arrival there. But I was the first to spot Harvey; he was the counter display creature. And oh what a stunning display creature! His red, black and white body contrasted alluringly against the ecru backdrop of his aspen substrate. His black beady eyes and darting tongue were captivating in a truly Eden-esque way. It was all I could do to not purchase him right there on the spot.

Elias fell hard and fast after me. "Please, oh please. Please. Please. Pleeeeeeesse," he begged upon gazing at the snake, enraptured immediately.

"No!" I shouted, oblivious to the clerk who was smiling knowingly behind the counter. "No snake. We have too many animals as it is. No way!"

But, like a lioness with the hobbled springbok in her sights, he was inherently aware that he had me right where he wanted me. It was only a matter of time before I would collapse, exhausted,and hand over my credit card to the smirky clerk.

We left the store and when we got home I locked myself in the bathroom so as not to hear the tortured pleading and crying of my two younger children who were in the powerful grip of potential snake ownership. I was in the powerful grip of a tenacious bad mood, brought on by all of the above-mentioned aggravations (and even though I have no right whatsoever to be in a bad mood, considering: world poverty, cancer, Haitian earthquakes, factory farming and the Kardashians).

A few hours passed and they wandered away from the locked door and forgot about the snake. The next morning I went back to Tri-City Aquarium, bought him and all his paraphernalia (which, much to my personal dismay and digust includes "pinkies" -- frozen,dead neonatal mice that are the basis of his diet), and named him Harvey Milk (Snake). I was suddenly happy, following a bit of herpetological retail therapy. The children don't get and don't like this name. But he's my snake and I'll call him what I like. And furthermore they will be caring for him and thawing and otherwise preparing his damn "pinkies" for when he's hungry.

My first snake lecture to Elias was about handling. I told them that Harvey would need to be handled regularly in order to become nice. Ben, leaning casually against the counter, took a swill off his beer and said, "I tried that with you and it didn't work."

Apparently Ben does not think my mood has been positively affected by the snake. No matter. I still love Harvey. He is sleek and comforting and he's mine all mine all mine. He's my baby, he's my pet. We fell in love on the day we met.

I wish this were the first all my three fans were reading about Harvey. But Abby has already posted his picture and even possibly created a fan base for him on Facebook. So all of her 755 (and this includes the bulk of my 50 Friends) Friends now know about my snake. I finally understand why my kids fight over the right to tell me exciting news. Imagine my disappointment when I started to tell bff Deb about Harvey and she said , "I read about it on Abby's Facebook." Boo. Hisssssss. Sssssurprise news is a thing of the passsst.

Overdue books and thanks

When I moved to this town -- Rollinsford, NH -- more than 12 years ago I wondered about a place that had no library. I had never heard of this phenomenon; every place I had lived previously had some sort of a space for book borrowing and community gathering. On our way to western Maine where we ski I even saw signs for a "public library" in a place we call "Spooky Town" since we have never once in 10 years of passing through this town seen an actual person. I looked at Ben and pointed out, "See. They even have a public library in a place with no public."

It didn't take long to figure out why Rollinsford did have an active and visibe public, but no library. There was simply no one who had the motivation and wits to raise the necessary funds and then figure a way around the Board of Selectmen and Budget Committee in this town that would steadfastly maintain Rollinsford did not need a library. We could use the one in So. Berwick, Maine or pay to use Dover, New Hampshire's.

Because of my love of books and reading, many years ago someone (a pox upon his/her household!) wrote in my name for a town election as a "Library Trustee", whereupon -- there being no one to oppose my candidacy -- I was voted into office. Then I spent my term alternately rolling my eyes at my predicament and wringing my hands helplessly for whatever imagined tenure I was signed on for. Who could build a library from scratch, with zero money?

It turns out there was someone. A number of someones actually. These someones worked their butts to a nub (Isn't it really something to picture a "nub-like" butt?) and over the course of too many years, drummed up forces, library supplies, funds and, finally, a space for the library. While there were many supporters and helpers who deserve credit for their work, the big accolades for the eventual reality of a library in our town go to three people: a child, a political activist, and a housewife. RJ Bolian (see picture, left) was no more than 10 years old when he began seriously haranging and harassing whomever would listen about the need for a library in Rollinsford. At any community event, there he would be -- it was almost enough to drive you crazy -- making sure his project to get us a library wasn't forgotten by all the scattered, busy adults. Then there was Salme Perry: a loud, forceful boss-woman in her 60s prone to taking the bull by the horns who doesn't tell, but shows; who walks the walk; who puts her money where her mouth is; who does not suffer fools; who works like a dog. Someone else can find the next idiom; but thank you Salme Perry for your tireless efforts to bring a library to Rollinsford, NH -- the last town in the state without one.

Once RJ and Salme had accomplished their tasks (respectively: convincing a majority of residents of the need for a library and putting a library together from scratch) in stepped Tamara Niedzolkowski, a longtime Rollinsford resident, former English teacher at the University of New Hampshire who had left UNH to stay home with her two kids, and an outspoken proponent of libraries and literacy. It was Tamara who finished the job RJ, Salme and dozens of other library lovers had started. She was the library aesthete, making sure the space was beautiful, organized, serene and clean. She was the library champion, making sure town residents learned about their new library and what it had to offer while at the same time organizing enough volunteers to ensure the new facility would be open regularly enough to meet the needs of our small community. She was the library rabble rouser, rallying support for town funding so that the library would succeed in the long-term. She was so good at running the library, the three-person board of Trustees (exhausted from four years of non-stop work) asked her to run it officially.

Thank you Board of Trustees. And thank you Tamara for making our library a welcoming place of calm and literacy for our town's residents -- the young, the old and the 29-year-olds like me.

You'd think the town's leaders would have thanked RJ, Salme and Tamara too. Instead what happened was a protracted and divisive fight for a modest request of $45,000 to house the library and pay the salary of the person most responsible for its jaw-dropping success.

But this is a "positive" story, and, lord knows, I need to be more "positive". Therefore I will simply note that, while Tamara is my friend and partner in rage against the domestic machine, no amount of friendship would cause me to beg for taxpayer funding before town boards on behalf of someone who is not worth EVERY SINGLE PENNY.

Rollinsford is a small town with a long history of libertarian sensibility. But we are currently running the risk of becoming small in more ways than one. Times change. Even Rollinsford changes. Many young families have moved to town, lured in by the promise of a great elementary school and an even greater rural setting that is nonetheless close to all the services provided by the small city next door, Dover, NH. People in this town -- young and old -- are now looking for a few more tasty services to be served up with their sour-tasting property tax bills.

So here's something positive: the library is this town's chance to serve a seven-course gourmet meal to an undernourished population. And the gourmet meal is being offered at a fast food price. Who would say no to that? Instead, on March 13th at Town Meeting, let's pick up our forks and say, "Thank you!"

(*many thanks to the witty, talented Julie for blog tech support.)

The Unfriendliest Way Down

Whoeever likes skiing raise your hand. Now picture me with both arms woodenly attached to my sides.

I have tried -- no one can say I haven't -- to embrace the ski life. I have given it a better shot probably than most people I know who were forced later in life onto two rapidly gliding, skinny, unbalanced boards. I have taken lessons, signed on for a season-long "adult" learn-to-ski program. I have skied in an ungainly fashion down easy trails,hard trails and trails that shouldn't be called trails. I have skied on ice and through moguls (looking like the most hideous of dorks along the way).

And still I approach ski mountains with a level of apprehension that dictates I cannot properly call myself a skier, even after 10 years of working at it. I say, instead, "I ski," which can be interpreted in a number of different ways.

This is the way it should be interpreted: I like to "ski" at 28 degrees Fahrenheit, with no wind, and no ice upon packed courderoy-like powder. But I don't live in Utah, I live in New England, where one person's "trail" is another person's icy promontory that only someone who is suicidal would attempt to glide down upon 160 cm carbon-Kevlar boards. So to make up for the wind, the ice and the mind and bone-numbing cold that permeates my winter digs at Sugarloaf, USA oh, let's say, for about 14 of the 16 ski-worthy weeks of the year, all I ask is to be left alone with my courderoy.

Any real "skier", however, will tell you that to ski down a groomed trail at 8:30 a.m. when everyone else is still having coffee, pulling on their balaclavas and affixing their toe warmers to their socks? Any "real" skier will scoff that this is not, in fact, skiing. Skiing, they say, is something that is performed on hard pack over or around the giant moguls that pile up after a long, hard snow or it is something that happens among tightly packed trees.

These are the same people who were bundled up by their motivated middle- to upper-income parents and transported off to ski, if not each weekend, then at least several times a season of each year.

Because here are two hard,cold facts about skiing. You must have a reasonable cash flow to afford it. And you must start when you are very young --two or three is good, in the womb is better; there's something about about that fluid side to side motion that prepares the fetus for ice and moguls. Sadly, most of us have no control over whether our mothers decided to take a few runs while we were gestating. But you do. All you pregnant women out there, take this as a call to arms: Go ski! Just watch out for the trees.

Cash-wise, mid-life is a good time for picking up the sport. But trying to learn to ski at this point is (prepare for understatement) challenging. There are the little issues of fear and gravity that persistly interfere with accomplishment, i.e., one fears the gravity that threatens at all moments to propel one into those pesky trees or that causes one to lose control while traveling at alarming speeds, resulting in broken and otherwise mangled limbs, ligaments and/or heads. All one has to do, when justifying one's skiing to a "real" expert skier, is explain about the late-in-life adoption of the sport. He or she will nod sadly, sigh and say, "Ah." One need say no more.

Beyond cash flow, fear and gravity lies even worse scariness: the "fake" expert skier. I am speaking specifically about the zillions of boneheaded individuals who think they are so great...and so very fast. In no other sport are people (mainly men) consistenly deluded into thinking they are talented, when in fact they are pinheads who should have their skis confiscated permanently. We've all seen them, skiing 60 miles per hour with arms swingly wildly akimbo, legs flying out from under them (but skis firmly attached since they have told the guy at the ski shop that they are "experts" and their bindings are cranked up tighter than Joan Rivers's face). If I can't kill myself, there are any number of these idiots who will do the job for me. No, people don't give up skiing for being bad at it. I am a case in point. But at least the only thing endangered by my skiing is my own ego.

"Why," my irritated husband and children ask me, "are you always looking behind you?" They think this is bush-league. I think it is life preserving.

My friend Robin, whose family also likes the sport, has permanently given skiing up in favor of reading books and periodicals by a fire. How lovely does that sound? But I'm a victim of my own stubborn will and, as such, I refuse to give it up. I will take my ski medicine until the day I die (hopefully of natural causes). Why I have chosen this path I cannot explain, since, contrary to what is cheerily imprinted on trails with a green circle (beginner) and a smiley face, I'm here to report there is no friendly way down.

"Nobody cares about your blog"

I saw this exact bumper sticker on a bedraggled vehicle ahead of me the other day. Abby nudged me, sniggering, "Mom. Look at that."

"I don't care about your bumper sticker!" I shook my fist out the window and snarkily shouted to the unknown woman as her vehicle turned the corner out of sight.

There were other stickers affixed to the rear-end of this car, most notably the 01*20*09 sticker and the one that says "LOVE YOUR MOTHER". (Liberals generally speaking are more likely to have bumper stickers on their cars. And why is that?)

I was looking at the vehicular rear-end of a fine liberal, one maybe not unlike my own bad self. And so while on the outside I snickered derisively at the offending sticker along with my kids, on the inside I suffered a wounded pang deep in the hardened tissues of my heart.

This was, after all, one of my people who had taken time out of her busy liberal day (shouldn't she have been off in Haiti innoculating the poor?) to affix the blog bashing bumper sticker to her vehicle. So now, as a victim of liberal elite snobbery, I know just how Sarah Palin feels. I'll probably go rogue on my next post.

What does she know anyway? She probably has never experienced the cathartic thrill of writing something from her heart and then pressing that "Publish Now" button for the first time; or the agony of waiting to see if anyone finds your earnest post; or the guilt associated with getting too busy to post so that your blog becomes stale; or of finding the blog of a kindred spirit and nodding happily about the fact that, yes, there is someone else out there who gets really angry about all those jerks who zoom up in the right hand lane at a traffic light, when they knowthey are going to have to cut you off to merge back into traffic!

No. That woman has probably neither written nor read a good blog.

As a former newspaper reporter, I have seen my writing published before. But for the average Josephine, the world of self-publishing is one of endless possibility, filled with boundless money-making potential, possible fame and fortune and a veritable jet stream of free goods.

Okay that's all bull@#**: most bloggers will earn nil and eat nary a free lunch from this sort of writing. But blogging is fun. Cousin Julie (former reporter, current freelance writer, with a number of books to her name -- and have I mentioned that one is dedicated to moi?) insists the writing she is doing for her blog, Bad Home Cooking (badhomecooking@typepad.com) , is the most fulfilling and enjoyable writing she has committed in years.

And then there is my best friend Debbie. She was diagnosed with breast cancer almost exactly three years ago and has taken up blogging (debbiescancerblog@blogspot.com) as a way to unload her cancer anxieties and connect with a community of breast cancer survivors. Her last post, a grateful nod to the people who have helped to get Deb through the worst of her treatment, has already elicited eight responses. That's almost more than the number of responses to all of my posts thus far!

For those who would turn their noses skyward scornfully and assert that the average Josephine shouldn't be published because she is not a trained writer or because she has nothing significant to say, I say fie! Reserve your scorn for the true scourge of the literary world -- the tell-all celebrity memoir.

That's what's so cool about blogging. It is for everybody. Like with pornography (xxstream alert!), the blogging naysayers and disapprovers can abstain from participating and keep their traps shut about the rest of us.

The problem is I fear it is too late. A quick Google search of "Nobody cares about your blog" yields a veritable big box store of boxer shorts, t-shirts, mugs and other anti-blog paraphernalia. The blog backlash is already in full swing.

It's the same thing that happened with the Crocs. Humans find something that is functional, fun and, yes, a little dorky and self-indulgent and then it is not too long before the killjoys come along to ruin it all. In the case of the Crocs it is the fashionistas who are spoiling all the fun, by convincing a gullible public that tottering about in spike-heeled shoes that cost $300 makes sense, all while sneering at the most comfortable shoe to hit the foot market since the native American mocassin. Spare me.

Just as Crocs are the enfant terrible of the fashion world, so blogs are fast becoming the ridicule of the cyber world. But they function as an outlet for the writer -- whether accomplished, budding, or just plain "trying". And why should the Philip Roths and the Ian McEwans of the world get to have all the fun?

So listen up bumper sticker lady. I know three people who care about my blog. And I'll be blogging as long as I'm breathing! Or at least until the next TypePad bill comes due and I still have not received any free stuff.