C: Compromise (A-Z Blog Challenge: Evocative words)

As a mom and a teacher, I am often trying to help people understand the art of compromise. We

promote it as a method of conflict resolution. And it does seem to work, sort of, under some circumstances. Even if we can't come to a true compromise, we at least learn how to negotiate with each other kindly.

If I want to go the movies and you want to sit and talk, maybe we can watch a movie, then sit and talk about it afterwards. That's a nice situation. We both get what we want. Of course, if we both get what we want, maybe that's not a real compromise. We just decided to do both things. No one gave anything up.

Hmmmm . . .so let's say that you want to play Pinypons and I want to make cupcakes. If we're going to compromise, we try to find middle ground where you give something up and so do I.  If we make cupcakes with a Pinypon theme, then I kind of won, because we didn't really play Pinypons, but we did make cupcakes. If we have an imaginary cupcake party with our Pinypons, then you kind of won, because we didn't really make cupcakes, but we did play Pinypons.

So, maybe that's part of why compromise is tricksy (like Hobbits).  No one wins. Maybe we both end up happy enough, if the stakes were low. Or maybe neither of us is happy now. Or maybe neither of us is happy and something important is genuinely lost.

In adult life, compromise takes on some really negative connotations.

• "I'm sorry Mr. President, security has been compromised!"
• "Senator Fathead was caught in a compromising position this past week." 
• "It compromised his chances for a promotion." 
• "The painter compromised his artistic integrity when he added the CEO to his work."
• "The stock he own in the company compromises the impartiality of the judge."
• "She had to compromise her dream and accept a smaller garden."
• "You can't compromise when it comes to your health!"
• "She compromised her principles and accepted the new deal, even though it didn't include her partner."
• "The stability of the entire structure is compromised by the shifts after the earthquake."

Generally, "compromise" is not a good thing, it seems. There are losses, and sometimes those losses are not acceptable--integrity, respect, dreams. Things that should NOT have been compromised.

I notice, too, that the phrase comes in passive phrasing a lot. Something "is compromised" or "has been compromised." It's something that happens to a person, rather than an action a person takes.

So, what do I teach my baby? I guess I'll compromise on my teaching of the art of compromise: it's not always the way to go. There are times when a girl should fight tooth and nail for her side and there are times when it's okay to cave in to the other side. The trick is in knowing the difference!

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This post is part of the Blogging from A-Z Challenge.

B: Benefit (A-Z Blog Challenge: Evocative words)

Let's talk about the word "benefit."

A good job comes with benefits. You might also be friends with "benefits." If there's need to raise funds, we might hold a benefit.

I might give you the benefit of the doubt or do something for your benefit. Then again, I might be concerned that you are benefiting unfairly. Maybe you are doing something only for your own benefit.

It's a complicated little word, full of negative and positive associations. It's all about advantage, and whether it's considered appropriate for you to seek or hold an advantage in the circumstances at hand.

There's a lot of politics of power in these few letters. Who has the ability to bestow or take away a benefit? How are they judging whether a recipient deserves the benefit they are receiving?

It's an old word, full of the baggage of a system of patronage. For an artist, independence is important to freedom of expression, but refusal of benefits comes with its own cost in quality of life.

A quick googling of word origins shows me a Latin root (bene facere) meaning do good to. Looking at the word with my contemporary eyes, I see "bene" which means "good" and "fit" which implies a suitability, a fitness. So to get a benefit, someone needs to judge my fitness.

The noun form also has connections with charity and gift giving.  Recipients of charity and gifts know the unspoken but important component of showing gratitude, especially if you want to receive further benefits. That takes us back to patronage, and the level of sycophancy required.

That gets tricky when benefits are part of payment made for services rendered.  The terminology, at least, still seems to make things like insurance and sick leave into gifts, for which we should be properly grateful, rather than rights that can be negotiated and fought for. Hmmmmm, that has a certain political ugliness, doesn't it? Something that smacks of patriarchy and don't you worry your pretty little head, miss. "Patronizing" after all, is not a compliment.  It's a comment on where respect is and is not given.

It's probably true in many fields. I wouldn't know as I've only ever worked in mine. But teachers run into the attitude a lot. If you dare to suggest the benefits and salary are not commensurate with the workload, people freak out. They call you avaricious and question your commitment to the work. Many people seem to think we should be doing this work for free. After all, it's for the benefit of the children, isn't it?

When I'm feeling especially cynical, I chalk it up to sexism. After all, one of the ways that teaching became a "women's profession" was through the argument that women were cheaper labor, that it wasn't necessary to pay us like you would men because men would take care of us. Notice that the number of men in the field grows the older the students are. So does the salary.

Like so much in our educational system, the reasons we have the system we do have changed, but we still have the vestigial pieces, clogging up the works. Women no longer expect to be "taken care of" financially by men. But it's still harder for us to earn the same dollars for the same work.

So, the question becomes, whose benefit is this system for? More and more each year, I become certain that it's not the children. After all, children are a long term investment. The short-term yields can't be counted in dollars. But the cost? Well, eventually that will be very high indeed. How's that for a cost-benefit analysis?

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This post is part of the Blogging from A-Z Challenge.

A: Ambivalence (A-Z Blog Challenge: Evocative words)

In April, I am participating in a blog challenge. For each day of the month, we're to write a post that begins with a letter of the alphabet.  I've decided to write about evocative words.

A is for Ambivalence

I am often ambivalent.

By this, I don't mean that I'm wishy-washy or indecisive. I'm no Charlie Brown.

But I am of two (or even three) minds on many subjects. I'm good at looking at an issue from other angles, understanding the opposing point of view. I can see the flaws in both sides of an argument or standpoint.

This complicates my life sometimes. I want time to think and consider. Snap judgements make me uncomfortable. In fact, I tend to view them as sign of limited intelligence. Then, I become ambivalent about the arrogance of that attitude. After all, who am I to judge someone else's intelligence?

I'm even ambivalent about ambivalence itself. Ambivalence may complicate things, but that isn't all bad. It's at the heart of a lot of great art--that exploration of the gray areas of life. Maybe life is easier for those who can see it simply in clearly delineated dichotomies. But, I suspect it is less interesting. Doing the right thing is easy when it's clear: killing is wrong.  But, it's interesting when it's less clear: what about war? abortion? the death penalty? self defense? zombies?

It's in exploring ambiguities that epiphanies are born, that inventions are created, that change comes. It's the pondering of what else might be true that brings one nearest to the heart of truth.

Given my recent commitment to leave teaching after eighteen years, ambivalence seems a good watchword for me right now. I've been ambivalent about the work for a long time. I wrote the poem below around 2002.

No Child Left Behind.

I. Pessimism

America is created

each day

in uncomfortable desks

where minds reach to expand

above cramped knees,

where night-weary eyes glaze over

bored by lack of vision,

and ears tune to distant voices,

that somehow seem more near,

voices which sing of other lives and loves

in worlds tapping feet long to explore

America was created

by those who hungered

for food, for faith, for freedom.

Again stomachs growl

across the land,

mouths ache

to taste

to experience

to find and hold and own.

Thousands go hungry.

Appetite comes early,

but the keys to the kitchen

are withheld for eighteen years,

a sentence for crimes

which only might be committed.

America is created

in classrooms

too hot or too cold

where the equipment does not work

or is out of date

and the teacher is sick

at heart,

where the subjects are chosen

by forces mysterious as planets,

and assignments doled out,

checked off, and handed back

to be crammed into backpacks,

crumpled into pockets

or left--efficient  system.   

The machine cranks on

little knowing what it creates or why. 

II: Optimism

You can’t tell her

it’s time to give up.

She won’t believe

that a boy of 17 is done,

complete, beyond reach.

No matter what he’s done.

No matter what’s been done to him.

She refuses the notion

that the pregnant girl of 15

cannot be more than a welfare mother

like her mother before her.

She believes in them all,

in that still-wrapped gift

called potential,

and prays each will find

their spark, their reason.

She wants to teach them self-reliance

in the face of despair;

she knows the lengths

you can travel on perseverance alone.

Her classroom walls proclaim

the value of hard work,

honesty, attitude, and imagination,

promising excellence and success.

It’s not that she’s naïve

or a blind idealist.

She sees the forest and the trees,

she knows what’s what

and her ass from a hole in the ground.

It’s a kind of stubbornness.

She thinks of it as resolve,

rising to the challenge.

They say she’s soft,

that she gives too many second chances.

And she does get hurt,

disappointed and angry, but

her hope feeds on small things—

sparks of understanding seen

when eyes meet across a book;

a girl who realizes the answer

to her own question

while she is still forming it;

overhearing kids arguing

politics in the cafeteria,

quoting something they’ve read

or heard within the walls

of her classroom;

the wonder of witness,

the moment when beauty takes hold

the age-old discovery

discovered once more,

as new as the first eureka,

but heralded privately,

in the storehouse of her heart.

It puffs her up,

fills her with,

not just pride,

but pleasure,

a feeling that she matters

in the larger world,

that she has done her part.

Some may laugh at her willingness

to throw starfish back into the sea,

but she’ll keep at it all the same.

Sunset Boulevard

"I am big. It's the pictures that got small." -Norma Desmond

This evening I had the pleasure of watching Sunset Boulevard on the big screen with some friends. Our art museum holds these wonderful Friday night showings of movies. I would go every Friday if life allowed.

I love old movies. In some ways, I think Norma was right. There's something about the older movies. Something powerful that newer movies don't generally have. I don't know exactly what it is, but older movies move me and affect me differently. Maybe it's that the years have let the schlock fall by the wayside, so the movies that have survived to be shown are real jewels. Maybe it's the black and white. Maybe it was the writing. Maybe it was the types of stories being told. Maybe it was the acting.  As Norma said: "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!"

If you've never seen this film, you should. There are few near-perfect movies in this world. But this is one. (Another is Casablanca). The main three characters: Norma Desmond played by Gloria Swanson, Joe Gillis played by William Holden and Max Von Mayerling played by Erich von Stroheim were all so spot on. Not a false moment. The curator told us in her talk about the other actors considered for the roles of Norma and Joe, but now it's impossible to imagine anyone else in the roles, so entwined have they become with these performers.

In fact, there was (I presume and imagine) some element of personal truth for the actors in these roles, and I wonder if that is where the strength of performance comes from. Gloria Swanson had indeed been a silent film star, and, like many women of Hollywood, knew how unkind the industry was about aging. She is undeniably beautiful. Even as she holds her head at that impossible, cockeyed angle that she invented for the character, she is lovely.

But, as the recent Oscars showed us with catty and harsh comments about Kim Novak and Liza Minelli and even Matthew McConaughey's mother, Hollywood is very uncomfortable with aging in women, regardless of whether you age "gracefully" and "naturally" or fight the process tooth and nail. Gloria Swanson tortures herself to try to recapture her younger face. If the story were written now, she'd probably have botox and surgery.

I'm not in Hollywood, obviously, but even ordinary women feel the sting of the shift in the way the world treats you when you are considered past your sell-by date. Sexuality, we're told, is for the young, slender and beautiful. There's a little longer window these days, for the MILF . . . but even that role is one you can play only briefly, when you still are guessed as too young to have a child as old as you do. G-d forbid you should look your age.  Hollywood isn't the only place in the United States that doesn't know what to do with a woman old enough to have lines and sag, but who hasn't resigned herself to an asexual invisibility either. It was Joe who said it best: "There's nothing tragic about being fifty. Not unless you're trying to be twenty-five."

William Holden may have understood Joe pretty well, too. His alcoholism was affecting his looks. The "shine" was off him. He was too old to be the golden boy anymore.  Holden did a beautiful job with the nonverbal parts of this role. Every time Holden's Joe accepted money or gifts from Norma, a part of him died. He hated himself for being kept, and hating himself made him want to be cruel. Even when he told the young woman he was falling in love with the truth of his life as Norma's kept man, there was so much subtext in each line and each movement. He conveyed the pain and anger of his own lost chance at happiness intermixed with a feeling of worthlessness that meant he didn't deserve that chance in the first place. He sent her away because he loved her enough to save her from himself.

I don't know anything about the actor who played Max, but he, too, was amazing. His quiet protection of Norma, his acceptance of his responsibility for what became of her. The torch he still carried after all these years.

What a tragic love story! No one loves the right person. Max loves Norma. Norma loves Joe. Joe loves Betty. Artie loves Betty. Betty loves Joe. Everyone is reaching for someone who doesn't love them back. Or, in the case of Betty and Joe, the love was poisoned before it could grow by the circumstances of its birth--infidelity and deception.

Whew! Makes me glad I'm in no danger of becoming famous. I'd end up face-down in the swimming pool for sure.

Giving up Teaching

I'm planning to leave teaching at the end of this school year (assuming I can find something else to do for a living). In all honesty, it scares the heck out of me. It feels like looking over a cliff and deciding to step off without knowing what's beneath me.

I've never not been a teacher.

I decided to be a teacher in first grade, when Mrs. Aldsorf paired me with another student who was having trouble understanding something. I helped her. She understood. I was hooked.

I've been a public school classroom teacher for eighteen years, pretty much all of my adult life. The only other jobs I've ever held were brief, and long ago. I took them because I couldn't get a teaching job and dropped them as soon as I found a classroom. I was a tutor, a secretary, a receptionist, a librarian, a teacher's aide (even in that list, two of those jobs are arguably teaching). But I was always going to be a teacher.

There are a lot of reasons to leave teaching. The hours are long. The pay is laugh-so-you-don't-cry poor. The stress is high. The work conditions are atrocious. The basic rights any worker should be able to expect are not guaranteed. I could bore you for several days with my frustrations with my field, my state, my country and my school. When I successfully talked my daughter out of becoming a teacher herself, the relief was palpable. I want better for her than this.

The reason I've always stayed is that I believe in the work. That old saw about being there to watch the lightbulb go off in some kid's mind is totally true. It's magical every time. And my work matters. I'm not manufacturing goods no one needs and trying to get people to spend money they don't have to buy them. I'm *helping.* One starfish at a time.

So, why now? Why quit work that I still love?

Because all the external stuff is getting to me. I'm hearing that burnout tone in my voice, that bitterness that I have seen in many the colleague who stayed too long over the years. So, I need to leave. I need to leave before I'm not good at it anymore, before the bitterness starts to spread to the children.

In a way, it's like breaking up with an abusive lover. I still love him, but he's not good for me. He treats me poorly, blames me unfairly for things that are out of my control, even outright beats me down at time.  I don't like who I am when I'm with him. He separates me from my friends and other things I love. He manipulates with guilt and blame to get me to do more with less. He thinks he owns me.

But that doesn't mean that it's easy to leave. Ask any woman who has had to do it. It's easy to say you'd leave if someone was abusing you, but how many of us stay? More than would like to admit it. Especially when our financial well-being is tied up with the abuser.

We stay because we are afraid. We're afraid that whatever we leave for isn't going to be better. We're afraid that we haven't given it fair shot. Some part of us hopes that it will get better if we are just patient. The devil you know vs. that hidden devil out there in the deep blue sea. We stay because we don't know where else to go.

Good bye, teaching. I know I will miss you, but I deserve better.

Holy Ice Storms North Carolina!

I live in North Carolina. It's a very temperate place. Even in winter, I don't expect much of what the rest of the country thinks of as winter.
Not here.

If we see snow once a winter, that's good. Just a taste to remind us, remember the tingle of a snowflake on the tongue and the magic feeling of seeing the world transformed overnight.

Perhaps a day off school. Honestly, I don't even own winter boots or a real coat anymore. There's just no need.

Not usually.

This winter has been downright bizarre. By my count, we have missed five days of school, and had two early release days due to snow.  The entire state is making a face like Burt Ward's over there. WTF? Seriously?

Then, just when we thought it couldn't get weirder, we had an ice storm. Not even the whole area. Just my little town and *some* of the other little towns nearby . . .not all mind you. In fact, when we had been without power for twelve hours or so, and got hungry, we were able to drive twenty minutes north to the nearest mall, and find that the roads weren't even wet, let alone icy.

Then, by the next morning, it's so warm that I'm not even wearing a jacket and when the ice particles fall from the trees that are bowed with their weight and hit the ground, they become steam without even taking time to turn liquid first.

So, in the space of twenty-four hours, there was ice and snow, breaking branches and fallen trees, no electricity or heat, sunshine, mud, and steam.

It was so localized and so brief, this bizarre little ice storm, that I suspect it is not natural in its origins. Perhaps there's a wizard living here who has a strange sense of humor. Or perhaps Löki is visiting and brought one of his Frost Giant relations along. It has to be something more than nature.

Read Like a Writer

I didn't exactly make New Year's Resolutions this year, but there is a new habit I'm trying to build. I want to read like a writer.

My daily writing habit is still going strong. I've only missed one day since I started that experiment, around a year ago now. It's undeniably effective. I've finished two books, gotten good starts on two more, finished a short story and written drafts of three or four more (oddly, I think short stories are harder than novels), and written lots of blog posts. Writing is easier for me now. I can produce more words in one writing session, and more of them are words I can keep.

Rearranging my life to make time for all this writing is cutting into my reading though. And I would argue that reading is essential to a writer's practice. It's important to see what others are doing, to have models to aspire to. It's not that I want to write like someone else; I'm not wanting to imitate anyone.  I want to read more and think hard about what works in the books that work and what doesn't in the ones that don't and apply those lessons to my own work.

So, to that end, here's what I've been reading so far this year: I've finished six books so far this year. (I'm a notorious book-starter, often reading four or five books at the same time, but getting distracted and not finishing them). Four of the books I've finished are worth considering from a writer's perspective:

Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu was brought to my attention by a reading circle of middle school teachers I work with. I read it in paperback, purchased from Amazon. It's a quiet book, and, at times, I wasn't sure I liked it. Maybe this is, in part, because I haven't read many middle grades book. I've read a fair amount of Young Adult, but this was obviously gauged a bit younger. I was genuinely surprised when magic came into the story as a real element. The first half of the book made me think the magic was all in Hazel's mind.

What kept drawing me back in to the story were the little moments in which the narrator described some small aspect of life with a haunting accuracy and sadness. "School was very easy, it turned out, if you just disconnected your heart." Poetic. Heartbreaking.

The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson by Nancy Peacock came to me from another reading circle--a neighborhood group. We've decided to read books with a connection to North Carolina, our home state. This one was by a local writer. I read it in paperback, purchased from Amazon. I was genuinely surprised by how much I liked this book. Nothing about the cover or the title made me expect what I got.

It's a great example of the curiosity-building opening line that Stephen King is so fond of: "I have been to hangings before, but never my own." It's a sentence that packs a wallop, emotionally, and definitely made me want to know more. This is something I've been thinking about in my own work. I tend to ease into my stories slowly, but readers seem to appreciate being grabbed in the opening paragraph.

I also admired Peacock's ability to keep the story interesting in first person. So far, I don't write in first person. I like close third, sort of the "over someone's shoulder" view. First person brings a lovely immediacy, but it's also limiting--you can't show anything the character doesn't see or know. Persy's life took some interesting turns and Peacock integrated her historical research beautifully, providing detail without ever making me feel like the story had stopped so she could show me what she had learned.

My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira came into my life from the public library's online collection

of audiobooks. I choose audiobooks almost at random. I just go the website, click the search option that shows me what's available for checkout and choose the first book that has any appeal for me. So, I listened to this novel not having any idea at all what is was about, but just drawn in by the cover and title.

It turned out to be a Civil War story, set in the North and focused on Northern characters. I've not encountered much of that in my life. Most Civil War stories I've read or viewed have been set in the South. It was fascinating. One of my own projects right now is a historical novel set mostly in the early twentieth century. Oliveira and Peacock both have strong lessons for me about incorporating research and factual detail without letting it overwhelm the narrative.

In Mary Sutter, the key was Mary herself. She was both a woman of her time, and out of her time. I was instantly intrigued by her and cheering for her in her quest to become a surgeon at a time when medical training was not available to women. Oliveria also handled the complicated feelings of disappointed love beautifully.  Since my own character, Freda, is disappointed in love, I hope I can handle it as well.

Lastly, there's The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. This one came to me from the same reading circle of middle school teachers, in a paperback copy borrowed from another teacher. I should state upfront that I have a hard time with Holocaust literature. It eats at me in a way that reading about other tragedies does not. So, I wasn't sure I wanted to read this book at all.

I read it very slowly. A chapter at a time, with breaks for other reading in between.

At first the narration fascinated me. What an interesting idea! Having the story told by Death personified. It brought to mind The Lovely Bones  by Alice Sebold for the creativity of the narration.

Partway through, though, that narration began to feel contrived and false to me. I almost wish the author had found a way to let Death slip away once he had introduced us to the players and just let the story play out for itself. Death, after all, didn't change or grow, and his fascination with Liesel was unexplained.

I felt the same way about some of the neat poetic/not quite sense-making descriptions Death used. They were striking, like the moments of insight in Ursu's book, but maybe too much so. They started to feel precious and removed me from the story. "You will be caked in your own body." Trying too hard? I'm still not sure.

I also couldn't decide how I felt about the cues to future events. This was more than mere foreshadowing. The ending was basically announced several times before it actually arrived. Was this a function of being a book intended for younger readers? Was it supposed to lessen the shock? Or build anticipation? It didn't do either for me. Again, it pulled me from the story to wonder what he was after by that tactic. If I'm thinking about the tactics, they are probably not working.

So, what have I learned?

• Historical fiction has to be accurate, but not call attention to the accuracy. It's the characters that make you care. Don't lecture. Know the details, but don't tell them all. 
• First lines are very important
• An interesting narrator is a blessing and a burden

Now, off to read some more and see what else I can learn. What should I read next?