Maybe I write less because I have to blog on WEA’s site every day. Maybe I blog less because my life is so much more boring now (thank you, God). Maybe I blog less because I don’t feel I have to connect with so many people who were so kind to care for so long on an every day basis to let them know what is going on.

Still, I do miss blogging sometimes. We are very busy with prep for Adam’s bar mitzvah. Lots of details…lots of fun. I will get back to this sometime. Really. There are good things to share…but too much going on right now. Ciao.

It was 32 degrees this morning on the way to work. We had to do the emergency “water-on-window-shield” for the car to get Max to the ferry. I was in Las Vegas for the last few days. Who knew the temperature would drop so quickly? I am glad it did. I’d much rather have cold and dry than rain and warm. It is frosty and frey and foggy outside and I like that it is December.

Las Vegas was terrific and different. What was terrific was the conference I attended with my colleague, Linda Woo. We were learning about ways to work with college students who are considering becoming teachers. We were just assigned this task less than two months ago so we are on a steep learning curve and we are enjoying what we’re learning. This conference brought together colleagues from around the country who gave us good advice and good ideas about how to revitalize this program in our state.

We stayed in a resort about 20 miles from the strip and, at first, I was disappointed. But as our week progressed, I began appreciating the quiet of being away from the strip. We went to the strip for a couple of hours on two nights –once to just hang out and once to see “Ka,” which was, by the way, fantastic. I ended up appreciating the fact that I didn’t get tired of the cigarette smoke and the noise and chaos of the casnos in the strip. Our hotel was beautiful — modern and very, very comfortable and pleasing to the eye. So, in the end, I enjoyed the idea of being out of the strip area.

We are on serious bar mitzvah mode as we prepare for Adam’s big day next month. Meanwhile, we have major activities with the holidays…for example, Max is in finals week at school; Adam has a piano recital, a ballet performance AND a senior band concert all next week while he is also supposed to be finishing his d’var torah. Max is starting to raise funds for his Latin America trip this summer. He will be stuffing more than 100 letters soliciting donations this week so if you are thinking about getting him ANYTHING for Hannuka, dump the idea and give him a donation to Amigos instead as he needs to raise more than $3,000. He won’t know what country he is going to be in until right before the summer begins but he has a choice of 8.

Okay…so, it is time for me to get back to work. Sorry I have been so remiss about checking in here.

What a weird place.

And for good reason too…when things are mellow (meaning uneventful around health, wealth and welfare) it just seems boring which is very good. It’s not that we don’t have opinions around here. We have big opinions around things like stifling freedom of expression on Vashon Island. We have opinions about health insurance and about the state of public education. We have opinions about all kinds of things, but we are too busy stuffing our faces this weekend and feeling full to really share those opinions. Because, after all, people around us are doing the same thing. And though we know so many did not get the chance to do that, we are in our own little world…our own little corner. Ho hum. We had a lovely Thanksgiving with dear friends and relatives…we had a great “day after” dinner with the Schencks and Michel-Jean. We had a great day today and we still have ONE MORE day off. It doesn’t get better than this. I love Thanksgiving weekend for a million reasons and this is just one of them…the idea that the holiday is right away then we have days to recover. Okay, I could very well start rambling if I don’t stop now so I am stopping now. Ciao.

More on that later. Goodnight.

When the phone rings at 8:30 in the evening and the caller i.d. says Swedish, in our family, we know it means it’s the good Doctor Kaplan. I had my first check up yesterday in three months. When the call came in, I was folding laundry; Max was listening to The Great Gatsby (it’s better than reading, Mom); Adam was doing homework upstairs –reorganizing notebooks and Marty was in his office. He said, “It’’s Swedish.” I thought, “Oh, oh, I better come up with a quick excuse about why I haven’t taken my vitamin D so when Kaplan shries at me, I’ll be able to reassure him that I am back on the vitamin D bandwagon.” As I walk to the phone I tell Marty to start calming him and to tell him D is returning soon. I take the phone and start telling him that before he can talk to me.

“Your liver bloodwork is off,” he says. Well, that stops me in my tracks. My heart drops from its usual position down to my knees or maybe to my feet. It’s probably no big deal, the doctor says, but your liver blood work has always been perfect and now it is off. Right. Well. Okay. I start to get scared. He says, “don’t be scared.” He does this for a living, you know. He saves lives all the time.

It could be a number of things. It could be your thyroid. I just started taking thyroid medicine this morning. We can wait three months and see if it is your thyroid, Kaplan says, or you could go in for a scan right away and avoid waiting. Could it be cancer? I think there’s a one in 25 chance that it is related to cancer, he says. But he also says there is a less than one percent chance that it is breast cancer that has hit my liver so that is somewhat reassuring, but not really. I don’t want to wait. I will schedule the scan as soon as possible. “I thought you would say that,” he says. “I already left a note on Michael’s chair.” Michael, you may remember, is Dr. Kaplan’s heroic assistant, scheduler, etc. I will call him today and get in there. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. I am scared. Kaplan said he is just being an obsessive compulsive doctor. “It’s probably no big deal but I don’t want to take any chances,” he says. Me neither. I will keep you posted. Ciao.

I am sitting at a table with a number of very knowledgeable and very talented professionals who are discussing education reform and the neo-reformists. It is a fascinating discussion — performace pay, tenure, charter schools, federal dollars, etc. We are talking about how “teacher quality” is such a big buzz word and how people say the problems are due to the quality of teachers instead of some of the genuine issues — scarcity of resources. The best teachers in the universe will still only be able to do so much with a class of 28 or 29 kindergartners.

The disparity is so vast. And the perception of both our members and our staff are so different. My perception right now is that our teachers are distraught. They are being asked to do more and more and more with less time and resources. And they are distraught. The teachers I hang out with are basically saying, “We’re dying out there.” They really want to make sure their students are successful and it is becoming so difficult. It is also sucking the joy out of teaching and the life out of our members. One of my friend’s son is in his first year of teaching in New Orleans. He is at a charter school — a high school where he teaches Spanish. He is in the classroom from 7 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon. He goes home and begins grading papers. Needless to say, the conditions are what most human being would find impossible. One of the students at his school who is 14 is pregnant — she was gang raped by the school’s basketball team. What did the cops say? “Be careful, boys.” I am serious. He is in his first year of teaching and getting no support. He’s making a decent starting salary — some $46,000, but how long will this young man last?

I have the distinct honor of having one child in an urban school district and another in a rural school district. It is amazing where people are putting energy — the parents — in times of economic scarcity. On Vashon, we have an entire community flipping out about the kind of “dirty dancing” going on during school dances. We have parents who are crusading to “change the dance culture” on Vashon Island. The irony, of course, is that we are going to see Joey Eisenberg in Flashdance at his high school tonight. Meanwhile, in Seattle, we have everyone simply rolling over as the school superintendent tears programs in half to save a few bucks.

How can we, as a union, be intentional about vision and about positive change? The only thing our members care about is kids. Yes, they have to make enough money to pay their mortgages and get their own kids to college, but really all our members care about is that their students get the opportunity to reach their full potential –not JUST their academic potential although that is very important, but that they reach their full potential as human beings.  How can we allow kids full time to learn to be whole human beings when so many weeks are being stolen from them to put them through test after test after test? How can we, as advocates for our teachers and other school employees be out in front in a landscape that is shifting beneath us all the time?

I still say that the Gates Foundation (no matter how well meaning they are…and they are well meaning for the most part) is the largest non-elected policy shapers in the world. They have a gargantuan amount of power and it is fascinating to see how it is playing out…and a bit scary.

 

Max just got two new pairs of Adidas sneakers and he is very excited. I am happy for him. He has growing feet. He’ll need a pair of dressier shoes for Adam’s bar mirtzvah…he just informed me he wants a suit as well. How many times will he wear a suit? Anyone have a suit for a sixteen and a half year old? Hmmmm. Max Cargal-Bley had his bar mitzvah today. It was very lovely. It has been pouring rain in buckets around here lately. It’s nice to have the metal roof. I like it. I like the rain but only because it is November. Ask me about it in February. That’s all the news for now. Isn’t blogging fun?

I mourn the loss of October, my favorite month. The last day, Bernie’s 52nd birthday, was perfect in every way. Max was contented somewhere on Vashon Island sleeping off a night of hanging with friends. He has been enjoying high school and even though it is a little scary around his math grade, I just appreciate that he is such a wonderful kid and that he’s having fun. He is working hard and what I learned at the college fair a few weeks ago is that there are plenty of great colleges and/or universities for kids with solid B averages — they don’t all have to be 4.0 kids. Adam was working on painting a scene on a Grecian urn for his quarter project and, because I had to drive, I was stuck in north Seattle. Stuck is the wrong word. Marty was busy in the morning and I was happy to pick Adam up after he spent the night with my mom. They saw Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Their collective review was that the show was so-so. Marty and I saw August: Osage County the same night. It was terrific. So, it’s Saturday morning and I got my hair cut and colored FINALLY and that felt pretty good. It was truly the first time I’ve had a couple of hours of free time to do that in many moons. After dining at Blue C Sushi, Adam said he had another couple of hours work so I took a long and leisurely walk through neighborhoods north of University Village. I stopped off to visit with Wendy and Willie Katz. Willie was tormenting Teddy and Wendy as he was stuck doing what he considered way too much homework for a guy who was trying to enjoy Halloween. The weather — what can I say about Saturday’s weather for walking except it was more than perfect? I have always appreciated good weather. Living in Seattle makes one appreciate it even more. Living post-cancer ups it exponentially. The weather was PERFECT. The leaves were perfect. People’s Halloween-decorated homes were perfect. I had some alone time which was perfect. I got back exactly as Adam was finishing then Marty, Adam and I had dinner with the Friedman-Petersen family. The kids trick-or-treated on their own and it was so lovely to just hang out. Max was back on Vashon with friends and it felt like a special treat knowing we’d all get that extra hour of sleep that night. I am trying hard to treasure every moment we have with Max. If he wants to hot tub (and he did last week) I jump and go no matter what I am doing as I know these times are going to be fewer and fewer. Marty, Adam, Max and I hot tubbed together last night before bed and that was great. Marty doesn’t like our hot tub as it has never been his cup of tea (he’s a sauna guy) and he hates that we are constantly heating water but it is serving us well. It is GREAT for my joints which (who knew) would really appreciate some warmth as I take those yukky drugs to ward away estrogen-positive cancer. It attracts kids to come to our home. Yea. It gives us a place to talk late at night and to be vulnerable and to share dreams. It’s a good thing. Sometimes it’s worth it to heat up a lot of water just to have family time. I notice that I have given up paragraphs in general today. Adam got first prize for his DALAI LAMA costume. My dad said he was sad because he sent me to a good university and I misspelled Dalai last week. Speaking of my dad, get this….he was taking a walk in the little park by the house where I grew up the other day and a dog knocked him over. THAT shouldn’t happen to a dog let alone the fact that a dog caused the problem. He has a skinned knee, ripped pants, a sore arm and did he get the address or phone number of the person who owns the dog ? What do you think? NO! He’s lucky as the dog could have hurt way more. I am, by nature, a dog person…I love dogs. I do not like THAT dog. Dogs ought not knock over people who are heading for their 89th birthday. It is not nice. It is poor doggie behavior. A cat (and I hate cats) would never knock anyone over. They might smother a baby, but they would NOT knock someone over. Enough said on that. Enough said all together. Let’s face it. I am rambling. No more.

Adam is dressed as the Dali Lama today but he’s doing it Dolly Parton with a llama on his shoulder. He is rather hilarious. He is hoping to win most original costume at school. Large photo below. It is difficult to see the full Llama but it was early in the morning when the photo was taken. I will add a couple of more….maybe. I am technology challenged. It is gray and cloudy and very “Halloweenish” out there. My brother turns 52 tomorrow. I hope his next 52 years go well as he deserves a whole bunch of good ones. Now that the play is over, we are heading into full planning for Adam’s bar mitzvah. Invitations went out to out-of-towners and relatives last week. We will send in-town later in the month. We have many friends who will stay at IslandWood with our out-of-town guests and we are excited about the whole prospect. EXTRA EXTRA (stop reading if body functions gross you out) my chemotherapy dead toenail fell off this week. I see this as a milestone of continual shedding of that time in my life. Scroll below for photo(s).

All purchased as second hand stores except for my jeans jacket.

What can I say? I think EVERY child ought to get to cross dress when they feel like it. We had a “Think Pink” day yesterday at work…there were photos there from last year and I wanted to take mine down as I feel much hairier and happier now. I was just getting hair last

October and now I have enough to

complain about….Adam and my mom are

off to see “Joseph and the Amazing

Technicolor Dreamcoat” tonight. Marty

and I are seeing August Osage County and

Max and Matt (our temporary son until

Monday) will be roaming Vashon with high

school friends. I must get to work as

soon as possible. Bad news…Elyssa, my

college roommate and dear friend, was laid off from work today after 21 years of dedicated service. How sucky is that? She has to the end of the year on the payroll and a good severance package but still….21 years. She never loved the work but it did pay the bills and it wasn’t anything she dreaded…now she gets to reinvent herself. So that is the posting for now. I know my posts are boring and I’m pleased about that. Thanks for reading anyway.