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| Earlier today, I attended a rally at the edge of the Charleston Harbor to urge Gov. Mark Sanford to accept $700 million in federal stimulus money. Gov. Sanford has until Friday to make up his mind (which he claims is already made up); with the legislature's role (if any) in the acceptance process in doubt and tied up in legal wrangling, our state's budget is looking pretty thin. Unless our governor changes his mind or a way is found for the legislature to override his wishes, precisely the kinds of services needed during a recession will be cut drastically. Some of the worst cuts will affect education.
I went to the rally because I'm concerned that while Gov. Sanford stands on his principles of small government, low taxes, and limited spending, many South Carolinians will fall through the cracks. Our most vulnerable citizens - those who have lost jobs; the elderly and disabled forced to rely on government services; families caring for children with special needs; the working poor overwhelmed by the rising cost of groceries and other goods; and disadvantaged children attending failing public schools - can't afford to wait until the economy starts looking up again. Paying off the state's debt (what Sanford wants to do with the money, although the federal government has by now made it clear that's not an option) may put South Carolina on a surer financial footing for the future, but at what cost? How many people will lose homes and jobs, suffer needlessly, and miss out on all opportunities for learning and advancement?
I was disappointed, then, that for the most part, today's rally wasn't about the neediest and most vulnerable among us. It was about "us." The "emcee" was a woman whose children attend public middle and high schools. She warned that summer school could be canceled if the non-stimulus budget is passed, then hastened to assure us that it's not just under-achieving students who go to summer school, but really good, smart, hard-working students who want to go the extra mile to get into a better college. Another mother and public school volunteer complained that Spanish teachers were being cut to half-time and that not learning a foreign language would adversely affect students' chances of getting into good colleges. (There was no mention of the fact that knowing Spanish is a very practical life skill these days, as South Carolina's Hispanic population grows.) Charleston schools superintendent Nancy McGinley spoke well, asking whether we want to go back to a time when only people with "personal resources" could send their children to school. But as she ran down the list of possible casualties (teacher pay and positions, equipment, summer school, fine arts programs, athletics), she betrayed no willingness to compromise, to talk about some programs that might be expendable. After all, stimulus or not, we're in a recession, and even with the federal money, there still will be painful budget cuts.
The rhetoric engaged in by most of the speakers was all about "our money," "what we deserve," and so on. We were asked to get out our cell phones and call Gov. Sanford; when one man got through, he put his phone on speaker, and the crowd chanted, "Show us the money! Show us the money!" Toya Hampton-Green, chairwoman of the Charleston County School Board, was the one bright spot, bringing a more thoughtful message. She showed that she understood where the governor is coming from, but that she also understands the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable of South Carolinians.
I do think we need to take political action to try to convince Gov. Sanford to change his mind; if I didn't think so, I wouldn't have been there. But we also need to be aware of the larger context of this battle - that even $700 million is a drop in the bucket compared to all the needs our state has, and that we need to be both creative and generous if we're going to avert disaster. It isn't "our" money, and "we" don't deserve it. Rather, we have a responsibility to be good stewards of our own personal resources as well as the state's money and anything we get from Washington. That's going to mean sacrificial giving and service to "the least of these." I'm afraid political action on this scale isn't going to stir up much support or change many minds as long as we look like another selfish interest group, clamoring for our piece of the pie, rather than a compassionate multitude, ready to confront these hard times and challenging our state government to stand with us.
- KPE
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| I just don't think this business of blogging every day during Lent is going to work, all of Jonathan's good intentions notwithstanding. It just isn't possible for me at this stage of my life (and my children's lives.) I hope to be able to blog a little more frequently than I have in the last few months, but don't hold your breath. Thank you for your good wishes, and have a blessed Lenten season.
- KPE
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| Jonathan announced a few days ago that he was "imposing" (I use the quotation marks because neither of us believes the actual imposition of duties is allowable or possible between husbands and wives) a Lenten discipline on me - blog every day during Lent. The idea struck me as laughable for its narcissism - during this season traditionally associated with solitary contemplation and self-denial, I'm supposed to spew my self-important thoughts onto the Internet each day? It's certainly not a conventional discipline.
But I decided to give it a try, because Jonathan asked me to, because part of me does want to get back to writing, and (perhaps most importantly) because Jonathan promised to help me find the time to do this.
Where have I been during the past two and a half months since I last posted? The same places I was before: at the sink and the stove, at the park with the children, on campus with Jonathan, in the grocery store and the doctor's office, and so on. I haven't been writing because I decided over Christmas to try (just for a short time) giving up most of my personal activities and hobbies and really focusing on childcare and meal preparation. We've been trying to eat more nutritiously and more cheaply, and I've had to discipline myself (there's that word again!) to spend much more time in the kitchen each afternoon than I had been accustomed to spending. I also occasionally soak beans overnight, and once I made pita bread from scratch. The price I've paid is that I'm fairly cut off from the outside world, and that isn't good for anyone, including my children. I'm able to do these things only because I'm not working for pay or volunteering outside the home. I'm really quite inefficient. So one of my goals for this Lent is to seek God's will for how to balance all things our family should do, and how to direct our family's orientation outward. In this pursuit, Charlie (my oldest, now almost four) provides an invaluable example. Everywhere we go, he introduces himself and strikes up conversations with complete strangers. I've seen many other children do the same. It's truly wonderful to see - and a sobering reminder to all of us who have become cautious, guarded adults.
Lent is supposed to be a time of contemplation - of our sins, our humanity, our need for a savior. That we are dust, and to dust we shall return. Such contemplation requires memory. We are to remember our wrongdoing, remember what God has done for us, and remember our purpose in life. I have trouble with this, because I have a very poor memory. It's not that I don't have memories. Often they come upon me unbidden and alarmingly vivid. A smell will remind me powerfully of a lost time in my life. And yet I think the memories I have are so strong and so independent, coming and going seemingly at will, precisely because I lack a good, steady long-term memory that constructs a narrative of my life thus far, a context in which to file the fleeting memories of moments that come into my head. I have nowhere to keep them. I am struck by them, and then they're gone again.
I feel like I need to do something about this situation. I am coming to God, asking Him to reveal to me what my purposes and priorities should be in this season of my life, but I have little sense of who God has made me to be, because I can't construct a coherent story of my life. Certainly I have the facts. And I am very rooted in my family, with whom I am close. I just can't put the pieces of memories together. I don't really remember myself as a child, a teenager, or even a college student. Every morning when I wake up, I feel that I've always been this way, living this exact life, doing these exact things over and over again. That's not a complaint; my life is very pleasant most of the time. I love routine. But I think seeing my life now in the larger story of my entire life might help me also to see my life in the larger narrative of God's redemption. I also think that remembering my childhood - not the major peaks and valleys, but the day to day existence of a child - might help me become a better, more empathetic mother.
Have any other mothers out there experienced this sort of feeling of spiritual amnesia?
I'll try to post something more upbeat and outward-looking tomorrow!
- KPE | | |
| Yesterday I dug an alligator hole with my children. It all started with a book from the library. Charlie likes gators, so he saw a book with a picture of one on the cover, and we had to get it. It was called, What Lives in an Alligator Hole? My snide response: an alligator, duh. Not so simple, apparently. I learned from reading to my children that the alligator is a "keystone species" that enables many other species to survive in the wetland environment by providing them with relatively fresh water. The alligator wallows in the soft mud, digging a nice big hole, and the hole fills with water, from under the mud, that is less brackish than the water that typically sits around in marshes. And contrary to popular belief, alligators don't eat everything in sight. In fact, they eat less than you might expect. During the winter months, when the cold-blooded gators essentially hibernate in their muddy holes, they only eat once a month on average. Usually, birds, turtles, and other animals are pretty safe in an alligator hole. (Hibernating all winter and only having to fix myself a meal once a month doesn't sound like a bad life to me right now, but that's neither here nor there.)
So, we got to the end of this fascinating little book, and when I saw the last page, I quickly snapped it shut. "What was that, Mommy?" Charlie asked. Now, Charlie can't exactly read yet, but he knows enough that you can't fool him by skipping pages. "Uh, nothing, darling." I knew I wasn't getting away with this. I'd been caught, and it was only a matter of time. Charlie can wheedle, off and on, for weeks if necessary. I relented. "A science activity," I conceded warily, knowing I ought to be more excited about this. Predictably enough, Charlie and Kristianna were both interested and insisted I read the skipped page.
The activity was simple enough: fill two bowls with the same amount of dirt, add the same amount of water to both, then pat the dirt in one bowl down flat, while digging a hole in the other bowl. The "alligator hole" is supposed to fill with nice, clean-ish water for your toddlers to drink. Okay, so I made up that last part.
However, nothing is simple in our family. First, we had to find a toy alligator, because Charlie insisted that WE could not be the ones to dig the gator hole; it had to be dug by an actual (toy) alligator. It took a couple of weeks (no, I'm not kidding) for us to find time to go shopping for an alligator, and the window of opportunity finally opened while Charlie was at school on Tuesday. So I took the girls to A.C. Moore, where I was pretty sure I'd seen cheap plastic animals, and we started rummaging through the various species. I'd been feeling pretty guilty about the whole thing, since we try not to buy lots of junky toys, we don't have much money anyway, and then there's the business of plastic (especially the ubiquitous painted "Made in China" variety) not exactly being good for you, according to more and more studies. But I had a 50% off coupon, the little plastic animals didn't cost THAT much, and while they were in fact made in China, they also sported a tag reading "Phthalate-free." Whatever that means. Anyway, it sounded good.
The problem was that they didn't have an alligator, only a crocodile. Now, I knew that Charlie knew that alligators and crocodiles are not the same thing. (One of my nephews once conveniently combined the species, excitedly telling my sister that he had seen the "crocogator" at the zoo.) But I thought I could get away with it. How would he know the difference? No such luck. When we got to Charlie's school to pick him up, Kristianna strolled into the classroom still carrying the crocodile, which she had refused to part with except briefly so it could be scanned by the cashier (during which time she looked daggers at the clerk). Charlie's teacher asked, "Ooh, do you have an alligator?" See, SHE was fooled! But not Kristianna, who must have heard me muttering to myself at the store about the lack of a proper alligator. "No, a 'dile," she proclaimed, and the secret was out. For the rest of the day, I had to listen to Charlie's comments on the matter: "Mommy, I TOLD you to get an alligator, so why did you get me a crocodile?" "Why would you go to a store that sells only crocodiles?" "A crocodile cannot dig an alligator hole." And so on. By the next day, he had finally concluded that it would be acceptable to pretend the toy was an alligator, just for the duration of the activity.
We still had to find dirt. This isn't a problem for those of you who live in houses; just go to the backyard. But we live in an apartment complex, and a very well-landscaped one at that. After I had watched the landscapers work all fall on the beds, it didn't seem right to dig for dirt under the bushes right outside our apartment. So yesterday afternoon we loaded up the stroller, bundled up the baby, and trekked over to the pond (where the real gator has his real gator hole) to find some dirt. There were a few bare patches that I didn't think the rental office would mind if we raided for a measly three cups of the stuff. As I kept a guilty lookout for any suspicious landscaping personnel, the children spooned dirt into Gladware containers. Then of course we had to go by the playground "on the way back," and before we knew it, suppertime was upon us and another day had gone by without doing that one, extremely simple activity. (We even had to take the library book back earlier in the week. Good grief.)
Yesterday morning, the time was finally right. Personally, I don't mind getting dirty. But I didn't relish the idea of mud all over the carpet, so I contained the children in the kitchen and nervously watched their feet and clothing. It is so hard to give up control, to just let them enjoy something and not constantly be barking, "Don't scratch your foot; your hand is muddy!" and "Don't splash; it's getting under the stove!" I compared myself to the mother I'm not - the mother who would sit back and watch the children get the whole house muddy, smiling peacefully to herself at the joy of youth, and then patiently put them down for naps and clean the whole house again before they awakened.
We did succeed in getting messy, but the demonstration of the benefits of alligator holes was a complete wash. Maybe the dirt was too wet to begin with, or maybe the measurements in the book weren't right, or maybe I remembered them wrong. In any event, both bowls simply flooded with muddy water. There was no clean drinking water for the toy birds and beasts that the children had gathered for the grand experiment, and the hole was barely discernible. I tried to explain how it should have worked (and why it didn't), but they weren't listening. They were piling mud on the "alligator," making their other toy animals dive into the bowls, making muddy handprints on the kitchen floor, trying to construct a beach for a toy penguin, and of course pushing each other with muddy hands while giggling.
As I was watching them and then cleaning up the kitchen, I found myself both envying professional teachers (who would know better than I how to conduct such an activity) and pitying them. They are assailed from both sides - by a society and a government that often expects them to stand in loco parentis for children whose parents are, for whatever reason, barely involved in their lives, and then by parents who ARE intimately involved in their children's lives and would like schools to stick to teaching academic subjects and not try to parent them or teach them values. I'm in the middle of watching a documentary called Corridor of Shame, about eight rural South Carolina districts, all clustered along I-95, that sued the state of South Carolina for additional funding, claiming that they were unable to provide a "minimally adequate" education for their children with the meager revenue they gleaned from property taxes. The film depicts crumbling buildings and libraries with few new books; it also features interviews with teachers and principals who say they have to be parents to many of their pupils. They talk about first-graders who don't know their birthdays or addresses, or how to spell their names. They talk about children who come to school hungry because there is no food in the house for breakfast, and who will go to sleep hungry unless their teacher sends them home with some food. In the film, one young male teacher (he didn't look much over 25) says with tears in his eyes that he can't bring himself to leave the district, despite the poor pay, because many of his high school students call him "Dad."
I am extremely blessed. We aren't rich, but Jonathan makes enough that I can stay home with the children. I don't want to ignite the "Mommy Wars" with this post, because I know there are many working moms who do an excellent job of raising their children and are quite involved in their children's lives, helping them with their homework and passing on their values and beliefs to them. And sometime soon I would like to have a career outside the home; I don't see staying home as my final destination or something I am morally obligated to do. But the point is that I have the opportunity to choose. Many parents don't. Some of the moms and dads described in Corridor of Shame were alcoholics or in prison. But most couldn't be there for their children because they were working two or three jobs to make ends meet. And in today's economy, that's necessary for more and more couples and single parents. Increasingly, schools will need to step in to teach not just the three R's, but how to get along with others, what to wear, self-care and nutrition, civic responsibility, and yes, some sort of value system.
Parents who can afford to be very hands-on in raising their children, as Jonathan and I can, have often objected to the comprehensive nature of public education. "Why can't they stick to teaching the basics," they say, "and let us handle things like conflict resolution, sex education, how to approach other religions and other lifestyles, etc.?" A frequently heard argument for home schooling is that it takes so much less time than school in a traditional setting, because class time is taken up only with purely academic work; all the other stuff is taught in the process of living life as a family. Yet the government (really, the voting public) puts an enormous amount of pressure on public schools (and now, through voucher programs, some private schools) to serve as the final barricade separating troubled youths from the juvenile detention center and an adult life of poverty and hopelessness. Schools are expected to take children whose parents are so busy trying to survive that they can't read to them or teach them their colors, and make productive, decent, moral adults out of them. That's a very tall order, and it's one that involves much more than reading, math, science, and history.
I've been trying to think of solutions, and I haven't been very successful. Parents could be given the opportunity to opt their children out of all but strictly academic activities, but that would in effect segregate public schools into two groups of students, which would probably be mostly differentiated by socio-economic class. My worry about such a system is much the same as my worry about "school choice" - that it would help the students who already have the great advantage of involved parents who don't have to work all the time, and leave behind those who are already at a disadvantage. I also fear that it would undermine democracy by causing some students to feel superior to others, mostly by virtue of their family income and background, and as though they had been given the "privilege" of not having to spend as much time with the "other group" of children. Aside from that, I'm out of ideas and would appreciate any you have. After all, segregation (of all sorts, not just racial) in education is endemic, as a result of private schools, charter schools, tracking and gifted programs, and just plain human nature. We want to make sure that exposing diverse groups of children to each other doesn't result in gifted (or better-prepared) children getting bored and learning nothing, while academic standards are adapted to the lowest common denominator. At the same time, we want to make sure students of all backgrounds have the same opportunities.
Meanwhile, as I was thinking these things, I realized my alligator hole disaster was not quite over yet. I still had to get rid of all that dirt. Putting it down the kitchen sink would probably stop up the plumbing; ditto the toilet. It didn't make any sense to put good, clean dirt in the trashcan. So, making sure the children were clean and occupied with a coloring book, I left with the container of dirt. Again, I looked for landscapers. I found the edge of a bed where the bare dirt was exposed and, squatting, scooped the dirt out with my hands and smoothed it over the ground in an attempt to disguise its addition. Unfortunately, it still looked a little too much like dog poop, which the property manager has rightly banned from the premises. I put some pinestraw over it and hoped for the best. Back to the apartment to wash all the containers and the spoons. Back to trying to figure out what's best for my children and all the other children, too.
- KPE
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| Yesterday morning at approximately 6:03am, temporary Wal-Mart employee Jdimypai Damour was pronounced dead at a hospital in Valley Stream, New York, a suburb of New York City. He had been trampled to death.
The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/business/29walmart.html?em) reported that a crowd had grown outside the store starting at 9pm Thanksgiving evening, with hundreds and eventually thousands of would-be shoppers waiting for "doorbusters" and other "Black Friday" promotions. At 3am, police were called to the scene because the crowd was getting large and rowdy; however, police were subsequently diverted to a nearby Best Buy and Circuit City on account of similar problems. At five minutes until 5 (when the Wal-Mart was set to open), the crowd surged forward, knocking in the doors, and Mr. Damour, standing near the doors with some other employees in an attempt to control the crowd, was trampled and suffocated as shoppers tripped and fell on him. According to other shoppers and employees, people continued to stream into the Wal-Mart long after he fell, jumping over him and stepping on him, and even pushing aside employees who were attempting to help him up. Even after the police arrived, customers pushed and shoved officers who were trying to perform CPR on Mr. Damour.
What do we make of this scene? The first reaction of many people may be to blame either the insensitive shoppers or Wal-Mart. Both are at fault. Surely people are responsible for their individual choices, and in this case they acted barbarously and inhumanely. I am sickened by the kind of greed, unrestrained self-interest, and apathy that would motivate a person to step on a fallen human being and push away those providing aid. I am also persuaded by the comment of police Lieutenant Michael Fleming, who spoke for the Nassau County Police Department and said he thought the tragedy was "foreseeable" and that Wal-Mart did not take adequate security precautions. After all, Wal-Mart and many other retailers undertake a blitz of advertising in the days and weeks leading up to The Day After Thanksgiving, in an attempt to persuade people that holiday happiness is available if only you buy the right things for the right people (and for yourself, because after all, you deserve a treat after such a hard year), and since the economy is bad, you have to go to the Biggest Sale of the Year and get all the goodies as cheaply as possible. There are reminders not to overspend and that, come January, credit card companies will be beating down your door if you disregard your spending limit. But the reminders are gentle, and the advertising is relentless. Wal-Mart certainly could and should have foreseen that, given the great deals they were promoting, a crowd might form and get out of control. They could have hired more security personnel, called the police sooner, asked their employees to stand away from the doors instead of using them as human barricades, or maybe even reinforced the doors. Given that several shoppers suffered minor injuries in the stampede as well, the litigation arising from this episode will be vast and long.
But beyond the proximate causes, I believe we urgently need to rethink how we celebrate Christmas - and Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Eid, the Winter Solstice, and the generic, secular occasion commemorated each November and December and perhaps best referred to simply as The Holidays. As a Christian, I think Christianity, among the world's faiths, best advises and enables moral, loving behavior toward our neighbors. But the fact of the matter is that no major religious observance celebrated during the winter holiday season advocates or even condones the behavior of yesterday's Wal-Mart crowd. All advise love, joy, and humility. Why, then, are we trampling each other to get at big screen TVs, XBoxes, and coffee makers?
One answer is that "we" aren't. That it's just "those people" who do things like this: "those people" who are poor and desperate and made greedy by hours of television shows that encourage them to envy what their richer neighbors take for granted. "We" who can afford to order our entertainment centers well in advance of the Christmas rush are not at fault, we'd like to say. And yet "we" (and yes, I mean me, too) often send the same harmful messages to our children, our friends, and our neighbors: that bigger is better, that we all deserve great entertainment and conveniences, that every gift must be reciprocated, and that we can make each other happy by giving each other the perfect gifts. I think we do a particular disservice to our children, because even when we skimp on things for ourselves or gifts for the adults in our families, we often scrape up just enough to buy that toy our child wants, "because it will make him so happy."
I'd like to suggest an alternative. A group called The Advent Conspiracy has a great website and video at http://www.adventconspiracy.org, and I encourage you to check it out, forward it to your friends, etc. They also have a Facebook page, and you can put the link on your profile. It's a call for Christians in particular to return to a truly Christian perspective on Christmas, to cut down on our compulsive spending on useless gifts, and instead to use whatever extra we have to give to those who really need what we have.
That's a radical call in a culture where it's considered rude not to give gifts to certain people in our lives - even when those gifts are things the recipients don't want or need and which will end up in the trash or stuffed in a drawer. As our economy slows, our response should be more careful spending and valuing what we already have - not breaking down retailers' doors so we can buy the same luxuries at lower prices. The Advent Conspiracy urges us to start slow - maybe just buy one fewer gift this year, and take that money and put it in the bank or write a check to a worthy charity. The website also urges us to use our time wisely, maybe by volunteering at a homeless shelter for an hour instead of putting up one more garland on the roof, or taking the children sledding (assuming you live in a part of the country where you can do that!) instead of dressing them up and attending one more holiday party or event where they won't know anyone and it's too loud to hear yourself or anyone else talk.
It will be hard, but our family is trying to cut back this year. I'll be making fudge and sugared pecans instead of buying gifts at the store for some people (although that raises yet another prickly issue - that of good nutrition. Oops...) We'll look at our schedules and try to cut out unnecessary activities that none of us will enjoy and that won't do anyone any good. We don't want to be Scrooges; we want to embrace the joy of the season. But joy is more readily available, I think, when it's not forced, when it's spontaneous and unlooked-for, not purchased and wrapped and carefully orchestrated. I'm always stunned by how non-materialistic very young children can be, until they're coached by adults (and older children, of course) to behave otherwise. Selfish, yes. But not nearly as materialistic as we think. And when we tell them to behave selflessly and lovingly, not practicing what we preach, they often surprise us by doing what we say and not what we do. That, of course, doesn't last long. But maybe we can learn from them and enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a little child, as Jesus told us.
I would prefer to leave us with a positive vision, but I can't help pointing out the first thing I thought of when I saw the article on the Wal-Mart stampede. I was reminded of similar melees in Third World countries, with desperate people trampling and pushing and shoving and shooting over much-coveted resources. But in those cases, the loot is food, clean water, and medicine. Here, it's largely nonessential - even luxury - items. One wonders what signal this sends to the rest of the world about the heart of America.
- KPE
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