Striking contrasts

As I was substitute teaching at the St. Louis Park public school across the street from me one day last week, I stood waiting for the first graders to come back from lunch and I suddenly flashed back to my classroom in Mexico. I stood soaking in the richness of this American classroom remembering the stark Mexican classrooms I taught in at Libertad. I took out my camera to take the photo below.

The classrooms at Libertad School were so painfully stark and bare, I found it at first very difficult to adjust. The classrooms in my suburb of St. Louis Park are rich in everything: beautiful decorative walls, lovely furniture, educational materials of all sorts and kinds. My classroom at Libertad was literally empty when I moved into it after a month of being a "traveling teacher" who used other teacher's classrooms. The classroom provided for me last year in late September was equipped with three round tables, chairs and a teacher desk. That was it! And Libertad was a private school where families paid tuition. The public schools I saw on my teaching tenure in Mexico were more bleak than Libertad; forty students crammed into tiny classrooms sitting at long tables with no books or materials in sight. Probably the way most students in third world countries experience education.

I know that I never really appreciated the comfort and ease of the classrooms I taught in during my career in the States. Today the classroom I taught in had two wonderful rotating fans that cooled the room perfectly on a warm Minnesota day. What I would have done for them at Libertad where the air conditioner did not work half the time and the temperatures reached close to 100 degrees. I bought a fan at Costco in Mexico to use in my classroom. The walls were flimsy and one could hear whatever was going on in the classroom on either side as well as the screaming from the playground just outside my classroom windows.

Most American school students would have have no way of knowing how good they have it. Mexican students at Libertad however knew how unpleasant their classrooms were. One day I had my middle school students at Libertad write and draw a picture of their "dream" classroom. They described classrooms where the paint was not pealing off the walls, where the air conditioners worked and where there would be pictures on the walls and room for them to move around.

Today the 5th grade class I taught was extremely difficult. I had several students who were belligerent as hell. I again flashed back to my Mexican students at Libertad who could be challenging at times, but I would never desribe them as belligerent. Again the thought that if they had any idea what they had going for them they would display a nicer temperment. I wish all young students could have a beautiful classroom and I wish those who have beautiful classrooms would know just how lucky they are. Sometimes experiencing a third world country is a dangerous thing. You keep having those flashbacks.

Life is in the sticky bits

We went to see the movie Letters to Juliet this past week. Skeptics will say, just another typical chic flick and in many ways it is. Except this chic-flick stars Vanessa Redgrave and this puts the movie in a class all it's own. Redgrave plays a grandmother who takes a trip to Italy searching for a long lost love. She has never looked more beautiful and her acting gives the movie a substance romantic comedies often lack. I remembered Redgrave playing Guinevere in Camelot and in this film she is even more lovely. Quite a feat for a 73 year old. I read her bio on Wikipedia after I saw the film and she is a remarkable woman and actress, not afraid to take risks or be controversial when it comes to what she believes in. She made the role she plays in this little film touchingly sweet and softly strong.

I love the New Yorker magazine and they loved Letters to Juliet. I thought this may be a good omen for bringing (dragging) my husband to a chic flick. He has still not forgiven me for taking him to see Johnny Depp in a musical. I lost all credibility. But he came with me and I, being a chic, was not disappointed. Harry thought Redgrave was great, but he thought the young actors had terrible diction. Ah well... The opening scenes of the movie take place in the offices of the New Yorker magazine in New York City. There we meet Sophie, a young fact checker for the magazine who dreams of someday writing for the New Yorker. I found her adorable, bad diction and all.

The movie is based on a 2007 book about the group of women who answer the letters left on the wall beneath Juliet's famous balcony in Verona. This reminded me of the wailing wall in Jerusalem where people write their prayers and stick them in the wall's crevices hoping God will answer. I am not sure how long the leaving letters for Juliet has gone on but it is rather charming tradition. With a return address you get a personal response to your romantic woes from "Juliet." (Has God thought of this? Maybe people should start putting their return addresses on those wailing wall notes.)

Sophie and her Italian fiance are taking a trip together to Italy, a sort of a pre-honeymoon. While in Italy our heroine realizes she is in the wrong relationship. The boyfriend is more obsessed with opening his new restaurant in New York City and making food related contacts in Italy than he is with her. The movie is sprinkled with romance and heartbreak for both the old and young characters and though the young folks are lovely and interesting, Redgrave sweeps you away with her grace and style. She makes getting old look good. Only a very good actress can do that.

The young Englishman who plays Redgrave's grandson becomes angry with Sophie telling her that she has made his Grandmother's already difficult life full of more sticky bits. Redgrave corrects him, "life is the sticky bits," she says. Besides Redgrave, the best part of the movie is seeing the northern Italian countryside around Verona and Siena. It is absolutely breathtaking!

So if you have been feeling like a little romantic Italian get-a-way would be nice, and you are short on cash or time, this could be the chic flick for you! Just try your best to ignore the bad diction.

Pine nut squash lasagna

Part of Harry's self-created therapy has been to go through our collection of food magazines to create a list of the recipes he wants to try after his jaw works properly. I guess it has given him hope. While I have been out eating a crusty New York bagel and cream cheese or chowing down on my beloved Chinese food, Harry has been looking longingly at food magazines meticulously cataloging. He even went so far as to watch our young friends, Jack and Tera, and I as the three of us had steak one night at our house. He made wonderful side dishes he could eat and ate fish without complaint.

Food magazines can be a blessing and a curse. You love looking through them when they come in the mail or you buy them at the grocery store. You get them home and you page through looking at the photographs, all the while dreaming about cooking some recipe that looks fabulous and knowing full well the odds of your actually doing that are slim, The magazines pile up and you try to forget about them. They make you feel guilty, but you are too busy to take them seriously.

Fortunately, Harry has taken the time to find some wonderful recipes in these magazines that have helped him get through this difficult time. He cooks up something new and edible for a man with a plastic palate a couple three nights each week. (lasagna pictured) It has been great for me, sort of like having at a good restaurant with a changing menu right in my own home. We have become particularly pleased with some of the fish recipes and, as we all know, eating fish three times a week is highly recommended. Tomorrow night our friends, Pete and Lee, are coming for dinner and Harry is cooking fish Veracruz, tortilla soup and arroz con leche. (pictures later.) Recently Pete cooked us a delicious Harry appropriate meal of quiche and creme brulee.

Needless to say, eating like this is a real treat. When I was a child my dear mom had a limited kitchen repertoire. She cooked a predictable bill of fare each week. Monday was mince and potatoes, Tuesday: fried chicken, Wednesday: creamed tuna on toast, Thursday: fish sticks and Friday we splurged and had take-out chow mein. Mom did not have the time to cook creatively. She worked hard all day and came home each night and proceeded to cook a meal for seven people. We ate a lot of packaged foods in those years; scalloped potatoes in a box and brownies, also from a box, were our family favorites. After I left home Mom started as a housekeeper for a couple who were both doctors and their children. She began to experiment with magazine cooking, encouraged by the doctors who had a nice collection of food magazines they had never cooked from.

My ex-husband, Jerry, and I loved to cook from Gourmet magazine when we entertained. In the early very poor years of our marriage, we would splurge on buying a new spice from the spice rack at the grocery store to add to our limited collection. We had many successes and many failures with Gourmet Magazine as the years went by and we could afford more spices. It took the failures to learn what recipes were the ones to try and which ones were the ones to stay away from. I learned to love the entertainment aspect of dinner parties in those years; the dishes, the candles, the linens and flowers and especially the guests. I have many wonderful memories sitting around the dining room table laughing, talking, debating with our dinner guests. Good food is important and people are more important.

When I moved from my house on Abbott after 25 years, I had seven sets of dishes, scores of table lines, candle holders and colored napkins. I also had boxes of Gourmet magazines which my friend Lee says I should not have thrown out because Gourmet Magazine died when we were living in Mexico. I got rid of my collections when we moved out of the big house into the condo. (I did keep the Waterford crystal goblets that were a gift from my ex-husband's family however.) Harry and I then proceeded to buy two new sets of dishes that matched the condo. Any excuse to buy dishes works for me. In October, when we return to Mexico for a month, I will be able to bring home the set of Mexican dishes and glassware I bought. Just where I will put these acquisitions since I have little cupboard space or basement as I did on Abbott Avenue is the question I have yet to answer.

Our stack of food magazines collected over the years had been out of control here in our condo. Food and Wine, Cooks, and Eating Well filled up our coffee table lower shelf. Harry took control of the stacks, bound and organized them and we have not had a bad meal yet. I am ready every night with the candles, the appropriate dishes for the meal, table linens and my fork. Just think what it will be like when he gets that jaw working again! Make your reservations early, seating in this small condo is limited.

Adri's favorite book

My niece, Adri, invited me to a book talk and author signing last week at Barnes and Noble. Adri is in a group that attempts to show leadership at her Edina Middle School regarding issues of race and culture. Adri's language arts teacher recommended the book, The Help. Adri read the book and loved it. The author, Kathryn Stockton, is signing Adri's book in the picture. The book has been on the New York Times best seller list for over a year. It is the story of a group of black maids working for middle class white families in a Mississippi town in the early 1960's, just before the Civil Rights movement.

Stockton grew up in Mississippi in the 70's in a family that had a black maid. She moved to New York City after graduating from college and worked in advertising by day and wrote this book by night.

Adri and I got to Barnes and Noble an hour early thinking we would have no trouble getting a seat. That didn't work out so well. There were at least 300 in the room and as the hour wait progressed another 100+ people arrived. Talk about standing room only! The crowd was predominately women, white women, although a few black women were also in the crowd. I watched as a young black woman and her mother had Ms. Stockton sign their books. They left the signing table and I overheard the young woman say to her mother; "I love her so much." Adri said the same thing to me after she heard the talk. These two girls were the youngest I could see in the crowd.

Kathryn received 60 rejections before her book was published. She worked on the book for five years. She told us the story about the cover of the book, explaining it had no significance at all. Her favorite cover option was a photograph of a black adult woman's hand and a tiny white baby hand gently touching each other. Her publisher told her that such a cover would never work because people would assume the book about race. Americans he said, do not like to talk about race. One woman who edited her book Stockton told us had completely re-written the black English dialect spoken by the maids into a standard white dialect.

The author surprised the audience by telling us her book was going to be made into a movie by Stephen Spielberg and the movie begins filming in July. I downloaded the book onto my kindle when I got home and I now understand why so many people turned out to see this amazing writer. Of course I was ready to read it on Adri's recommendation alone.

I meant to tell Adri that our family had a tradition of being maids. My Scottish grandmother came to Canada in the early 1920's and spent her early years as a domestic for a wealthy American family in the Twin Cities. After my grandmother had children she went to work in a foundry for the rest of her working life. I remember how she could endlessly recite Robert Burns poetry from memory. She would tell me she was always number one in her class but she had to go to work to help support her family. My mother, who dreamed of being a nurse, worked all her life as a cleaning lady and she was so ashamed of it that her daughters were instructed never to let anybody know this. Adri wants to be a doctor. The Scottish grandmas would be (are) very proud of her and so is her Aunt Jeanne. And not just because she wants to be a doctor, but because Adri will be one great doctor if at age 15 she is reading books such as The Help.

Technology Rules or the I's have it.

Our granddaughter, Eva Juliet, and her Dad, Ivan, flew in from St. Louis to visit for the weekend. I could not resist taking this photo. Ivan on computer and Eva watching kiddie videos on her Dad's I- phone. Not pictured were Grandma and Grandpa, aka Jeanne and Harry, reading on their Kindles.

Technology changes how we connect with each other and how we can connect to the world. Sometimes the technological devices we use everyday can be a bit like the pacifier Eva has in her mouth. Comforting us, allowing us to detach into our own little worlds; learning, listening, relaxing.

In the fifties when the television was a relatively new technology, I was growing up in a house in northeast Minneapolis where the television was always on. Kids and adults today are not limited to the simple technology of television. Today we can watch movies on demand, play video games, send text messages while we drive. And of course let's not forget facebook, twitter, books on tape, I-tunes and now we have the amazing I-pad too!

We can all be plugged in and turned on much of the day. Sometimes that is great, sometimes not. Today at the grocery store the clerk was trying to communicate with the woman whose groceries she was scanning, but the woman was on her cell phone oblivious to the need to communicate with the person right in front of her. We all have experienced drivers who are more focused on their cell phone conversation than on their driving. Our spouses, significant others, friends, family members, co-workers and our fellow drivers may indeed appreciate a little less technology and a little more personal attention.

In the sixties my family graduated to not only having a television in the living room but in the kitchen as well. This meant we didn't have to talk to each other during dinner because the television was doing the talking for us. When I met my first husband's family I was astounded that his family actually talked to each other during dinner. There wasn't a television in their dining room or their kitchen. Many times the family I married into would sit around the table long after dinner was over still talking to each other. I loved it! When I was doing research for my Master's Degree thesis, I read an extensive article which found that the only common variable that could be singled our for a child's success in school was whether the child experienced a family dinner several times a week where the adults and children talked to each other. Simple yes, but such experiences are not the norm in our country where only 60% of our kids do not graduate from high school.

When I visited my brother-in-law's family in Colombia years back, I vividly recall how his large family could sit in their television free living room and just talk and laugh with each other for hours. I was shocked. My memories of our family gatherings as a child always included the television being the focus of attention. Often we would all be watching a football game with the women folk talking quietly so as not to disturb the men folk watching the game. Those watching the game were often yelling at the screen as if what they said could be heard by the players and coach. Sometimes it was just fine to be in the kitchen washing the dishes. I think my intense dislike of football goes back to these childhood memories.

On a trip to Spain a couple years back, the adult Spaniards we taught English through conversation from 9-4 each day would dance every night into the wee hours of the morning. They would consistently be at breakfast by eight a.m., a bit blurry eyed, but cheerful. We Americans thought the Spaniards were crazy. We Americans didn't dance, we complained, feeling deprived in this incredibly remote and beautiful mountain setting because there were no televisions and only one computer all 20 of us had to share. OMG!!!

Being connected to others in face to face conversation or dancing is different than being connected to the world through technology. (Steve Jobs would probably disagree with me.) Today's technology is amazing, I love all of it, but sometimes a technology free zone is nice too. (would that zone have to include my Kindle?) I should learn to dance!

Three ENFP's growing old together

Pat, holding her dog Ginger, and Rene and I have had a tradition of celebrating our birthdays together that has been going on now for a few decades. When I went birthday present shopping this week for Rene, I found the hat she is wearing in the photo. Rene is rarely seen without a hat, so when she arrived at our get together wearing a lovely hat that matched her outfit, Pat and I insisted she take off her tasteful hat and wear this goofy one. She was more than willing and looked so cute in the hat I thought we might make wearing the hat a new part of our birthday tradition. That is if Rene is willing to share. She always says that when I borrow something from her I never give it back so she is always reluctant to let me borrow anything. (Yes, sometimes the three of us have been known to behave and fight like sisters.) Sometimes it is nice in life to be able to pick who you want for your sisters.

When the three of us met in our twenties each of us was just starting out in our careers. Rene joined Northwest Airlines, Pat began a medical editing career at the University of Minnesota and then moved to McGraw Hill publishing and I began teaching in Minneapolis. We were and still are very different from each other. Each of us did however stay with the same careers at the same places for all our working lives of 30 plus years and we stayed with each other. Nowadays most people have different careers and work for many different companies during their lifetimes and you are perhaps lucky to have friends that have been at your side for most of your life. The three of us are technically retired now, although Pat is freelance editing for Mayo Clinic, Rene is involved in volunteer work and other creative projects and I am busy trying to re-invent myself after a two year teaching gig in Mexico. (Wish me luck on that one!)

Our threesome has weathered life's storms; marriages that went bad, ridiculous boyfriends, bouts of depression, jobs that were sometimes unbearable, the deaths of our parents and the challenges of raising children and dogs. Through the good times and the bad times we supported each other. We have taken trips together, celebrated holidays together and chatted on the phone giving and taking advice for many an hour and became godparent and "auntie" to each other's children. Somehow when we get together we don't feel the need for any extraneous entertainment or activity. Men may need an activity like playing poker, racquetball or golf to cement their friendships, but all the three of us ever needed was the time to talk to each other about everything while we drank coffee or sipped tea and ate good food, be it take-out or homemade. I have always attributed our enjoyment of each other, our synchronicity, to the the fact that our Myers Brigg's personality configurations are the same, ENFP's. (extrovert, intuitive, feeling, perception) Of course I believe in astrology too, so I know you will not take me too seriously on that insight.

Our ability and love of talking endlessly with each other, as extroverts are known to do, has meant we can be counted on to cover a wide variety of interesting and controversial subjects. The good part about this is that each of us also knows how to listen and not just talk, a trait not always characteristic of extroverts, but pretty much true of us when we are together. We know each other very well after all these years, yet we continue to learn new things about one another probably because we all make a point of listening when one of us needs to be heard. We also love to poke fun at each other and laugh at our idiosyncrasies. I was gone for nearly two years, missing these two dearly and it felt as if I had never been gone at all as we celebrated Rene's birthday last week. I told Harry I would be back in a couple hours, a couple hours turned into nearly four hours. Typical.

I hope we will be blessed with many more birthdays the three of us can celebrate together maybe taking turns wearing the silly hat as we march or begin to tottle through the next decade of our sixties. It's always good to laugh. Getting old needs to be a bit funny. I will promise to give the hat back to Rene if she lets me wear it at my birthday party in October when I turn 60. Sisters have to share you know! Oh, did I mention that I am younger than my two sisters? With my other sisters I always have to be the oldest, that has been a chore. It's more fun to be the baby in the family and that's possible when you choose two new sisters who are older than you are.