A warm winter vacation....up north.

I have always wanted to live in a big old Victorian-era House like the ones Anne Tyler writes about in her novels, the novels with the eccentric characters overwhelmed by life's unpredictability. This week for two days days I got my wish. Harry would not find this wish unusual because he tells me on a daily basis I am just weird enough to be a character in a Tyler novel: two standard deviations from the norm, is how he affectionately describes me. I wasn't able to live out my fantasy in the city of Baltimore where Tyler always sets her stories. However, instead, I unexpectedly found myself in Duluth fulfilling my long-held dream. I find it's always good to be a little flexible with your dreams.

For our 7th wedding anniversary this year, on December 26th, we went to the Ellery House pictured in the photo, a Victorian Bed and Breakfast in Duluth, for two nights. The B&B overlooks Lake Superior, and no, the lake was not frozen over! In fact it was downright balmy up in the north country as it was in Minneapolis, where a record high temperature was recorded on the day after Christmas. Thanks to global warming, one can now visit Duluth in December and not bother wearing gloves or hats or even a warm coat. Not to mention the complete lack of snow which meant you didn't need boots either.

The Ellery House, as it is know known, was built as a single family dwelling in 1890. It has four bedrooms on the second floor each with attached baths. We rented the "Daisy Suite" which was at the rear of the house on the second floor. The bedroom had an adjacent sun room which is furnished with a small free-standing gas fireplace, two cozy chairs, a day bed and a small table. Our bath was huge, with enough room for a chair, an oversize pedestal sink, another fireplace (not used), an old-claw foot tub big enough for two and a shower, also big enough for two (nice for folks celebrating their anniversary).

The main floor of the house included a music room, a parlor, a large dining room and kitchen. All the rooms are filled with antiques. The innkeepers live in a little matching house they built just behind the mansion, so they do not hang around much other than to cook and tidy the rooms, of course. When the other B&B guests were out or shuttered off in their rooms I found myself on the main floor imagining I lived in the house as I made myself a cup of tea or poured a sherry from the antique sideboard in the dining room.

Ellery House reminded me of my house on Abbott, with it's gold-painted walls, maple floors, oak woodwork, high-coved ceilings and red decor. The Abbott house was a 1904 Edwardian farmhouse, not a Victorian beauty like this one with all its ornate touches. I loved living in the old Abbott house, but I could have loved living in this house even more. I found myself feeling grateful and a little nostalgic for my old house years as I sat drinking my afternoon tea in the downstairs parlor next to the old tile fireplace. There is just something about these old places. They have the ability to wrap themselves around you and make you feel so cozy and elegant.

Breakfast was delivered to our room each morning by the inn keeper, Jim, on an antique trolley. Jim had no trouble wheeling this old rickety antique into our sun room. We found we had lots of trouble wheeling it out, so we picked it up and carried it to the hallway after breakfast. We sat each morning in our sun room at the small table eating a wonderful homemade feast. The sun poured in through the windows as a huge ore boat moved slowly across the lake. I decided this has to be the most cozy, spacious and comfortable place I have ever stayed in. I did not want to leave!!! Guess I will just have to re-read one of those Anne Tyler novels when I get home for solace and go back to my dreaming.

I have decided a new dream is now in order. My new wish is to stay for a few days in an English country mansion, similar to the one on the PBS series, Downton Abbey. It may take a while to accomplish this dream too, but when it does happen I will be writing about it, so stay tuned.

P.S. And I beat Harry, the old card shark, at cribbage!

I love you Justin Bieber!

To sub or not to sub the last days before winter break, that was the question. I decided in the affirmative and I was lucky enough to experience the last days before winter break in two school districts. I ended last week in St. Louis Park with three straight days in a 4th-grade Spanish Immersion School classroom. The class reputation with regard to behavior was not very good but the teacher left excellent plans and I had good support from the other 4th-grade teachers, so things went pretty well. Winter break in St. Louis Park started last Friday and I came home feeling great and ready to break.

Edina, however, unknown to me until I got the call early Monday morning, had classes for three days this week; and so I chose to spend the last three days at one of the Edina Middle Schools teaching Spanish. This teacher left no plans. She is pregnant for the first time, due on December 21st, and I guess had not really prepared herself for the fact that babies are unpredictable. On Monday morning, she woke up, coughed and cracked one of her ribs. The pain incapacitated her. I got the call Monday morning before six, arrived by seven and scrambled to make sense of what was going on in the classroom: not an easy task. Today as the school day and week ended, I learned she had been in labor since 3 am and there was no baby yet. And I thought I had had a rough day!

The day before a school break begins is always the worst day in a classroom and today was no exception. I did my best to stay on academic course, at least for the first four classes, then I gave up, telling the 5th class of the day they could just chill out and relax. I couldn't fight anymore. Suddenly a girl popped a Justin Bieber Christmas CD out of her bag and we found a CD player on a shelf in the back of the room. The middle-schoolers sat in small groups, coloring, talking quietly and singing along with Bieber. It was the best class period of the day. Oh, Justin, if only you had shown up earlier!

Harry and I are having a rather quiet Christmas this year, and after the last two weeks that might be a good thing. Our kids are not coming home, and we will celebrate with my sisters and their families Thursday night at my sister Ardee's house. It will be just the two of us together on Christmas Eve. Harry is going to cook us a duck using a recipe from Julia Child that includes a sausage and apple stuffing. Maybe next year we will have a houseful again and I will make a better choice: like baking cookies the week before Christmas.

We are going to Duluth on Christmas Day to celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary. I found on line a cute Victorian Bed and Breakfast overlooking the lake, make that a frozen lake. We will have an enclosed sun room off the bedroom with a little free standing fireplace where they will serve our breakfast if we wish. Harry leaves for England arriving for his Mom's 98th birthday on January 10th, while I am going to visit Alexis in NYC the first week of January.

Happy Holidays to all ... and thanks again, Justin for your unexpected but delightful appearance today.

Old Friends, New Things, Very Grateful!

Our trip to Florida each year at Thanksgiving always brings new adventures. This year was no exception. We took a pasta-making cooking class with Chef Chris Covelli, a good friend of Pat and Bill (and now of ours), Pat invited me to tag along to his swim aerobics class every day, and we had an on-going Mexican Train tournament.

Chris is a professional chef who just landed a job as head chief at an exclusive cooking school in Sarasota. He includes among his friends Marcella Hazen, the woman who is considered the Julia Child of Italian cooking: Joanna and Ivan gave us her major cookbook last Christmas. Harry and I were included in a pasta-making class during our visit, along with a group of friends of Pat and Bill. We made tagliatelle and ravioli from scratch, while Chris made the sauces for the pastas and two kettles full of oso bucco. The sauces for the tagliatelle included butter, cream, truffles and truffle oil which Chris brought back from Italy in early November. He also teaches in a cooking school in Lucca.

The ravioli was filled with pears sauteed in bourbon and butter with a dab of smoked mozzarella cheese. Words cannot express what these dishes tasted like. I felt like I was in heaven eating with the angels. Harry and I feel like we have the pasta making pretty much down now, thanks to Chris and my friend Linda who gave us a lesson last year.

To ward off the pounds I always accumulate on this trip, I immediately took Pat up on his offer for me to join his Y for a week. Each day we got up early and headed off to a water aerobics class. (Harry, meanwhile, had a relapse on the chest cold he contracted from the cast of Richard, but did manage to leap around in the home pool and play with the stretchy things which our trainer, Alex, loaned us for the trip.) One morning Pat and I even tried a water yoga class. This Y was a wonderfully old-fashioned comfortable kind of place with a charming mix of the old, the very old, and young families. I learned some new water tricks for my arthritis that I think will be very helpful over time. It was fun, too, just spending one-on-one time with Pat.

Harry and I spent hours sitting by the pool in the lanai reading or napping, and the four of us played many games of Mexican Train. Pat and Bill play a little different game than the one we learned in Mexico where you play for money. Both are fun, but I think the Florida game is a bit more challenging, and of course with these bridge masters the competition is fierce. Harry lost the Hearts tournament yet again, but only in the final deciding game, and considers it an act of bravery to play such a game with them in the first place.

This was our ninth year of going to Florida for Thanksgiving. Our tradition is ever-changing but our friendship with Pat and Bill is a constant in our lives and as Art Garfunkel sang, Grateful, grateful, truly grateful am I!

flummoxed:confused, perplexed, flustered

I went this week for a massage on my arthritic neck at one of the Massage Envy locations in Edina. I found myself flummoxed by a young person who greeted me at the reception desk as I entered. I smiled and looked into the most beautiful eyes and perfectly arched eyebrows one could imagine. The receptionist’s hair was auburn, cut in a Mohawk style with blue highlights. The clothing worn by this attractive young person gave no clue as to gender, and neither did the voice nor the mannerisms, which were a mix of masculine and feminine. I chatted with this person, whose name tag said Cody, for several minutes as he/she helped me fill out a form for the massage therapist.

It was a most unusual experience! I suddenly confronted the fact that so much of the way I relate to people depends upon gender. I was uncomfortable but intrigued. After a few minutes I decided just to put aside needing to decipher this person and chose to focus on enjoying the delightful personality instead.

I told Cody I had been subbing this year at the St. Louis Park and Edina High Schools. Cody told me he/she was a recent graduate of St. Louis Park High School and went on to tell me effusively how the school was a fantastic place and how much he/she missed the teachers there. Cody’s comment made me remember how much I hated high school, and I couldn’t imagine how a young person like Cody would have such good memories of the high-school experience.

I was something of a loner in high school. High school felt like being forced to attend club meetings for a club that never issued me a membership card. The club members were the cheerleaders and the football players. Over the years I have known people who say the best years of their lives were spent in high school. I always figured such statements came from former cheerleaders and football players. Now in front of me sat a person who, in my day, would have had a hell of a time in high school, singing the praises of an alma mater.

My high school, Edison, was very different from Cody’s. Edison was an all-white city high school in northeast Minneapolis. There had been one black student in my class but his house was fire bombed in my sophomore year, so his family moved out of the neighborhood. Looking back with hindsight, I realize some of the kids I knew in high school were undoubtedly gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender; but in those days gay meant happy and I would never have known the meaning of the other words.

My high school teachers were sub-par at best. I fondly remember only one English teacher, Miss Sandquist, who took a group of us on a trip to New York City, where we saw four Broadway shows including the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which included a nude scene. Our parents thought she was scandalous! My Spanish teacher for three years had us sing along in Spanish to Eydie Gormet records, forgetting to teach us how to conjugate verbs. One of my history teachers would regularly fall asleep at his desk while reading the newspaper as we read our textbooks. Now that should have been scandalous.

I know from subbing that high school today has changed in some ways and in other ways hasn’t changed at all. For sure there is more technology, but the structure of the school day has remained virtually the same for over 100 years. The days I sub at Edina and St. Louis Park High Schools are parceled up into several different academic periods, and students move around the building on a strict schedule just as I did back in the late sixties. Students still take tests, write in notebooks, listen to teachers and read textbooks. They try to hide the fact that they are texting or sneaking I-Pod earphones into their ears during class just as we used to hide the fact we were chewing gum or passing notes.

The most fundamental change in education today, I think, is the fact that the inner-ring suburbs are beginning to look as city schools have looked for decades. Even the predominately white suburb of Edina currently struggles to deal with an ever-growing percentage of non-white students. This is in part due to the open enrollment policies of the last decade, but also to a growing immigrant population that has made the limited number of apartment buildings in this suburb their homes.

Needless to say, these demographic changes have school administrators and teachers in Edina flummoxed. The rhetoric of educational equity for all has become the district mantra as they struggle to educate a different kind of student clientele. The underlying fear, of course, is that students of color will dilute the pure waters of educational excellence in Edina. The reality of educational equity for those who come to school in Edina but live in Minneapolis is not yet a reality. The immigrants from places like Somalia, too, struggle in the Edina culture. The equity rhetoric is easy, but providing equity to those who are culturally different is much more complex and difficult than people want to admit.

St. Louis Park, Edina’s next-door inner-ring suburban neighbor, is a horse of a different color when it comes to demographics. The high school is and has been for many years a hodgepodge of ethnic and religious groups. In St. Louis Park, no one group dominates the mix of of blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, Jews, whites, and immigrants from Africa and other countries that populates the schools. The diversity is due in part to the fact that St. Louis Park is chock full of apartments and has neighborhoods consisting of smaller, cheaper houses affordable to a wider variety of people.

St. Louis Park High School has struggled longer with educating a diverse population than Edina, and undoubtedly has more success stories. The school district has received national recognition over the years for excellence in providing education to all its students. St. Louis Park also attempts to tackle the needs of GLBT students by offering support group meetings. Signs in the high school hallways give the date and times of these gatherings.

Edina school hallways are full of anti-bullying slogans. Bullies have always been part of school life but now we teach kids to call a spade a spade. Back in the 1980s and 90s, there was the “good touch, bad touch” campaign to teach kids about sexual predators (this focus has sort of gone by the wayside as recent events at Penn State have shown us).

Students laugh and joke about bullying in Edina classrooms, but at least on the surface, there seems to be a growing awareness that racist, sexist and homophobic jokes are not appropriate.

It’s true, standardized test scores are not going up in this country. The Chinese and other nations outshine and out-test our students in math and science. Few of our students want to become scientists or engineers. It is just too hard!!! Our high school graduation rate is nothing to brag about either. These are only some of the long list of educational negatives that characterize American education in the media and press today.

I think, however, that we forget to praise ourselves for what we at least attempt to accomplish with our children in this country. We try to do what other countries in the world do not even attempt. We try to educate everyone: the poor, the disenfranchised, the immigrants, and the physically and mentally handicapped; and we naively believe this is possible. We even try to create school environments where kids are not bullied because they are “different.”

Anyone who has walked the hallways and sat in the classrooms of an inner-city school, a rural school, a school on an Indian reservation, or a school in a wealthy suburban district like Edina knows this to be true. Educational equity does not yet exist in America, but achieving such a goal with such a diverse society is not easy, and may even be impossible. We are indeed flummoxed, but we keep trying to improve anyway.

But, then you run across a kid named Cody, and you think: "Damn, schools are not doing such a bad job after all."

Who was Shakespeare really?

Seven years after the death of Shakespeare, and upon the publication of the first folio of the famous plays, Ben Johnson wrote, "He was not for an age but for all time." The debate as to who was the "he" referred to by Johnson is the subject of a new movie called Anonymous. Mark Twain, Dickens, and Freud all believed the Stratford man did not really write the plays. There are many scholars today who also have a hard time with the conventional history. One school of skeptics is the Oxfordians, who believe that Edward DeVere, Earl of Oxford, was the real author of the plays but was forced to conceal his identity as a playwright for powerful political and social reasons during the reign of Elizabeth I. Oxford, according to the Oxfordians, conspired to have an actor from Stratford on Avon, William Shakespeare, take credit for the plays. Has the world really been scammed for all these centuries, and if so why?

I came to an appreciation of Shakespeare late in life. I was a college Shakespeare dropout back in 1971, the year I married and quit school. I spent three weeks in a Shakespeare class at the U of M, and though I loved the class, I never again took a Shakespeare course; nor did I read another Shakespeare play. The odds were good that I would have spent my whole life in a state of Shakespearean ignorance were it not for the fact I saddled myself with a new husband who lives and breathes Shakespeare. In order to stay married, I had to design my own course: Cliffs Notes and Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare became my textbooks.

I struggle greatly with the language in the plays. I know it is beautiful but I have trouble following what is being said. Sometimes I think my Spanish is better than my Elizabethan iambic pentameter, and that is not saying much. When Harry had the leading role in Measure for Measure, he had to learn one of the longest roles in Shakespeare, but I had no idea what he was saying most of the time he was on stage. Of course I have a problem with what he is saying at other times, too.

I found myself, the Shakespeare novice, crying my way through a wad of Kleenex during the "Quality of Mercy" speech from Merchant of Venice a few years back. This happened twice, once at the Guthrie and the second time watching the film with Al Pacino. I never saw Hamlet until this past year, and then I saw it twice within six months. Both times I was riveted to my seat for three hours. I subbed in a high school English class for three days straight recently and on my third time through Midsummer Night's Dream I was actually laughing at the jokes. Harry's last play, All's Well That Ends Well, is what they call a problem play. After seeing All's Well twice, I was actually able to carry on a dinner conversation about why it was neither a comedy or a tragedy. My next challenge is to appreciate thoroughly my spouse's rendition of one of the most famous speeches in all of Shakespeare, just before he pops off stage to die. Richard II, in case you missed my earlier announcement, opens this Friday.

My introduction to the Stratfordian/Oxfordian debate began in 2003. Harry was in England visiting his mother for a few weeks, but I had stayed home to clean out the attic and basement of my 100-year-old house, hoping to put it up for sale when he returned. I stumbled across a New York Times book review of the book Shakespeare by Another Name, by Mark Anderson and bought it for Harry as a little welcome-home present. The evening before he came home, I began reading the preface to the book and suddenly found myself reading until three in the morning. Harry arrived home to find his Shakespeare-illiterate wife unwilling to let him touch his book until she had finished reading it.

Many books about Shakespeare and De Vere have been written within the last decade. I have read only two, so I am not an expert on the topic. Such books, and now the movie, Anonymous, seem to have moved the debate from the strictly scholarly realm into present-day popular culture. Even Cliffs Notes, my favorite synopsis source, is currently making web-accessible cartoons of the Shakespearean plays that include jokes about those who still think Shakespeare wrote the plays. They are funny and a bit crass. So much for popular culture.

I was very excited to see the film Anonymous even though the reviews have been terrible. Those in the New Yorker and The New York Times were particularly scathing. The reviewers panned the movie in ways that to me demonstrated the writers had little knowledge of the powerful arguments from the Oxfordian camp. They trash the movie, preferring Shakespeare in Love's version of history. There are many hard questions and mysteries surrounding the authorship of the plays, and I don't think that being someone who questions the version of history we have all been fed makes one a traitor or, worse, a class snob, as one reviewer put it. As a schoolteacher, I do find it hard to believe someone with the kind of education the Stratford man undoubtedly received could have written Hamlet. The sort of scholarship the plays contain with regard to languages, geography, literature, etc. etc. was not easily attained in the 16th century without a royal pedigree. And a slow start in education makes it impossible to attain a vocabulary of 20,000 words: modern research makes that abundantly clear.

Anonymous is a dark and shocking movie. The movie-makers take the reasons for the truth being hidden a few daring steps further than even the Oxfordian camp would want to go. The topic of the authorship is an emotional topic for many people, but I do not think it would be a tragedy if history is someday rewritten giving credit to the Earl and not the Bard. It would be nice to know what really happened, but it is unlikely we ever will. Just another one of life's big mysteries!

www.cliffsnotes.com/CliffsNotes-Films.html

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Are bookstores a thing of the past?

This past week Harry had the entire cast for Richard II over to rehearse in our living room, all 18 of them, so I decided to make myself scarce because space was going to be at a premium that night.

There was a book I had read about and wanted to buy, so I thought it would be the perfect evening to spend a little time in a nice bookstore. Barnes and Noble at Galleria in Edina is not exactly the quintessential old-world-type London bookstore such as Flourish and Blotts from the Harry Potter series, but it is nice. I do not frequent bookstores much anymore, being the Kindle gal that I have become over the last few years.

Upon entering the bookstore, I was shocked and rather saddened to find that my old haunt had taken out what were once large areas of bookcases filled with books and replaced them with shelves of games, puzzles, greeting cards, stationery and gifts of all sorts. I looked around and thought, what happened to all the books? Did their market research tell them to get rid of the books? Are people today really sitting around playing board games and putting puzzles together? I thought most people today are playing Angry Birds alone not Monopoly with a group of their friends and family. Don't most of us spend a lot of time looking at screens of some sort or another? Our hands are on a keyboard or a touch screen when we want to relax, they are not picking up puzzle pieces. We communicate with our friends and family via Facebook in cyberspace, not in real space. We now use our phones to text our friends or family, we don't call and talk to them. Maybe the market researchers have learned that when people do spend time together they will have to be playing games and putting together puzzles because the art of conversation is a lost art.

I did find the book I was looking for: Cleopatra: A Life, by Pulitzer-prize-winning author Stacy Schiff. The book has photographs and maps that would not be fully appreciated on my black-and-white Kindle screen. Lately, and rather strangely, I have found myself in the mood to read a "real book." I have spent many an hour wandering around in this Barnes and Noble bookstore over the years, looking at books, drinking cups of coffee with friends at the on-site Starbucks, listening to author talks and buying books. Barnes and Noble always had the book I was looking for, or they would order it for me. I found new books I didn't know existed just by wandering around, and they had a great selection of teacher materials. They gave a nice teacher discount too.

I know, I know: you can't have your great bookstore and a Kindle too; but walking about the newly configured bookstore the other evening, I missed my bookstore of old. I love downloading a book in 30 seconds on my Kindle while sitting in my comfy chair at home, or having the day's New York Times to read instantly during a sub's slow work day (lots of teacher prep time and nothing to prepare for). There's also the fact that I can carry my Kindle with me anywhere and read from a wide selection of books, magazines and newspapers. I can even read without my reading glasses because I can just pump up the print size on the screen, and love to surf the virtual bookstore, Amazon.com, when- and where-ever; but I still want the world to have bookstores you have to walk into on two feet.

I was one of the first in line to buy a Kindle years ago, and have actually had two Kindles. My first one drowned, victim of a rogue wave that hit me as I sat reading on a beach in Los Cabos. My only complaint with the Kindle has been the size of the screen. I have long thought that the keyboard at the bottom of the device should be eliminated and that it should have touch screen color technology. The Nook, made by Barnes and Noble, debuted after the Kindle with a color touch screen. The Nook was more expensive and heavier than the Kindle so I stuck with the Kindle.

Well, now it looks like perfection, from my point of view at least, has landed -- or I should say ignited? The Kindle Fire. The keyboard has been eliminated on this soon-to-be-released Kindle model, and the screen is a touch screen and in color. I like the relatively small size of the Kindle Fire: 7.5 " x 4.7 " 14.6 ounces, and the price: $199 (with free shipping, of course, from Amazon), You can also surf the web on the Kindle Fire and download movies and television shows as well. The Fire and other new but less fancy Kindle models will be released in November, just in time for Christmas.

I guess one should not find all that surprising the changes with regard to books, given the history of the written word. From scratching in the dirt with sticks to writing on cave walls, to parchment scroll writing, to monks hand copying bound books, to the invention of the printing press, communication with writing is what people have always done and will continue to do: only the technology changes. The lightening fast development of e-book technology has been astonishing. Books as we have known them for hundreds of years have suddenly changed form. I am glad to have lived long enough to experience this amazing change, but the reality is that these changes may mean the demise of bookstores as we have known them. Broders Books, the other large national chain of bookstores, recently went into bankruptcy. Barnes and Noble is struggling mightily to survive by reinventing itself with a wider range of merchandise.

Today my daughter and I went to Wild Rumpus, the wonderful little bookstore in Linden Hills which opened nearly two decades ago. It is sort of the Flourish and Blotts of children's books, situated in an old building on a charming city street in my old Minneapolis neighborhood of Linden Hills. Wild Rumbus is stuffed -- no crammed -- full of books, and it seems to be flourishing while selling only books. Alexis bought books for a friend with two young children, and I found a wonderful picture book for my granddaughters called Sisters. This bookstore may be strictly books, but it does have two chickens, three cats and a rabbit running about, and reptiles in cages. There are cozy chairs for old folks to sit, floor space with pillows for kids to lie down and curl up with a book, and kind people to help you find books. So, I guess for a time anyway, I can have my Kindle and ... an old fashioned bookstore too. As Jerry Seinfield said, "A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence that people are still thinking."

Amazon Kindle Fire Review - Watch CNET's Video Review - reviews.cnet.com - edit - delete

Quit your job before you get fired!

I thought I had found the perfect new job this year, but learned the hard way that it was not to be. My dear friend Linda, with whom I taught at my last Minneapolis school, was kind enough to help me get the new job, which involved testing kindergartners and first graders in all the city schools. The tests are academic benchmarks given three times during the school year, beginning in September. Retired Minneapolis teachers line up for this job, which is full time during the months of September, January and May.

When I started the job after Labor Day, I immediately felt the excitement of being back in the Minneapolis schools with all their diversity. I was sent to three different sites, the first school being in the Northeast Minneapolis neighborhood where I grew up. The majority of the students at Pillsbury School are now Somali and Hispanic. My second school was in the opposite corner of the city and most students there were white. My last school was Windom, where I taught for five years, back in the nineties. Windom is now described as a "dual immersion" school, and I am not quite sure what that means. I heard the adults in the building speaking mostly Spanish and I did not see any English reading instruction going on in any of the kindergarten classes. The students are Hispanic, white, and African American. Some of the Hispanic students are bilingual, and some speak only Spanish. The white and black students who make up about a third of the population are English speakers. If you were a white family who taught your kids to read in English at home, and who wanted your kids to speak fluent Spanish, this would be the school to pick.

The job of the tester is precise and scripted, so that the results can be considered valid no matter who does the testing. If the child can speak English, it takes about 15 minutes or so to go through the battery of tests,which are administered one on one. At the mostly white school in South Minneapolis, I found some of the first-grade students showing signs of test phobia. My boss came to evaluate me while I was testing two such students. I immediately hooked into the way they were feeling and modified how I was administering the test to try to relieve some of their anxiety. My boss, a former teacher, was exasperated with me, saying she did not notice the children were nervous and that I was talking to the students too much. I questioned how one could not notice that these two children were definitely showing a great deal of test anxiety, but she disagreed with me in no uncertain terms. I felt as if I were back in my student teacher days, except that then I knew that the teacher evaluating me saw things I did not. (It takes a few years to grow those eyes all teachers have in the back of their heads.)

I was then sent to the Dual Immersion school at Windom after undergoing my second one-on- one training session with the boss. She told me in clear, direct language that I was to stick strictly to the testing script: four pages of single-space instructions which tell you what to say word for word. As a teacher, I never followed the teacher guides exactly either. I nodded in humiliated silence. The truth was that once those little bright kindergarten eyes were staring up at me questioning what the hell was going on, I would be making the test into a fun little game. After testing my first few students, I felt very strongly that to get the best and most accurate test results, one needed to get to know the students a bit and make them feel relaxed, even if that meant you did not exactly follow the script.

My boss came out for the second time to see me in action. She immediately looked disapprovingly at the little teddy bear I had sitting on my testing table and the stickers I gave to students when they finished the test. She had said to all the testers that these sorts of things were not necessary. She now knew for sure that I was a subversive . She sat down with her note pad to observe me. Let's face it, it gets pretty boring doing the exact same thing over and over again, day in and day out, but that is what you sign on to do. The kids, however, never get boring: they are all unique and that made the job bearable. After watching me administer the first part of the test, my boss was once again irritated, and for good reason: I was once again off script. I would argue, though not with her, that I was getting accurate results. After a few minutes of disapproving looks, I took Mr. Buchanan and the stickers off the table and politely asked her to step in and show me how it should be done. She jumped at the chance. What happened next I found very enlightening.

The child being tested was extremely bright and he immediately found her rote style irritating. He began standing up, and refused to sit down, even though she told him several times to sit still in the chair and do what she asked him to do. He had lots of questions and he began grabbing at the sheet of paper she was taking notes on trying to see what she was writing about him. On several parts of the test, it was clear his behavior was drastically clouding the results she was getting, but she continued at a smooth clip, reading frequently from the script. She was clearly embarrassed that things had not gone very well and when the the child left she gave a huge sigh, telling me what a difficult child he was. I told her I really hadn't noticed.

I knew what was coming next, so I quickly asked her if she had read the email I had sent her the previous day. She had not. I explained in the email that though I had tried, this job was not for me. I then told her that I would, however, finish up with the kindergartners at this school unless she had someone else who could take over for me. She was delighted to hear this and said another tester could be brought in on the following day. So I packed up Mr. Buchanan and my stickers and headed out the door.

At the training meeting for all the testers, the boss told all of us that these tests have been given in all of the Minneapolis schools for the past 15 years and that they have been shown to predict accurately which children will fail their MCA tests in 9th grade. I guess it's good to know early on who will be the academic failures. Schools are all about testing nowadays: teaching children, especially those who most need our help, seems secondary.

Sleeping like a baby....

It's been a long week for this nearly-61-year-old. My new job testing kindergartners in Minneapolis is turning out to be a challenge for someone with my temperament, and having to get up at six to go to work each morning doesn't help. More on this topic to come as soon as I get some sleep.

Naked Archeology

A few weeks back, I somehow stumbled upon an entertaining and unusual show on the History Channel called Naked Archaeologist. I found I enjoyed it so much that I watch an episode every night just before bed, thanks to the convenience of Comcast taping capabilities. Harry falls asleep in his chair without fail the minute the show begins. In fact, when he feels sleepy, but not tired enough to go to bed, he asks me to turn the show on. This predictable behavior makes it difficult to have a discussion on the wide variety of interesting topics which the show explores.

Naked Archaeologist is a creation of Simcha Jacobovici, an investigative Canadian journalist/film maker and two-time Emmy award winner. In 2007, Jacobovici collaborated with director James Cameron in the making of the film The Jesus Tomb, which aired on the Discovery Channel. The book of the same title, written by Jacobovici, was released the same year. Jacobovici contends that a construction project in Jerusalem back in the early 80s accidentally unearthed Jesus's tomb and that of his family. The archaeological evidence led Jacobovici to his world-shocking theories about the tomb, and, as we used to say back in the 60s, it was all rather mind blowing. After the initial uproar, many in the world of archeology now say the site and its contents deserve more study.

Jesus 'Tomb' Controversy Reopened
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1704299,00.html?artId=1704299?contType=article?chn=world


Naked Archaeology studies stories from the Torah and the Bible, attempting to find archaeological evidence which corroborates the texts. Jacobovici interviews scholars in a wide variety of fields and specialties as he travels around Israel and the world. He articulates his goal as being to "demystify the Bible and archeology in particular by brushing away the cobwebs and being unafraid of bursting academic bubbles." Academic and religious bubbles pop with consistency on the program. The Torah and Old Testament stories seem to hold up better from an archaeological standpoint than do the stories of the New Testament, which may have something to do with his Jewish identity. Christianity's historic tendency to lure the faithful with reliance on relics makes for some real ridiculousness. The body parts of St. Peter, for instance, can be found in countries all over the world. One Naked Archaeologist episode, The Search for St. Peter, focused on tracking the distribution of these alleged remains all over the globe.

The off-beat wackiness of each episode is grounded in current archaeological science. Jacobovici has a good sense of humor. He cleverly intersperses funny old movie clips in each episode alongside his visits to ancient archaeological sites and interviews with scholars. The pace can be a bit fast as complex history zips by too quickly to follow, at least for someone like me, who does not have a very good education in ancient history or the Bible. Jacobovici does a good job of trying to look at all sides of controversial and interesting issues, and has a way of interviewing scholars respectfully even when what they are saying is obviously absurd. He doesn't argue: he just listens, letting people hang themselves.

Cultural anthropology and linguistics were my two favorite undergraduate college classes, and this program can be better than a college course in these subjects (no homework either). Jacobovici speaks several languages, at least according to the Internet. I have heard him use his Hebrew and Arabic on the show and his Canadian is pretty good too. Eh? His knowledge of these languages, and ancient languages such as Aramaic and Egyptian hieroglyphs, adds a nice touch, as does the hat he never fails to wear (and which was much discussed on a show where he answered viewers' questions). He knows much about Israeli and Middle East culture, which helps him get in and out of difficult situations as he tries to access the archaeological evidence.

I had a smattering of the usual Bible-story education in Sunday School as a child, so I know enough to find the stories investigated on the show somewhat familiar. Last night's Biblical story was about Joseph and his coat of many colors. I saw the Broadway play, so I knew the gist of the story. Jacobovici looked at the coat from all angles, which included finding a breed of spotted sheep, native to Israel, that may have been used to make such a coat thousands of years ago. He found a farm in Israel that still uses the native dyes that were used thousands of years ago, and ended the show with a visit to a textile museum in Jerusalem that had a 4,000-year-old piece of cloth that looked as Joseph's coat may have done.

Jacobovici was born in Israel of Romanian parents who escaped the Holocaust. His father actually survived a mass slaughter of Jews in Romania by the Nazis. This obviously is the root of some of his journalistic passion. When he was nine, his parents moved from Israel to Canada. He majored in philosophy and political science at McGill and stopped just short of a PhD. to spend a year in the Israeli army. His documentary film career began after his stint in the military. He began by receiving a grant from the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees to produce a documentary on the oppression of Ethiopian Jews. The documentary, Exile of the Black Jews, made political waves throughout the world. He won the prestigious Canadian Genie Award for his Middle East documentary called Deadly Currents.

The most recent series of his documentaries, The Jesus Tomb, John the Brother of Jesus, The Exodus Decoded, and Nails of the Cross, have raised enough controversy to last him a lifetime. Theologians and academic scholars fill the Internet with page after page of scholarly and hostile reactions to these films. I have only seen the television program and the film on the Jesus tomb, but look forward to seeing more of his documentaries, some of which are on Netflix. His work is thought provoking to say the least. Some people may not like having the Biblical stories of their childhood examined with 21st-century scholarship, archeology and science, but I enjoy it. For me, faith only goes so far. Jacobovici can be very provocative, and obviously has strong political and religious views, but I don't find him or his ideas offensive because I feel he does his homework. Offensive to me is listening to unsubstantiated dogma.

The Naked Archaeologist covers serious topics, such as A Nabatean by Any Other Name, which is a look at the mysteries of Petra, and not so serious topics, such as Beauty Secrets of the Bible. It is all fun and interesting, sometimes so much so that I watch two episodes, turning up the sound so that I can hear over the snoring coming from the chair next to me.

I am not to blame...

I now have my own little apple orchard: I-phone, I-Pod Shuffle, and MacBook Air, and I have my stepson, Ivan, to credit or blame for my impulsive buying spree. When we were in St. Louis in June, Ivan was busy showing off his new MacBook Air. I have had my share of little lap-tops over the years, all of which were cheap and had no staying power. Preferring a small portable computer, I had waited for years for Apple to come out with an 11" laptop. A year ago my friend Brian found me a great and inexpensive little IBM, small but heavy. The price was right, but in my heart I still wanted an Apple. The MacBook Air came out a few months after I had bought my IBM, to my great chagrin.

The very week we were in St. Louis, Amazon.com sent me an offer on a MacBook Air at an excellent price with the option of no-interest, 12-month financing. I, of course, considered it a sign from God. Little Gala, as I affectionately call her, arrived the day after we returned from St. Louis, weighing in at 2.38 pounds. It was love at first byte, I mean sight, and the apple romance continues. I gave my IBM to my future son-in-law when he was here in July. Curtis was thrilled, I was thrilled, all was well until ....

Ivan came to a convention here in Minneapolis in early August, and I asked him to help me set up an I-Pod which Harry had given me years back, which I had never used, and which would not charge. Ivan took one look at the old pod and asked me if I was aware that Apple had recently come out with something much smaller than the I-Pod, called the Shuffle. He showed me a picture of the Shuffle on the Apple website and within a few minutes I found myself driving to the Apple Store in Uptown and, of course, buying a Shuffle. It was $49 and came in a choice of adorable colors. I chose the light blue after several minutes of deliberation. That darn Ivan!!!

The story only gets worse. My Apple addiction was beginning to spiral out of control. My sister Julie had been working on me for months to buy an I-Phone. I told her I had my Air Book and Shuffle and that was all the apples I needed. I secretly confessed to her I did not think I could master the complexity of a smart phone, and she said that was nonsense. While we were in Chicago, my tech-savvy sister kept showing me the cool things the phone could do, and I felt my confidence growing; as were the rationalizations as to why I needed an I-phone. I told myself I could have access to Facebook while subbing, as the students were working on their class assignments, and I could text my daughter, cutting down on our burdensome daily phone conversations. The power of stupid rationalizations was taking hold, as it does for addicts. I needed a lighter computer to write my blog on; the shuffle would help me exercise more ... you get the idea.

Harry and I happened to pop into Target for something or other last week, and I said I wanted to just check the prices on smart phones. Ivan had said sometimes Radio Shack sold I-phones cheaper than Apple stores, and I knew Target now sold Kindles, so I wondered if they too sold I-phones. I walked (dashed) into the electronics section of the store and lo and behold, Target was selling I-Phones for $149 and the sale price was good for one more day. With our Target Card discount and Harry's retiree discount, I would save another 15% if I bought the phone that very day. What choice did I really have? Ivan and Julie would be so proud of me!!! The store clerk even welcomed me to the 21st century as I signed the ATT contract.

[Another of those pesky editor's notes: your author fails to mention that she more than blew the savings on paying off her contract with T-Mobile, and was only saved from even more egregious spending on a discontinued earlier model for her husband, which would only add another $20 to her monthly bill, by the obdurate Luddite nature of that same husband, who hates cell phones, and who would not have consented to accept one anyway after she had kept him hanging around Target for an hour and a half, even though his T-Mobile contract had died of natural causes that very day.]

So yes, I bought the phone, and I do love it, and its sophistication is well beyond what I will ever be capable of using. The day after I bought the phone, I took a class at the Uptown Apple store to learn some basics: ie, how to turn it off and on. Only two people, myself and another woman my age (who also has a Luddite husband), showed up for the class. The instructor, a young woman in her early twenties, gave us a great one-hour personal tutorial. Thanks to Julie, I actually knew a little more than my classmate, but I tried not to show off too much. Yesterday I also took an I-Tunes class at the Apple store. Ivan had tried to help me, but I was too clueless to ask him intelligent questions. Ivan has a PHD from Scripps in something high-tech, and I can find him intimidating. I picked up some basics at the class and am feeling a bit less clueless.

OK, I know what some of you are thinking. Next, it will be the I-Pad, but who will be to blame when I buy one? I can't blame Ivan this time. He doesn't have an I-Pad. I have just the person in mind to blame, however: my friend Bill. Bill was first in line when the I-Pads first came on the market a few years back. He loves, loves, loves his I-Pad. Apples are so easy to love. I remember one night when he and Pat were in town visiting from Florida and the guys were playing poker in our dining room, and Bill said I should try watching a movie on the I-Pad. I watched Avatar, undoubtedly a movie made for the big screen, but I actually enjoyed it very much on the small screen. I can read the picture-free New Yorker just fine on my Kindle, but on the I-Pad you can now download my other favorite intellectual magazine, People -- in color, no less. Just more rationalizations of an Apple addict (or is that Apple "edict?").

We will be taking our annual pilgrimage to Florida for Thanksgiving again this year, and I hope Bill does not do that showing-off stuff with his new I-Pad 2. I have obviously demonstrated that I have no self-control when it comes to apples, so Bill better just back off! Maybe an Apple twelve-step program is what I really need. I just pray Steve Jobs doesn't come out anytime soon with any more amazing devices I just can't live without.

*I learned some sad news this week after writing this blog. Steve Jobs is stepping down as CEO of Apple for health reasons. He survived a rare form of pancreatic cancer a few years back and subsequently a liver transplant. I came across the commencement address he gave to the Stanford class of 2005 after beating cancer. He recounts his humble beginnings briefly and gives his philosophy on life and death. I found it very moving. I'm attaching it here to show off some of my newly aquired technical sophistication, so you have to watch it.

Grandparenting from a distance.....

Our granddaughter, Eva, who lives in St. Louis, spent a few days with us in early August. Her father was very busy attending a convention, so we did not get to see much of him, but we saw lots of Eva. Over the past year since our return from Mexico, we have spent time with Eva on four different occasions. Not nearly enough, but we are grateful. We learned before she visited that Eva's goal when she came to Minneapolis was to go to the beach, and she arrived with a large blue pail packed in her suitcase. Grandma Juju took Eva to Cedar Lake and Harry and I took her to Lake Harriet.

One night, after a busy day of grand-parenting, we put Eva to bed at 8:30 and tucked ourselves in at nine. I think we were more exhausted than she was. As long distance grandparents, we found our stamina lacking. I kept thinking how fun it would be to have this amazing little child live closer to us. Many of our friends have grandchildren who do live close by, and I am jealous. These friends have all developed grand-parenting stamina and fun routines with their grandchildren, creating deep bonds likely to last a lifetime. Some of these friends even jumped into babysitting their grandchildren on a daily basis, and some jumped out of doing so after a few months.

I had a very close relationship with my paternal grandparents while growing up. My Dad was an only child, and his four daughters became beloved grandchildren to his parents. My grandparents always made me feel that I was cherished and an important part of their lives. When my sister Cate and I were little, we had many routine things we did with our Grandpa and Grandma, things I remember fondly to this day. We ate hamburgers at the Town Talk Diner on Lake Street (which was on the National Register of Narrow Restaurants), and Grandma made us a special tomato soup at her house. We had overnight visits, and Grandma played Chutes and Ladders with my sister and me for hours. Grandpa took us sliding in the winter, and in the summer he took us to a long-gone little amusement park near Minnehaha Falls called Queen Anne Kiddie Land. The park included pony rides, and being the rather timid child that I was, I remember my Grandfather picking me up and putting me on a pony, not leaving my side for a moment as the ponies went round and round. My grandparents were the anchors in the tumultuous, scary sea which was my childhood. Their constant, predictable presence in my childhood lessened the ravages of life with an alcoholic parent.

My daughter's grandmother lived next door to us when Alexis was growing up. For me, living next door to my mother-in-law wasn't always easy, but Alexis loved having Grandma next door. Grandma Alice and Alexis had years of special meals, books, and movies they enjoyed together. They continue their close bond today. It wasn't until after my own mother, Lily, died that Alexis filled me with stories about what a wonderful grandmother my mom was. I couldn't have been prouder of my daughter when, at age 16, she insisted she wanted to speak at Grandma Lily's funeral and play on her violin the theme from Ken Burns's Civil War, the Shogun's Farewell.

The best part of grand-parenting is the knowledge that you can just enjoy your grandchildren, and not have the responsibility of raising them. All the perks, none of the hard work. Many grandparents however, for a multitude of reasons, have to raise their grandchildren, and that is very hard work. Talk about needing stamina! As a grandparent, you are bound to think you know things about parenting that your children don't know. The sorts of things you realize you've learned when you have years and years to look back over: hindsight I guess you would call it. You hope your children will not make the same mistakes you did as a parent, and you work hard to keep your mouth shut when you see your kids parenting differently than you did. You decide to give advice only if asked; and the odds of being asked are slim, which is probably a good thing. Each generation has it's own unique parenting challenges. As Hastings Banda, leader of the infamous Mau-Mau, once said: "We want the right to misgovern ourselves." Which, of course, he did get and made full use of.

One thing I do know about my own parenting is that I did not appreciate my daughter's childhood nearly enough. As a young parent, I always had so much to do and to worry about. When Eva was in her bath every night on her recent visit, I took the time to watch her delight in the bubbles and the toys I had bought her for the beach that she insisted were great when doubling as bath toys. We read lots of stories before she went to sleep, and Grandpa and I had the luxury of having lots of time on our hands to just enjoy her and, yes, spoil her. (She got french fries whenever she wanted them, which was every night.)

I have vivid and cherished memories of my daughter playing her violin on our front porch many an evening during the summer months while she was growing up. One night, when she was in high school, I remember standing in the kitchen listening to her play, and I found myself thinking I wanted these moments to go on forever. I cried then because I knew these days were soon to be over, and cry now when I think of her playing so beautifully out on that porch as the day went from dusk to darkness. The good thing was that I at least had the sense to know that this profoundly simple event was one to appreciate in the moment. Too many other wonderful moments went unappreciated. Grand-parenting gives you another chance to get things right.

And who knows, maybe, just maybe, I will someday have a grandchild who will play violin too. We don't have our own porch here at the condo, but there is a porch just below us which residents share. I don't think the residents here would mind an occasional summer concert played by our grandchild. And if they do mind, well, too bad for them. I will be listening from my window two stories up with tears in my eyes.

Blessed are those who are lucky enough to be grand-parents, no matter the distance.

Not so gently...

When I was in my 30s and 40s, I belonged to a health club in Eden Prairie called Flagship. This was a fancy club with all sorts of posh amenities like warm towels, fancy soaps and lotions, and dressing rooms that made you feel like you wished your house could be as nice. Those were the days when workout attire was posh as well, and women at Flagship arrived in expensive, colorful leotards with matching sports bras and tights. The aerobics classes were very popular and the goal was to sweat long and hard while looking stylish.

My favorite aerobics class back then was rebounding. Rebounding was simple: you bounced on a mini-trampoline for an hour as music blasted. The instructor, wearing her little microphone attached to her colorful outfit on her amazing figure, encouraged you to lift those knees higher and higher. You not only bounced sky-high wishing your legs could look like hers, you found yourself high on endorphins very quickly. After a few years, the club called Flagship got rid of the rebounding class because people kept flying off and breaking their ankles. My heart broke when they did this. I dropped my club membership, saved a bundle of money, and took up the inexpensive sports of walking, biking, or cross country skiing around Lake Harriet, a few blocks from my house. I used to joke that I should have my ashes dumped in Lake Harriet because I have gone around it so many times.

Today, the club Harry and I belong to is not posh by any means, but it does have the advantage of being a five-minute drive from our condo. It is inexpensive, and you have to bring your own towels. I tried Pilates and Spin classes for a few months when we joined LA Fitness a year ago and then the arthritis hit and I had to change course. We had a wonderful personal trainer for several months, but Harry and I broke down physically when we returned from Mexico, and Joe had moved on to a better paying job. We spent several months on the couch nursing our aches and pains. Harry had taken a bad fall playing racquetball with his dear friend Brian, (or boy friend, as Brian's wife Vicki might refer to the relationship), and I had come down with an arthritic neck and knee. (By the way, tonight we're cooking fancy Italian from the cookbook Ivan and Joanna gave us for Christmas, in honor of Brian and Vicki's 25th wedding anniversary: congratulations, y'all. By the time they reciprocate, Harry will be in his mid-80s, and they'll have to make porridge!) After a few months, we decided it was time to get up off the couch. We now have been training twice a week for two months with a young woman named Alexandra, and I swim or use the elliptical machine or treadmill another two days each week. Harry walks on water: a secret gift that, he has decided, it is now time to reveal to the world (though I've always known that about him).

Alex is in her early twenties and her positive personality and knowledgeable style have been a true blessing at this time in our lives. Finding the motivation to exercise is extremely difficult, but knowing Alex is expecting us gets us out the door. Alex seems to have a lot of older clients, and she told Harry her parents, who are in their early 60s, do strength training every week. She is gentle and kind but tough as nails. I find myself doing exactly what she tells me to do even though it is so hard. In the two days following a 30-minute session with her, I experience pain in muscles I never knew I had. Swimming on the days I don't work-out with Alex helps with those aching muscles. My chiropractor told me swimming is the best exercise for arthritis. The reality is you have to keep moving even when you have arthritic pain. Not always the easiest thing to do.

In my thirties and forties, my exercise goal was to lose weight and look good in those colorful exercise outfits. Now, a couple of decades later, my goal is just to keep moving. How things change! My exercise attire is all black because it helps you look thinner, and it is anything but stylish. In fact I look pretty frumpy-dumpy and I couldn't care less. On a bad day when it is difficult to move toward my goals, I summon some motivation by reminding myself that I have two maternal aunts who are close to ninety and still going strong. Neither of them has arthritis, but I may have their longevity genes. The thought of being able only to sit in a chair for a decade, or more like Harry's mom who has arthritis in her knees and is unable to walk, scares me to death. How would I get out to go shopping?

Everyday movements have become easier now. Just getting up off the floor without help or putting on my shoes without pain is a major accomplishment. Even on the days when the last thing I want to do is swim or workout with Alex, I do it because I know what will happen if I don't. Once I get to the club and start to work out, those endorphins kick in and I have a lot less overall pain. The arthritis hit me fast and hard and I figure I have to hit back just as fast and hard or it will take me down.

I am also, as my father used to say, "living better through chemistry." I have searched the web and talked with my doctor, chiropractor, and future son-in law Curtis, the health guru, about medications that may help. I am now taking almost as many pills a day as Harry. I am also drinking alkaline water. Curtis and my Cabo friend Liz believe less acidity is a key factor to combating your body's natural tendency to deteriorate. Actually, only one of the pills I take is prescription. The others capsules I swallow each day are over the counter: fish oil, flax oil, glucosamine/chondroitin, B-Complex with vitamin C, and calcium with vitamin D-3 suggested by my chiropractor. I now wear only shape-up shoes which improve my slumping posture and seem to help to stabilize my arthritic neck. I bought a contour pillow that seems to help too. I hope my exercise regime is helping the muscles in my leg prepare for the inevitable knee replacement that so many of us baby boomers will be facing. Getting old is a lot of work!

If nothing else, I am not settling into that easy chair or onto that couch without a fight, or as Dylan Thomas said, "do not go gently into that good night." Lake Harriet may get my ashes someday, but those ashes will be from an old, but toned body.

PS. I know I'm old because I talk so much about my health!