Teeny Manolo

Back in the sepia-toned, bell-bottomed days of the Seventies when this documentary was shot, Langley was a lovely village surrounded by stables and farms, three-quarters of an hour’s leisurely drive outside of Vancouver. Now it is a strip-mall-encircled bedroom community an hour’s infuriatingly tense drive outside of Vancouver with, improbably, stables and farms still interspersed between SUV dealerships.

And this is the Langley School Music Project, a public school initiative by Hans Fenger, a teacher in the system. Just another public school teacher.

In the early 70s, Vancouver musician Hans Fenger decided to get a real job. His girlfriend was pregnant, and he couldn’t raise a family on earnings from club gigs and guitar lessons. He got a teaching certificate and a job in the Langley school district.

Here is some great analysis from The Delete Bin:

The recordings were literally a school project, headed up by music teacher Hans Fenger based in Langely B.C (just up the road from where I’m writing this), and incorporating 60 students who sang and played percussion instruments on songs which included David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, Paul McCartney & Wings’ “Band on the Run”, the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows”, and the Eagles’ “Desperado”. The record polarized opinion. Some said that the takes on the songs create a sort of ghostly, otherworldly effect, while others denounced it as sounding amateurish and very “school assembly” in delivery. Perhaps it’s their origin which makes these recordings so compelling. Fenger had this to say about the project and the kids who created it:

“I knew virtually nothing about conventional music education, and didn’t know how to teach singing. Above all, I knew nothing of what children’s music was supposed to be. But the kids had a grasp of what they liked: emotion, drama, and making music as a group. Whether the results were good, bad, in tune or out was no big deal — they had élan. This was not the way music was traditionally taught. But then I never liked conventional ‘children’s music,’ which is condescending and ignores the reality of children’s lives, which can be dark and scary. These children hated ‘cute.’ They cherished songs that evoked loneliness and sadness.”

And now, click on to see (and hear) the kids:
(more…)

The other day I read a quote from Matthew Broderick about his son with wife Sarah Jessica Paker, James Wilkie.  James, he said, was a big Barack Obama fan.

And hey, that’s fine.

But, James Wilkie is a few months younger than my own son, and yet he has an opinion about a presidential candidate?  And not even one who has clinched his party’s nomination?  It sounds to me like someone is picking up on some dinner conversation.

I think it is imperative that parents be politically active and aware.  That they vote.  That they take their kids with them when they vote.  In fact, I would say that if you don’t do these things, then you are short-changing your child out of a valuable education.

However, I have purposely not spoken to my son about any of the presidential election goings-on because I think it is still a wee bit too complicated.  He knows that we have a president and a (supposedly) representative government.  He knows about laws to protect people and animals and property, and I figure that since I have shown him “I’m Just a Bill” on YouTube, he is way ahead of the average American in terms of knowledge of the political process.

But super-delegates, gas tax cuts, healthcare reform, education reform, the historical candidacies of the two Democrats, I think that there is time enough for all that.  Let my five year old cut open a box and pretend it’s a boat, not worry if the Republican candidate is too old. 

Besides, I think if you asked the Munchkin who should be president, I’m afraid he would wholeheartedly cast his vote for Scooby-Doo.

Hmmm, maybe he’s got something there.

(And, apologies to all who suffered through the technical problems! It’s all better now!)

Yesterday, after battling a 102 fever and various other bodily indignities over the weekend, I was faced with one of the ultimate tests of motherhood.

Could I, after eating approximately three and a half pieces of bread (no crust, please!) over the course of two days, drag myself out of bed and get the Munchkin to school?

The short answer?

No.

The long answer?

When a five year old jumps on your bed and takes the covers off of you, you would have to be comatose to not react in some fashion.  So, I steeled myself to the fact that I needed to get this boy to school.  Not out of some altruistic educational principle, but just to get him out of my hair for the next three hours. 

So I trudged into the kitchen to make him his oatmeal, wishing that I could also partake of some type of sustenance without my stomach protesting in various sorts of ugly ways, and sat at the table watching him eat.

And that was as far as I could go.

There is no tale of internal fortitude that enabled me to get him ready, myself ready, and then drive him to school.  That I dug deep down and found the strength do to what needed to be done for the good of my child. There is no heartwarming fable with a happy ending of how a good mother will always get her child to school, regardless of whatever physical ailments she is suffering from.

You will have to go elsewhere to find that type of tale.  

Over here, there is just the story of a mom with the best of intentions who winds up passed out on the couch while her kid watches Scooby-doo and plays Webkinz.

Good times, my friends.  Good times.

It was the worst experience that I could ever imagine going through as a mother,” said one West Hollywood mom… “Of course I broke down and started crying. I threw up. I had diarrhea. I locked myself in the closet and drank myself into oblivion. I felt like I failed my kid.”

I know that you are thinking to yourself, what the hell caused that type of reaction? Was her child mauled by a wild bear? Maimed in an entirely preventable accident? Or perhaps walking too close to a cliff and fell off, resulting in bodily injury? Did they have a disease which she blames herself for missing the symptoms?

No my friends, it was worse than that.

Much, much worse.

Her child just so happened to be wait-listed for kindergarten.

I know, I know.

Don’t worry.

I’ve got enough hankies for all of you.

In a nutshell, that is what an “eminent biologist/naturist” EO Wilson said at at the Aspen Environmental Forum.

Well, Mr. Wilson, we’re even worse when we have PMS.

Not one to be above some hyperbole, Mr. Wilson was trying to encourage his audience to think about how our current society, with its advances in technology and fear of children running around unsupervised, has made our children disconnected from nature.  In theory, this leads to a society that will care less about nature than previous generations.

While I agree that we are moving toward more structure in our children’s lives via classes and playdates, I think the death of the appreciation of nature has been greatly overexaggerated. 

I don’t have to force the Munchkin outside, he loves being outside.  There is all this hand-wringing about how computers and video games are ruining our kids, but my son loves nothing more than playing in the mud.  I wish I was kidding.  Given the choice to watch Scooby Doo or go out and dig in his alloted spot in the planter, he will choose the digging every single time.  He loves the beach and just today was complaining that we haven’t been in so long. 

I happen to think that children have an innate connection with nature.  I don’t know any mom who purposely keeps their kid cooped up in the house all day.  In fact, it is exactly the opposite.   It might be because of where I live, but I don’t that’s all of it.

While I understand that Mr. Wilson was trying to make a point, I really think he is selling us moms short.

Or, maybe he is simply trying to pull a classic mom ploy.  Hands off the guilt trips, Mr. Wilson, they’re all ours!

At a certain point, you know, one has to conclude it no longer matters.

If only. Oh, if only. This little baby is my dream machine. And they could have a right-wing version with an AI simulation of William F. Buckley for the playoffs. Gore Vidal, William Kristol and Naomi Klein modules! I can see it all now! I could sell a million of them! Soooooo much more practical than silly old spelling bees!

Oh, who am I kidding? What’s the market for a game teaching rote memorization of routine tasks versus the ability to conduct logical debate with philosophical opponents at an elevated level? There goes my business plan, now where did I put the gin?

Voice of GenX (sorry, Douglas Coupland) McSweeney’s genius and 826Valencia founder Dave Eggers talks (for nearly half an hour) about engaging with the public school system. Lengthy, but worthwhile.

Somehow, it just seemed topical. For some reason.

Ah, teachers. Who’d be one? Like nursing, it’s a career path of critical importance to society, yet vastly undervalued both in public prestige and in the critical area of renumeration. That’s how you spell it, right? “Renumeration.”

What can I say? I was homeschooled as a toddler. Then public schools. Then hippie boarding school where they told my mother “Raincoaster doesn’t come to class. She sits in the hall and reads books. But they are very good books, so we’re giving her an A.” So there’s lots of blame to go around.

In any case, I’d like to share with you the case of United States District Judge Samuel B. Kent, a man who obviously paid attention in school. It should warm the very cockles of any underappreciated teacher’s neglected heart to know that out there, somewhere, perhaps in the back of class, perhaps hidden behind that big Samoan kid in the third row, there may be a Samuel B. Kent of her own, a student who not only listened in class, but who learned, and that profoundly.

Watch the master at work (via Metroblog):

Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact — complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words — to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions.

With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor’s edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins…

And concludes:

At this juncture, Plaintiff retains, albeit seemingly to his befuddlement and/or consternation, a maritime law cause of action versus his alleged Jones Act employer, Defendant Unity Marine Corporation, Inc. However, it is well known around these parts that Unity Marine’s lawyer is equally likable and has been writing crisply in ink since the second grade. Some old-timers even spin yarns of an ability to type. The Court cannot speak to the veracity of such loose talk, but out of caution, the Court suggests that Plaintiff’s lovable counsel had best upgrade to a nice shiny No. 2 pencil or at least sharpen what’s left of the stubs of his crayons for what remains of this heart-stopping, spine-tingling action.

In either case, the Court cautions Plaintiff’s counsel not to run with a sharpened writing utensil in hand — he could put his eye out.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Selah.

Last week’s poll regarding organic food found 35 percent of you buying organic as often as you could fit it into your budget, while 27 percent bought it as often as possible, depending on what type of food.   A total of 19 percent eschew buying organic altogether.  Altogether a fascinating little snapshot of people’s food-buying habits, if I do say so myself.   And I do, so there.

Since there was quite a big dust up last week over my homeschooling post, I thought I would address the topic in today’s poll. There were wide-ranging opinions regarding why people choose to homeschool, and I really wanted to find out perceptions about homeschooling from a larger portion of the population.  Not that my polls are huge, but I have a feeling they reach a fairly good cross-section of people. 

more at twiigs.com…