Guinea Pig Mitzvah

It's hard to be sure when you're doing the right thing most of the time, especially when you teach. You know, the moments when you are pretty sure you're doing the best thing for the child, and the child is screaming "This stupid class is ruining my life!"? Those moments. But I feel fairly sure that by the guinea pig I did a mitzvah, and that's a good feeling.

The guinea pig entered my life yesterday at about four o'clock, when I wandered into a conversation between Mrs. Trumbeldor and Mr. DiMarco, the dean of discipline. Here is what had happened:

Mr. DiMarco's father-in-law, under the influence of what, we are not sure, decided that it would be a cool idea to get guinea pigs for all of his grandchildren. He has three children who have so far produced offspring, so he bought three guinea pigs, and began to deliver them. I don't know what kind of reception he got at the other homes, but when Mr. DiMarco was shown the guinea pig he was firm (if incorrect). "That's a rat," he said. "We do not have rats in my home."

I should mention that Mr. DiMarco is a bit of a clean freak. You know those little Zen fountains you can get for your office? His runs a 25% bleach solution. His office is jammed with potpourri, essential oils, Febreze, you name it. Not a rodent man. He refused to keep the guinea pig. "Why doesn't it stay at your house?" he asked his father-in-law. "That way the children can play with it when they come over."

"Hell no," said his father-in-law. When I entered the picture, the guinea pig was in the garage at Mr. DiMarco's home, since it was not permitted in the people areas, and he was insisting that he would turn it loose in the hills behind his house.

Mrs. Trumbeldor and I put a stop to that right quick. "Bring it into the school," we said. "We'll find a home for it." Mrs. Trumbeldor had already talked to Perl, who might be willing to take the guinea pig home. I promised that I and the Fella would take the pig for some time if needed. We threatened him with the SPCA if he didn't bring the pig out of the garage and let it stay in the warm house overnight.

Today the guinea pig and its cage and accessories were brought to Mrs. Trumbeldor's office. Cute little guy, all black with orange streaks, which we thought might appeal to Perl, whose hair is approximately the same colors. But she wasn't sure about keeping it, and the day wore on (and the guinea pig spent about an hour sitting in the lap of our biology teacher, being groomed and petted), and I decided to take matters into my own hands.

"Does anyone want a guinea pig?" I asked in the locker room, as the freshmen girls swarmed around me. "Go see Mrs. Trumbeldor if you might want to adopt a guinea pig."

By four o'clock, the guinea pig was on its way off-campus, in the capable hands of Mushkie.

I learned later that Mr. DiMarco, concerned about the state of the guinea pig's cage had taken it apart, cleaned it with bleach, then lemon juice, put the pig back inside, then burned the gloves and shirt he wore for this operation.'

I hope the pig will be happy at Mushkie's. I certainly think it had a narrow escape when it comes to Mr. DiMarco.

Today, my students learned the word 'dexterity'

Lights Out

So, yesterday the lights at St. Dymphna's abruptly went out for about two hours, due to amazing stormy weather.

I had an 80-minute study hall during that time, during which I fielded complaints from disappointed teenagers who had assumed that the power going out meant they could take the day off. (The Balabusta was also a little disappointed.)

"How can they make us stay here?"

"The heaters are off!"

"Why can't we just go home?"

"Can I call my mom and ask if I can go home?"

"What about lunch?"

"I won't be able to heat up my food!"

"Do you realize that no one who didn't bring lunch is going to get to eat?"

(After the principal assured us that the cafeteria kitchen runs on gas, and hot lunch would be available...)

"Oh, so we have to eat that food that's been rotting in the refrigerator, huh?"

After the complaints died down, there was a period of quiet, and then Yaakov turned to me. "What if the building catches fire?"

I blinked. "We would evacuate the building according to plan."

"And go where?"

"Outside. To the parking lot. Like the plan says."

"In the RAIN?"

Now, it's coming down pretty good at this point. "Yes, in the rain."

"That's stupid!"

"What would you suggest, Yonkie?"

"I'm not leaving the building if it's RAINING."

"OK, Yonkie. You're sixteen, you can choose to stay here and die of smoke inhalation if you so choose. I will be exiting the building and taking your more sensible classmates with me."

"We should go home."

I love teenagers.

The Dark is Rising

Last night, I finally got around to seeing The Seeker, a film adaptation of Susan Cooper's young adult fantasy novel, The Dark is Rising. I am a longtime Cooper fan, and highly recommend the books. The Dark is Rising is part of a series that also includes Over Sea and Under Stone, Greenwitch, The Grey King and Silver on the Tree, based on British folklore and Arthurian legends.

The Seeker is not bad at all. I was worried when I learned the protagonist was now American rather than English, but the movie itself is set in England, and I think the change was made simply to accomodate the star's own accent. I enjoyed it a lot, and can see why it was made now. I imagine that this might be an appealing storyline for Harry Potter fans, and hopefully it got some of them interested in the books.

Some Pros:

1. It looks beautiful. The English countryside is used to good effect. The film is visually very lovely.

2. Since much of the plot revolves around Will, the Seeker, being the seventh son of a seventh son, he has a large and rather interesting family.

3. The Old Ones, the semi-immortal Druidic order Will was born into, are hilarious as a series of odd older English village folk.

4. In the original series, Will's powers manifest when he turns eleven, in the movie this has been rolled forward to fourteen. I think this make the character's behavior and abilities seem far more realistic.

A few quibbles:

1. OK, OK, I get it. He's going through puberty. The telekinetically dancing butter knife between two salt shakers was still a bit over the top, symbolically speaking.

2. The addition of a seductive older girl who's in league with the Dark Rider adds nothing (except to point out the puberty bit), and is so cliched it makes your teeth hurt. It should be illegal for a sinister fantasy bad guy to have a minion with no back story who he addresses contemptuously as 'Witch!'. It should also be illegal for the temptation he offers this minion to be eternal youth--and of course, when she fails to seduce Will, and take the movie's magical McGuffin from him, she is immediately punished by becoming old, and claw-y and un-hot. There is no excuse for this nonsense.

3. The addition of a complex back-story about the mysterious disappearance of a twin brother adds nothing. In the book, the child simply died young, which complicates the plot much less, and adds a touch of real tragedy.

4. Similarly, after one of the Old Ones has apparently died, to his friend's obvious deep sorrow, and their leader solemnly tells Will 'our enemy is merciless', he just sort of pops up again after the final battle. Great. The stakes are so incredibly high, that...no one can actually die fighting for them? Undercuts a good plot point.

Other than that, very good, and extremely creepy in a feel-good, happily ever after way.

Back To School

Back to school, with a new class (taken on from a teacher who is now on maternity leave), and great plans.

Yesterday, we had a staff retreat, and I heard the story of how the Salesian Order first arrived in the United States. (St. Dymphna is a Salesian school). Unlike most religious orders, the Salesians didn't start in the East, their first project in the U.S. was San Francisco's North Beach, where they founded SS Peter and Paul church.

First, of course, they had to get there. Apparently, sometime in the 1890s, a young Italian immigrant wrote to the Salesian order, asking if Salesians would come to America and begin schools here. He received a letter back from the head of the order, letting him know that five Salesians would be arriving in New York shortly--and that he was in charge of getting them to San Francisco. When they arrived, the young man bought train tickets and accompanied the Salesians west, eventually becoming a brother in the order.

Sounds like a Catholic version of "The Frisco Kid", doesn't it?

Fun and Games With Hamasniks

On Sunday, having thoroughly rested up, I headed to Union Square, to be a counterprotester against the pro-Hamas demo happening there.

Specifically, it was supposed to be candelight memorial service, to mourn those killed during Operation Cast Lead, and you sort of feel bad counterprotesting a memorial service. Until you show up, and notice the vile anti-Semitic signage, and the chants of "From the river to the sea", and QUIT standing happily out with their banner, and the paper-mache puppets, and you realize that this isn't a memorial service, this is another dang Hamas rally.

The opposition had the steps leading into Union Square, corner closest to the Powell Street BART, so we lined up on the opposite side of the street, streaming past Max Azria, Victoria's Secret, and the Westin St. Francis, which happened that day to be flying the flag of Saudi Arabia, just to make everything completely deranged.

A fairly low-key evening, really. Cold. Me clutching a sign with a message about gay Palestinians in one hand, and one with the faces of children killed in Sderot in the other, singing "Oseh Shalom" and stamping my feet. Assorted Japanese tourists took pictures--I suspect that we have ended up in many a photo album, as an example of real American protestors. We wound up around six o'clock.

One thing I have not entirely worked out is how to deal with the people who drive by in the stalled traffic in SUVs, waving Palestinian flags and screaming at you, when they roll down the back windows and encourage their small ones to do likewise. I am torn, between stony-faced "Am Yisrael Chai!" yelling, and smiling and waving at the children. Hard to do both, especially when both hands are full.

Meanwhile, Code Pink is still stalled in Cairo, although apparently a group of them are to be let through.

Overcoming Speechlessness

I notice that Alice Walker has reposted to her blog an essay entitled "Overcoming Speechlessness: a Poet Encounters "the horror" in Rwanda, Eastern Congo, and Palestine/Israel". I had thought to write something about this essay when I first read it, but I put it aside. Other matters were pressing, and, well, I didn't know where to begin. But now it's back, and rather than grinding my teeth, I'm overcoming my own speechlessness and saying something, hardly everything there is to say, about it.

Beginning:

It's hard to know how to begin to tackle this enormous, sprawling, hateful and clueless essay. Maybe at the top, where there is a picture of Walker posing with "Hamas Sister, Huda Naim, Member of Parliament, and Mother of five children". Maybe just a piece at a time, picking out a piece or two that got my Irish up.

Walker begins the essay with an account of meetings and travels in Africa. She begins with the stories of women in Rwanda and Congo who have survived things that make you want to scream to think of them. And then, she brings us to her understanding of Israel:

Like most people on the planet, I have been aware of the Palestinian-Israel conflict almost my whole life. I was four years old in 1948 when, after being
subjected to unspeakable cruelty by the Germans, after a "holocaust" so many future disasters would resemble, thousands of European Jews were resettled in Palestine. They settled in a land that belonged to people already living there, which did not seem to bother the British who, as in India, had occupied Palestine and then, on leaving it, helped put in place a partitioning of the land they thought would work fine for the people, strangers, Palestinians and European Jews, now forced to live together.

Does the willful ignorance take away your breath yet? The "holocaust" in quotes, which doesn't reflect past treatment of Jews but 'future' disasters, the European Jews who passively "were settled" there? The ignorance of the history of Zionism, of the thriving communities of Jews already living in the land, working and living on land they owned? The communities of Jews living in what is now Israel, since Ottoman times or before? The people who came during the ninteenth century, and the first half of the twentieth, to build a country? The non-European Jews who came after the war--oh, Alice, tell me why you think they came from countries they had lived in since the Babylonian Empire was a going political power, lands like Iraq and Egypt? That's not to even bring up the Jewish people's connection to and presence on this land going back to the Bronze Age, which I'm sure Alice doesn't take into account at all.

So this woman knows nothing, nothing at all, about Israeli history, and yet she is going to write an essay about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From the heart, one supposes.

So many Jews.

Alice wants you to know about all the Jews, seeking justice, who went to Gaza with her. This includes:

A woman in her late fifties or early sixties stood at the front of the bus, as we passed donkey carts and Mercedes Benzes, and spoke of traveling to Palestine without her husband, a Jewish man who was born in Palestine. Several times they had come back to Palestine, renamed Israel, to see family. To attend graduations, weddings, and funerals. Each time they were held for hours at the airport as her husband was stripped, searched, interrogated, and threatened when he spoke up for himself. In short, because his passport was stamped with the place of his birth, Palestine, he was treated like a Palestinian. This Jewish husband sent his best wishes, but he could no longer endure travel in so painful a part of the world.

A Jewish man who was born in Palestine? How could that be, Alice? I thought they were resettled after the war by the Brits. Oh, never mind. I am supposed to believe that Israeli customs officials have never seen a passport issued to someone born in British Palestine before, and treat him like an enemy, because he is 'Palestinian'? Alice, sorry, but this is BS. Your ignorance of the country you see as the stronghold of racism and discrimination is leading you to swallow bubbemeisehs.

Let me tell you another story, and ask why you think this man's wife was not on the bus with you. The grandfather of a woman I know used to go every year, by train, to British Palestine, to pray at the Tomb of the Patriarch. It's a long train ride from Baghdad to Hebron, but he went every year, and then he prayed, not at the Tomb itself, because Jews were not allowed inside, but from the outside, as close as he was permitted to the shrine itself. His children and grandchildren now live in Israel and the United States, because within a decade of the founding of the State of Israel, Iraq was no longer a safe place to live as a Jew. Alice, did your guides introduce you to anyone who could tell you a story like this? Why do you think this man's wife, or his daughter, were not on your bus to tell their stories?

Rubble.

And she describes Gaza, and she asks: If children are not safe playing in their schoolyards, where are they safe?

And I think of pictures of children dead in Sderot, and I wonder at this woman's inability to see more than one snapshot of a conflict.

May God Protect You From The Jews

Alice encounters an old woman in Gaza:

I gave her a gift I had brought, and she thanked me. Looking into my eyes she said: May God protect you from the Jews. When the young Palestinian interpreter told me what she’d said, I responded: It’s too late, I already married one.

What a moment of solidarity, between the Palestinian woman and the leftist American novelist. A racial slur. Beautiful. But of course, Alice has a reason:

I said this partly because, like so many Jews in America, my former husband could not tolerate criticism of Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinians. Our very different positions on what is happening now in Palestine/Israel and what has been happening for over fifty years, has been perhaps our most severe disagreement. It is a subject we have never been able to rationally discuss. He does not see the racist treatment of Palestinians as the same racist treatment of blacks and some Jews that he fought against so nobly in Mississippi.

I wonder, Alice, if that might be because you've never bothered to learn the true history and the more complicated stories, and when you hear that from him, you turn off your ears and close your heart. But, no, clearly the ethnic slurs are justified.

I'm being mocking here because I don't know how else to respond. The sheer, stupid, self-justifying ugliness in this passage stopped my heart for a moment.

It's the pretension of awareness that gets to me. The self-anointing as struggler in a cause seen out of context, seen with no historical understanding, or knowledge of the broader world. The photographs with the Hamas 'Sister', with no understanding of what Hamas is, what they have done, who they are. The justifications for everything. The unwavering willingness to be the latest poor dumb American to come along and not look for any hidden truth or moral ambiguities.

May I never have to overcome speechlessness when it comes to lies and ignorance like this.