Recently in Politics Category

I lived in Massachusetts for a while, but that was in the college and post-college years, when I wasn't paying attention to--well, to much of anything, actually. Because I never thought of Teddy Kennedy as "my" senator in those years--and because I've never been one of those people who pays much attention to the whole Kennedy legend thing, the fact that I start to cry every time I read about Teddy in in the paper totally surprises me.

A facebook friend, who lives in Massachusetts, eulogized Kennedy quite beautifully in her status update: she said she owes Kennedy the Cape Cod National Seashore, the paid leave she got when she gave birth to her two children, and the ongoing dignity of her marriage (to another woman).  Seems to me to sum it up quite neatly: the environment, the family, the individual.  Her post also made me cry; I seem to have an inexhaustible pool of tears these days.

Truth be told, I suppose my tears weren't entirely for Teddy. The thought of losing a parent has been hovering dangerously close this summer, as my mother got ready for her heart surgery earlier this month.  She came through her operation with the proverbial flying colors and is already home--but the memory of how she looked when she woke up in ICU after the operation reminds me of her mortality--and how completely unprepared I am for her to shuffle off the coil. The quality of care she received at the Cleveland Clinic stunned us all--in ICU each nurse tends to only two patients; every cardiac patient moves to a private room after ICU; every cardiac patient is attended by a veritable squad of doctors, nurses, therapists, and god knows who else. I suppose that Kennedy, in the months after his diagnosis, received care as good as that and probably better...which of course raises the question of what would happen to the rest of us, if, god forbid, we are diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.

We all hope, don't we, that the phrase "life-threatening illness" never enters our lives, that it stays confined to news reports and melodrama; that we never sit staring at the  table wondering how this happened to us.  One moment, you know, you're going along all Teddy K., bipartisan and feisty, and the next moment whap, brain tumor; whap, you're in a wheelchair; whap, you're in a flag-covered coffin in the Kennedy Library.  Whap whap whap.

Friends of my mother's are reeling right now from their own whap: their wonderful daughter-in-law, A., was just diagnosed with what Teddy Kennedy died from. He had a level 4 cancer, hers is level 3. She's 51, happily married, and has two children, 14 and 12. Whap, whap, whap.

I know, of course, that evil sadistic horrible people get cancers and die but somehow, I never hear about them (perhaps the transformative power of death or near-death--I'm sure that the Kopechne family has a darker picture of Teddy than the current golden-hued portrait playing in the news). I think about A., and her family--who, luckily, have great insurance and lots of resources, all of which will be brought to bear on her illness. Or another friend, whose father has just  been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia...

Where do we find hope, in the midst of being buffeted by fate into the stone walls of disease and despair? The papers say that Kennedy surrounded himself with family, singing, religion; my mother, in the hospital, talked about her "magical band of allies"--her group of friends and family whose love, she claims, allowed her to make such a speedy recovery. (The phrase comes from a guided meditation CD she listened to in the week before her surgery.)  And perhaps  A. will defy augury and live for years--certainly anyone even peripherally touched by A.'s story is invoking all manner of magic and faith on her behalf.

In a collection of essays called The Woman at the Washington Zoo, the journalist Marjorie Williams writes about her own diagnosis of liver cancer, at the age of 43. Her doctor tells her she's been "struck by lightning," and gives her only a few months to live. Williams writes with heart-breaking eloquence about leaving behind her life--including her two young children--but she also talks about the "supple blessing of hope" that sustains her through her first cycles of chemotherapy. Williams does defy augury: she dies at almost 48, instead of 43. Her book seems to me the literary equivalent of Dickinson's description: hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul. 

So if a woman diagnosed with liver cancer can find hope, who am I to cry reading Teddy Kennedy's obit over my morning coffee? I think it's because of A.: I hear the whap of fate, smacking someone who should be much further back in death's line and I realize, with bone-deep certainty, how unready I am to say good-bye to anyone in my "magical band of allies." Nope, thanks, rather not, not a good time for me, sorry, come back again in like sixty years.

I'm crying for Teddy Kennedy but I think, really, I'm crying because it's when confronted with death that we realize how much we love.

I love metaphors and I hate driving at night.

These two completely unrelated facts collided the other night when I was blinded by the blue-white glare of SUV headlights in my rear-view mirror.

You know the headlights I'm talking about: they're xenon headlights (known in the car biz as high-intensity discharge lights, or HIDs) and when they come barreling up behind you on the highway, it's hard not to feel like Karen Silkwood about to be run into a ditch. And if a set of these gleaming lights streaks towards you from the opposite lane, you'd better hope you're alone on your side of the road, because you're going to be momentarily blinded by the bluish glare.

I've tried all the things I was taught in my driver's ed class (back in the stone age, granted). I blink my headlights at the blindingly white oncoming lights, only to get more glare flicked back at me. If I flip my rear-view mirror so that I can't see the lights behind me, I can't see much else behind me either, which makes lane-switching pretty much a crapshoot - especially winding through the nonsensically skinny roads of lower Westchester.

The headlights illuminate (sorry, couldn't resist), a social contract dilemma: the headlights make driving safer for the person behind the headlights and less safe for the person in front of the headlights.  And here's where I veer off into the realm of the metaphoric: what are we to make of the fact that thousands and thousands of people think that their ability to see further and thus drive faster is more important than the general safety of everyone else on the road?

Of course, this metaphor, in my mind, gains further traction in the fact that these headlights aren't cheap: they can cost up to $1000 to install (or a bargain-rate $850 on a new Mercedes). So what we've got (cue vox populi) is a lot of rich people zooming around blinding those of us putt-putting along in old Subarus.

But wait, you say, if these bright headlights are really unsafe, wouldn't the government do something about that? Create headlight standards or installation regulations, or something?

Barring the fact that the government of the previous eight years didn't do much else other than zoom around insisting that their need to get where they wanted to go trumped everything else, let's examine how the National Highway Traffic Safety Authority (NHTSA) has handled this issue.
 
Back in 2001, NHTSA opened the subject of headlight glare for public comment; it then commissioned a report, which was published in 2003. In its summary, the report found that about 30% of respondents were "disturbed" by headlight glare. The authors of the study found that people were less bothered about headlight glare in months with increased daylight hours, and more bothered by headlight glare in darker months. An astonishing insight: when it's dark, headlights are more bothersome than when it's light.  Really a heckuva job, don't you think?

Reading this report did, at least, offer me a diagnostic term for my headlight frustration, which, according to the report's statistics, is shared by a large percentage of women 35-44. We are "glare-disturbed."

Glare-disturbed. It sounds somehow ... peri-menopausal, doesn't it?  You know, she's got hot flashes, dryness, and glare-disturb. 

Or perhaps flirtatious: She was at a bar and got all glare-disturbed by the cute man at the next table.

But in the automotive context, glare-disturbances seem not to warrant any action on the part of the NHTSA, which insists that, as yet, no accidents have been caused by these new-and-improved headlights. Another instance of a government agency deciding that the best strategy is to wait until there's a crisis to try and fix the problem. Right? Let's not do anything, you know, preventative, like simply mandate that headlights on SUVs be mounted lower than the rear-view mirrors of other cars, to name just one way to improve this problem?

Sorry for the rant - I guess I'm just glare-disturbed. In my xenon-induced fog, I forgot how violently Detroit reacts against any impositions of standards (seatbelts, airbags, fuel emissions, you name it).  Which may have something to do with why the auto industry execs are all walking around looking so glare-disturbed themselves, these days: the bright lights of their own extinction are bearing down on them.

Clearly I can't rely on Detroit or the NHSTA to fix my glare-disturbances, alas, so I've been forced to come up with my own solution: I'm going to use my stimulus money to buy a monster truck.

Vans. Love 'em or hate 'em, the van has roots in the US cultural imagination. There's the Mystery Machine, of course.

And Sammy John's classic 1974 ode to back-seat (back-of-van, actually) sex: "she's gonna love me in my chevy van and that's all right with me." 

 

and the less sexy but oh-so-practical mini-van (which my friend Celia described once as looking like a dust-buster, and she's totally right):

and now, the (former) head obfuscator of New York State Senate, Joe Bruno, adds this van to our collective consciousness: Bruno pimped out this van (not a Chevy, alas, thus depriving me of several bad-taste jokes) to the tune of about 50K: leather swivel seats, a conference table, probably red "in flight" lights and a wet bar, too. I knew a boy in my large midwestern high school who had a similarly tricked out set of wheels, although Steve's van had gold shag on the floor and halfway up the walls. Steve's primary source of income came from selling dope - and while I don't think that Bruno had the same revenue stream, you've got to wonder what Bruno was thinking when he decided it would be a good idea to create a smoke-filled backroom on wheels.

But on second thought, maybe that's genius: you get people in the van and simply refuse to stop driving until they agree to your latest plan to keep Albany tied in knots.

Maybe Bruno (and the NY Dems, who now apparently own the GOP's GMC) could lend this automotive back-room to Barack, who could use it first to drive over Judd Gregg (nothing fatal, just a broken knee or something), as payback for Gregg's total gotcha on the Commerce gig; and second, perhaps Obama could take Lindsey Graham et al. on a drive-by look-see, so that they could observe first-hand what happened to the country while they played second fiddle in Bush's Nero orchestra.

So Bruno spent more than what many New Yorkers earn in a year so that he could have a moving clubhouse for men devoted to the art of lining their own pockets in the name of their constituents.

Well, fine. What's done is done. Bruno's been indicted on corruption charges and obviously has no sense of how to Make a Vehicular Statement. I mean, we all know what Bruno, clearly, does not - something that millions of suburbanites have had to accept, with sinking hearts and dashed hipster dreams. That unless it's 1974 and you're Sammy Johns, there ain't nothing, nothing, that can make a mini-van into a Status Car. And if you think otherwise, then you've perhaps been riding for too long with my old friend Steve, in the shag-floored, wood-paneled, bong-equipped 1980 Ford Ecoline van.

A few days before my 45th birthday, I found myself doing it. Alone, in the bathroom, and not for the first time.

It's true: I was staring into the mirror, slowly smoothing my fingers across my forehead to see what I'd look like with Botox. I didn't really think I had that many wrinkles, until I'd pulled the skin taut and realized that, yep, should've been more vigilant with that sunscreen back in college, instead of slathering on baby oil and settling down on the tar-paper roof of my dorm with a tinfoil-covered record album under my chin to make sure that the sun hit every inch of skin.

From what I've read about Botox and other such "procedures," it seems that it's a bit like re-covering your couch: first you do just the couch, but then the couch looks so good that you notice the walls are dingy; so you do the walls and now the rug looks a mess...

I mean, if I were to shoot my forehead full of botulism, then what would I do with the hairline fractures appearing around my mouth? And if I fill those in with Restylane, what do I do with the delicate webbing around my neck? And below my neck? I shudder to think.  

It's one thing if my face were my fortune - if English professors could also earn lucrative spots shilling for Revlon. If that could happen, then maybe I'd contemplate needles in my face, a nip here and a tuck there, here a nip, there a nip, everywhere a nip-nip.

Thus you should understand that when I went to the dermatologist's office the other day, it was really and truly only to get some kind of cream for the little rash on my cheek that wouldn't go away. The office was, of course, filled with ads for various products that will erase the effects of aging, but what struck me most was a framed certificate of commendation hanging on the wall in the examination room. The certificate was from, like, the Institute of Botox or something, and certified his training in some advanced procedure. Here's the picture on the certificate:

Do you notice something about the woman's face? Right. She doesn't have one. She has features: nose, mouth, eyes, but there's nothing holding it all together. She's a blank, a cipher, airbrushed practically out of existence.

They say there's no truth in advertising, but I think this certificate unintentionally hits it right on the (perfectly coiffed) head: we can use "science" to "remedy" the aging process and, in the process, surgically strip our faces of what makes them ours: the record of our experiences, our failures, hopes, worries, dreams. I won't even mention the question of why we're so afraid of mortality that we're willing to inject poison into ourselves in order to defy the inevitable movement towards the grave; nor will I say anything about how our aging faces and bodies connect us to our parents (omigod! I have my mother's knees!)...nope, not gonna say any of that.

I am going to ask, however, if any of you have seen the posters for "He's just not that into you," which offers up an astonishing array of Hollywood faces:

So many chiclet-sized white teeth, so much shiny taut skin, such perfectly oval eyes set jewel-like under eyelids that don't droop... It's amazing - not their beauty, but the fact that, except for variations in hair color, all those people look the same: it's a big group of happy white people (apparently people of color do not experience romantic comedy the way white people do, with the exception, maybe, of Will Smith). All the individuality has been airbrushed out - but the airbrushing didn't happen just to the photograph itself. Now the airbrushing happens beforehand, in the doctor's office, where any flaw (real or perceived) can be magically whisked away. (On the movie poster Kevin Connelly has wrinkles in his forehead, but we all know that he's going to be the comic relief, so it's okay.)
 
Yes, I know, I can hear the protests: well-applied Botox just makes you look rested, revitalized; I don't feel my age so why should I look my age; if I feel better about myself with fewer wrinkles, why shouldn't I have some work done...

I don't have answers to those questions and I can't explain precisely why the Botox bonanza bothers me. Is it the overtones of Dorian Gray? Is it our relentless pursuit of physical perfection, regardless of the cost? Is it our symbolic rejection of previous generations?

Should I really be so afraid of getting wrinkles that I sleep only on my back, staring up at the ceiling, as a friend's dermatologist said to her, quite seriously. Are wrinkles really such an atrocity I shouldn't curl up around my husband or my favorite pillow and get comfy?

Or is this rant simply my own fear about being ignored by culture obsessed with youth? I get "ma'am" a lot these days - and it makes me feel like I should be in a wheelchair, or at very least bent over a walker.

Or maybe what bothers me is the hubris of thinking that we can airbrush away the passage of time, stop the wheels from turning; it's as if we're trying to reverse nature's progress, whitewash away the truth of our experiences.

And now - wait for it - a leap from beauty to the beast: the Bush years seem to me the embodiment of a plastic-surgery obsessed culture: eradicate the truth of experience, gloss over imperfection, erase any unpleasant fact, tug and twist and pull at anything even slightly out of alignment so that everything coheres into a happy-faced image.

Maybe now, in this new administration, we will become a country unafraid of the blemishes and age spots, brave enough to confront the truth about ourselves, and willing to look ourselves in the mirror without flinching - and without trying to smooth away the wrinkles. 

My mother sent me a birthday present. It's a photo of her two favorite Christmas presents: a life-sized cardboard figure of Barack, and the presence of her extended family. Our family is only rarely all together, but we all convened in Indiana this year: my French brother-in-law, my sister, their French-American daughter; my gay brother; my mother's African American second husband ; my husband, whose parents are Philippino and Parsi, and our children, who are pan-Asian by blood and New Yorkers by birth. And me, the midwestern New Yorker. And my mom, of course, the former Kenilworth debutante turned community organizer and ardent progressive political worker.

We're all standing on the deck of her house, surrounding Barack, who is wearing a Santa hat (we spent the entire Christmas week changing his headgear - Santa hat, scarf, visor, ball-cap). He looks right at home in the middle of our racially and ethnically mixed group.

That's the small snapshot of my family. Not in that picture are my dad in Florida (by his count, one of about twelve democrats in his small town) and, spread out over the country, my aunts and uncles and cousins, including a few cousins whose children have been adopted from Korea and Viet Nam. "Post-racial" becomes a much less abstract phrase when your children talk about their Filipina grandmother ("Lola") to the black man whom they call "Grandpa."

My family photograph sat on the coffee table looking at me while I watched Barack take the oath of office today, just after 12pm.  Did you notice that when he gave his inaugural address the sun gleamed off his flag pin, making it look like he was wearing some kind of sparkly sheriff badge? Yes indeedy, there's a new sheriff in town and he's gonna clean up Dodge City.

His speech, with its sober calls to responsibility and hard work, put elegant nails in the coffin of the Bush administration: he promised (among other things) that government will work in the light of day and that Constitutional principles will not be violated for the sake of expedience - ideas that, after the last eight years, suddenly sound brand-new.

The words that resonated most powerfully for me in that speech were little words: we, us, our. It wasn't a speech about Barack and all of HIS ideas and HIS accomplishments. His words cast a wide net, brought us all into the problem - and the solution.

My family, with its mix of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and family structure, embodies one aspect of the solution: it's hard to deny the rights of marriage to your brother; it's hard to see someone with brown skin as "less than" when that brown-skinned person is your husband, your stepfather, your child, your cousin - or your President.

Like I said in my last post - maybe it's all going to be okay. And that's not just the champagne talking.

Yesterday, Sunday, the day before MLK day, kids doing their best to harass one another into acts of violence (no pacifists growing up here, nosirree). We were listening to the broadcast of the "We Are One" concert on the radio, or at least I was listening to it until I started vacuuming. But when I turned the vacuum off and started winding up the cord to put the thing away, I heard Barack's voice addressing the thousands of people on the mall ... "no doubt that our road will be long, that our climb will be steep. But never forget that the true character of our nation is revealed not during times of comfort and ease, but by the right that we do when the moment is hard. I ask you to help me reveal that character once more, and together, we can carry forward as one nation..."

And damn if I didn't get all weepy, kneeling there on the floor winding up my vacuum cleaner cord. My kids stopped fighting long enough to stare at mommy - although when they saw that I wasn't injured, they went right back to their baiting and bopping.

Friends of mine are reporting a similar syndrome: a tendency, during this inaugural weekend, to get all vklempt utterly without warning. Some turn of phrase filters through the household noise; or a photo op catches the eye; or you suddenly remember - as a friend of mine said - that Voldemort is dead (and let's be clear here that by invoking he-who-must-not-be-named, we are referring to Cheney, not potus-the-doofus).

What is it? Why are we all suddenly, collectively, misty-eyed at the thought of the Obamas moving into the White House? Is the birth of the "Obama Presidency" the death of cynicism?

Remember when Jon Stewart, during the campaign, reminded his audience that it's okay to laugh at Barack?

Stewart is right, of course - I know we can laugh at Barack ... except so far he hasn't done anything particularly funny. Or jaw-droppingly illegal. Or breathtakingly ignorant. Or stunningly arrogant. Or wincingly embarrassing. Bush's eight years have been god's gift to cynics, comedians, and oil execs. The rest of us? mmm...not so much

What will we all do, those of us who have spent the last eight years being - variously - snarky, bitter, and terrified? What if our ability to believe can't extend beyond the ballot box? What if our feelings of patriotism, optimism, and civic pride have rusted from disuse? Are we really, really going to wake up and help this man do all that we've asked him to do? 

Yes. Yes, I think we will. Wake Up.  And for the first time in a long time, I'm not laughing at myself for feeling all do-goody and optimistic. My cynical self seems to be on holiday somewhere (Dallas, perhaps? Crawford?) and that too seems exciting: suddenly it doesn't seem hopelessly naive to think that maybe It's All Going To Be Okay.

The lines of the Whitman poem that head this blog seem oddly apropo for such a chaotic time of upheaval, renewal, and excitement: maybe in Barack we've found a leader "liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient" - a leader who yokes together disparate elements, who doesn't see the world in terms of either/or (with us or against us; good or evil) but in terms of both/and (black and white, national and global).

Tomorrow, as it happens, is my forty-fifth birthday (now Michelle and I are the same age. I know we could be BFF if she would just call me!) I plan to celebrate my arrival on the doorstep of middle-age by planting myself on the couch with the TV remote (going to watch the Obamas on every single possible channel); a really, really big box of kleenex; and perhaps just a dollop (or two) of champagne.

Birthdays 41 and 37 were significantly less exuberant occasions - but this one? What a gift. Would only that the symbolism had completely lined up and Barack were Prez 45, not 44. But I'll take it, regardless - and share this birthday gift with the rest of you. I will also share with you the birthday wish I'm going to make tomorrow night, when I blow out the candle on my cupcake: that Barack's second term ushers in my 49th year.

Next week is standardized test week in New York. 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders will spend two or three days taking the English Language Arts standardized test (the math test happens in March). Please circle which statements apply to these tests:

A.These tests measure student achievement
B.These tests measure teacher effectiveness.
C.These tests measure a school's overall performance.
D.These tests measure a principal's overall effectiveness.
E.School budgets may be influenced by how students perform on the test.
F.A principal may be awarded a bonus by how students in his school perform on the test.
G.Kaplan Test Prep has been awarded more than 73 million dollars in NYC school contracts in the last decade.
H.All of the above.

The correct answer is H - all of the above. Isn't it amazing that we've invented a measuring tool that can do so many things all at once?

Liam will take the third-grade ELA next week. Keep in mind, of course, that the third-grade scores don't impact the students other than as predictors of how third-graders might (might) fare on the fourth-grade test. The third-grade scores are used by the school to help measure "effectiveness." (But what does "effective" mean? If you're a teacher and your class scores well, does that mean you're a good teacher or that you've got a bunch of smarties in your class? Conversely, if your class does poorly does that mean you're a bad teacher? Isn't it more likely that the scores have to do with the alchemical combination of your teaching and the personalities of your students?)

Liam will spend two days next week answering multiple-choice reading comprehension questions. If the practice booklet is any guide, many of these questions are so badly written that even I can't quite figure out the right answer.  For instance, if you had to distinguish between "explaining" something and "describing" something, could you articulate precisely what the difference is between doing those two things? Would you expect a third-grader to know the difference?

These tests - and the industry that has grown up around test administration (including test prep) - are big business. If I were investing in anything right now, I'd be investing in testing companies. Millions and millions of dollars have been generated for companies like Kaplan and Princeton Review; millions and millions of dollars have been spent in NYC in order to gather the information generated by the tests and then to use that information to generate the incredibly unhelpful school report cards (there is a link on this page to the city-wide report card, in an excel spreadsheet). Let me know if you can deduce any useful information from these scores, other than that some schools scored higher and others scored lower. And while we're at it, let's look at this article, which suggests that higher-achieving kids are being short-changed in an effort to focus on increasing basic competencies.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for basic competency. I'm just not sure that standardized tests are a way to get us there. I've taught too many college kids who have respectable SAT scores, but who cannot write a coherent sentence, read an entire novel, or even compute their own GPA. The test, in other words, doesn't measure competency: it measures the kid's ability to take the test. (Read this article for a grim account of a Kaplan test coach's stint in the NYC public high schools...)

Malcom Gladwell, in a recent New Yorker article, talked about the difficulty of assessing teacher effectiveness, which is ostensibly one of the things measured by these standardized tests. But one of the reasons why it is difficult to measure teacher effectiveness is precisely because learning doesn't happen on a standardized chart: people learn in hops and skips, circles and loops, moving backwards, stalling, and then bounding forwards. We've all watched kids learn to read (or remember ourselves that moment when the words unlocked on the page) - they mutter and mutter and hurl the book across the room and then one day, BAM!, they're laughing to themselves about green eggs and ham.

Nevertheless, Liam has to take the tests. Do I tell him it's no big deal, that it doesn't matter? I don't want to say that because next year, the test will matter. In a piece of DOE cleverness, the scores on the fourth-grade tests are the scores used on entrance applications for sixth-grade. Yes, that's true. A test your kid takes in January of fourth grade will be used one year later to determine where she should go to school the following year (which is to say, almost two years after taking the test).  

But even if I were to tell Liam that his parents don't think tests like this accurately measure what he's learning, the teachers and administrators send the message that the tests are important, while at the same time trying to reassure the kids about this standardized sword dangling over their heads. Practice tests became the bulk of the homework about a month ago; all the students made "stress balls" in order to alleviate anxiety (Liam asked me if he was supposed to be nervous); and even the third-graders are taught relaxation skills in order to alleviate the stress produced by tests that are essentially, practice. Fourth and fifth graders are given (free of charge other than to taxpayers) Kaplan test-practice workbooks, although no one is really sure why fifth-graders take the test, other than as further fodder for the school's overall profile: low test scores can result in schools being closed, and high-performing schools can get money if they take in kids from low-performing schools.

Liam's school does seem to be sending a mixed message, but what else can they do? The reality is that the tests matter, if only for budgetary reasons; but at the same time, the tests (taking them and preparing for them) take away from what all the teachers consider "real" teaching time. For that matter, what message are we, as a society, sending to our kids by promoting these tests: do we really want our kids to think that the only thing that matters is "what's going to be on the test"?

We live in a society in which the lack of accountability on Wall Street and in the real estate markets has driven us to the brink of financial collapse; a society that looked the other way while the Bush administration routinely tampered with public documents (and the public trust) in order to further its own agenda and line its own pockets. (See the most recent issue of Vanity Fair  for an infuriating explanation - description? - of how the Bush administration dodged accountability).

Does anyone else see the irony in our least accountable president insisting on accountability in the schools?

How can anyone think that these tests will somehow "account" for what happens in the classroom? Can a series of tests solve the problems caused by overcrowding, under-budgeting, and bad planning? Can we really quantify "learning" the way we can count widgets on an assembly line? Can we measure knowledge like flour: thanks, I only need a half-cup of math today?

If only it were that easy. If only our public education system could be fixed with a number two pencil and a scan-tron sheet.

Imaginations can't be standardized - and to fix the system, we're going to need precisely the kind of creative thinking that can't be measured by the ELA, SAT, ACT, or any other acronymed booklet.

On Sunday, Nicholas Kristof's column addressed the "second most remarkable thing" about Obama's election: the country will welcome into the White House "an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual."

 

That's right, folks, a member of the professoriat has achieved the highest post in the land (and no, I don't mean the Presidency of Harvard, sorry Drew Faust).

 

Does Barack's election mean that it might start to be cool to be smart? Every fall, I teach groups of first-year honors students - kids who are complete over-achievers, who work hard, who spend hours in community service (not just at the holidays), who get terrific grades - and I always ask them if, in high school, it was considered cool to be smart. Almost to a person they shake  their heads, "no, no, no way." The kids who do say it was okay usually went to very small Catholic high schools, where the nuns had done such a number on the students that they all thought they were idiots - and thus there were no "smart kids" to ostracize. 

 

At the other end of the spectrum are those kids for whom doing well academically is seen as some kind of sell-out, some kind of betrayal of family or neighborhood or friends. I've worked with these kids and it's dreadful to watch them undercutting their own achievements because failure is more familiar than stretching towards something unknown.

 

Or maybe, additionally, Barack's election means that now professors should start being slightly more sartorially savvy. I mean, is there any logical reason that rumpled = intelligent? I know, I know, professors are too busy Thinking Serious Thoughts to avoid things like pleated trousers, "fun" ties, and bad shoes. Or maybe we're all too broke to upgrade our wardrobes with any regularity.

 

Kristof's column brought something else to mind, however, besides the possible smartification of the country.

 

It gave me a theme for the Barackian Presidency:

 

Bringing Brainy Back.

 

Think about it: both Barack and Justin Timberlake have graced the cover of Rolling Stone numerous times; both men espouse a Rat Pack fashion sensibility (skinny ties, narrow suits); both borrow heavily from a mixture of racial vernaculars, although doubtless Timberlake is the better rapper. And let's face it, they're both rock stars. 

 

Timberlake's pop song starts "I'm bringing sexy back/Them other boys don't know how to act" - and doesn't that, with one minor change, sum it up: Obama brought brainy back, and those other boys (and girls) don't know how to act?

 

Of course, the song itself, which lasts roughly four minutes, is composed of about forty words in total and makes some unfortunate references to slavery, shackles, and whips - not in the historical sense, mind you, but in another, uh...more intimate context. Clearly unsuitable for Inaugural Dancing.

 

But we're bringin' brainy back anyway, with or without that pesky final "g."

6:32AM, the day after election day.

"Mommy, Obama won, he won!" The same four little hands as yesterday, but this time chilly from already having gone downstairs for the paper before I was even awake.

The boys want to know the score, because of course if someone won, then there's a score. Once I'd gotten some coffee into me (don't I realize that I'm too old to start drinking champagne at 11PM? I guess one must suffer for history), I realized that there were, in fact, a whole lot of ways to answer that question:

• The electoral college score: 349 to 173 as of mid-morning, with North Carolina still uncalled.
• The voter rolls: more than 3 million first-time voters
• The international opinion meter: way higher than on November 3rd
• The national optimism meter: WAY higher than on November 3rd
• The correcting-history score: off the chart

Because I live in Manhattan, I could be pretty sure of encountering equally elated citizens this morning as I went around doing my errands after dropping the boys at their respective schools. (Okay, so Caleb has maybe just a little glimmer of a fever, but Mommy has Got Stuff To Do and it doesn't involve pushing a four-year-old around in a stroller all day.) At the grocery store, the farmer's market, Staples ... everyone had a little smile, and the "have a good day" exchanges seemed particularly meaningful.

For someone like me, who has a pretty cynical worldview (and okay, I'm often bitter, too, but without the guns and religion), what seems perhaps the most unreal about today is the emotion bubbling inside me. I think - dear god could it be? - I think I feel ... patriotism. Actual patriotism: pride about what my country represents, about what it did for itself last night, about the amazingly peaceful transition that just took place and that continues to unfold. Think about it: an entire regime has just been deposed without a single shot.

It's true: this liberal cynic feels patriotic, dammit, like maybe I should be wearing red-white-and-blue, or a flag pin or something. I am, frankly, amazed that my country, which so often takes pride in its xenophobia and ignorance, and which has for so long clung to narrow and parochial views of difference, managed to shake off its blinders and move forward towards something - dare we say it - that has the potential for magnificence?

Last night, in his amazing speech in Grant Park, Obama said "that's the true genius of America, that America can change." We needn't be trapped by tradition, or convention, or the bleaker parts of our own history. Let's revel in this particular change, shall we? Here's an image that will bring a smile: imagine Dubya trying to make that speech - no, not write that speech, we all know that's impossible - just trying to get his mouth around all those elegant, powerful words - those elegant, powerful ideas.

Before we left for school this morning, Liam and Caleb were working together (see? Barack does work miracles) on a lego fortress/castle/poison destroyer. Liam was sing-songing to himself as he worked: "we have a president and his color is black, we have a president and his color is black." Every now and then, Caleb would chime in "and blue!" because he's very excited about the Empire State building being lit up in Democratic blue tonight.

I guess you could say, then, that today, for a change, black-and-blue are the color of victory. 

6:44 A.M. Election Day 2008.

"Mommy, wake up, wake up." It's my typical alarm: four little hands patting me out of deep, luxurious, all-too-brief sleep. During the week reveille is between 6:22-6:46; on the weekends I get until the ripe old hour of 7.

I opened one eye, thought fast: "hey, guys, why don't you go downstairs to get the newspaper and check out the line at the polling place. It's election day." Our voting place is, conveniently, in a student lounge space in the back hall of our building; the boys always come with us to vote, usually in their pjs.

"ELECTION DAY! ELECTION DAY!" You'd have thought it was Christmas and birthday.

They stomped out of the bedroom, chanting "O-BAM-A! O-BAM-A! O-BAM-A!" and I heard them racing down the hall to the elevators, intent on scouting out our voting prospects.

Their enthusiasm was dampened by the line at the polling place (confession: we inadvertently cut the line, so what should have been a ninety minute wait was maybe 45 minutes.To all who waited in line around us: apologies).

We finally wedged our way into the voting booths - Husband with Caleb, me with Liam. I watched Liam pull the lever for an African American presidential candidate.

Will Liam remember this, when he's finally old enough to vote on his own? Will Caleb? What if they remember the Obama presidency with the same ruefulness with which I think about the first Clinton term?

Remember the heady thrill when Clinton was elected? I was at an election party with graduate student friends, all of us totally broke, but we scraped together our credit cards to buy celebratory champagne. And then over the next four - eight - years, that elation just dribbled away..  But I won't think about that now.

Instead, over the course of the day, I started to feel - well, almost giddy. Like Liam and Caleb this morning (before the line-waiting part)

We had to pry Liam away from the TV earlier tonight for bedtime - he was furious about having to go to bed before it was all over and I will be sorely tempted to wake him up if Obama wins.

Now it's ten o'clock and they've just called Ohio for Obama. So okay, I'm going to say it - when Obama wins.

Maybe our country really can do this, really can cast off the ugliness of the past eight years. When I see the 70,000 people crowded into Grant Park in Chicago, I want to cry. I'm sure I will cry before the evening is out - not just out of relief, but out of pride. Pride in the people of this country who waited in line for hours to vote, who worked and worked and worked to get this man elected. (Swivelheader writes about this too, very eloquently.) 

My mother is at a friend's apartment in Chicago, overlooking Millenium Park; she's planning to walk with her friends down to Grant Park later tonight, although she says she can hear the crowds from the apartment balcony. She's been an Obama supporter from his early days in Illinois and when she called me just now to exclaim over the Ohio thing, the phone practically vibrated with her excitement.

Some of my earliest memories are of canvassing with her on the North Side of Chicago; of going to "headquarters" to help stuff envelopes; of leaflets from this or that political campaign being piled under the dining table. Politics - good old-fashioned progressive politics - has been an integral part of her life as long as I've known her. And although I've never been as active in politics as she has, I'm hoping to give my children what she's given me: a firm belief that politics can be an honorable profession and that it does matter who runs - and who votes.