You Better Recognize

A few nights ago, I sat in a ballroom, decorated with festive lighting and crisp linen table cloths on the tables that filled the floor. I was there as part of the entourage of my principal who was accepting an award for her hard work and dedication at our school. No one asked me to speak on her behalf, but I would have gone on and on about all of her efforts to put together a committed staff and her perseverance through the tough years of rebuilding and digging ourselves out of program improvement. Did I mention that she bakes for us? Her double fudge cake alone would be worth district-wide recognition.
She wasn't the only one receiving an award that evening. Custodians, teachers, office staff, and nutrition specialists all had a chance to come up to the stage and get a moment in the spotlight. Since the administrators were given their awards, a lovely laser-etched crystalline monolith, I had a chance to listen to the stories of dozens of other school employees who were nominated by their colleagues and bosses, and applaud all the good work they do day in and day out. It made me reflect back on the feelings I had when my son's seventh grade teacher was selected as the county's Teacher of the Year. It made me happy to know that my son was getting attention from our county's best. It made me proud to know that one of my fellow teachers from just up the road was worthy of such an honor. And there was, I confess, a moment of jealousy. Just a taste of "what about me?"
That passed quickly, especially when it was backed up by the way my principal chose to use her moment at the microphone in accepting her award. She echoed the sentiments of so many of the rest of the recipients: "This award belongs to all of us. I couldn't have done it without my staff." And I knew that she meant it. It is the village that we keep hearing about. The one that makes it possible for three hundred and thirty kids to get fed, play, get cleaned up after, and learn one hundred and eighty days of the year. I don't need a trophy to feel good about that.
But the next morning, as I was biking to work, I passed a gentleman who I recognized only dimly. He might have been a parent or an uncle of a student I had years ago. He might have been a community member who volunteered with me at a school clean-up day. He nodded at me as I passed and tipped his coffee cup as a toast: "Teacher of the Year," he said. I didn't even know that I was nominated.

First Name Basis

Kids at my school ask me, "What's your real name?"
I tell them: "Mister Caven."
"No. What's your first name?"
"Mister."
And that's how we go. Every so often, one clever fifth grader figures out that if he read the staff roster that is posted in the office, they could know the first names of every adult on our campus, but those are few and far between. That's okay with me. I prefer the distance.
Probably because I never called any of my teachers by their first name. Except one. She was my sophomore English teacher in high school, and she insisted that we all call her "Sylvia." It was part of her vision of putting us all on equal footing. If she got to call all of us by our first names, why shouldn't we be able to return the favor? If the intent was to build familiarity, it certainly worked. When I had a free period, I would hang out in Sylvia's room. When it came time to pick classes for the next year, I looked for classes Sylvia taught. In three years, I took four different semesters of what she had to offer, including a Science Fiction class that I didn't even really need to graduate in my senior year.
In that time, I believed that we had struck up a friendship. When I had questions or problems, I didn't bother with my guidance counselor, I headed to Sylvia's room. Eventually, I was one of the favored few to gain admittance to her office, where I helped out grading papers, making copies, and general clerical drudgery. I didn't mind. I was helping Sylvia. When my personal life began to blossom and I had questions about girls and dating, I turned to Sylvia. If that seems like an odd leap of familiarity, you probably didn't know Sylvia.
She accepted my confidences and listened patiently. She gave me plenty of good advice, and confessed to me that she wasn't always such a hip and together person. When she was in high school, all the other kids used to call her "Saliva." Knowing this somehow made it easier to navigate the hazards and pitfalls of high school.
Then one day, Sylvia went off on maternity leave. It didn't happen all at once. I may have been naive, but I wasn't stupid. Still, when she left during my senior year, I felt a loss. I had a girlfriend, and I was in even more need of her wise counsel. The day that she packed up her office, she told me that we should keep in touch. I know now that this is what grown-ups always tell kids, and each other. But I knew where she lived. Only a hundred and fifty yards from where I went to junior high. In a trailer. With her husband: Mister Sylvia.
I stayed away for a few months, and then when I felt confident in my relationship with my high school sweetheart, we decided to pay a visit to Sylvia and her baby. It was dark outside, and I parked in what I assumed was their driveway. I knocked on the door to the trailer, and my girlfriend and I waited at the bottom of the cinder block stairs. We heard the footsteps, and then the door opened. Sylvia looked a fright, or at least she did back then. What I recognize now as new-parent survival mode made me think twice before I accepted the invitation to come on in.
I don't remember a lot about our visit, except that it was brief. It was cramped inside the trailer, and the smell of new baby was everywhere. Sylvia was wearing glasses, something that I had never seen her do at school. We made small talk and looked in on the baby, who seemed impossibly tiny. I had intended to make a show of how well my girlfriend and I were getting along, and to thank Sylvia for helping us find our way as a couple, but there was never a comfortable moment. All of that familiarity seemed to have vanished.
When we left, there were more vague promises of coming back to visit, but in the back of my mind I knew that I would be graduating soon. I would head off to college and return only briefly for holidays and the eventual wedding to this girl I was sure would be my wife. None of those things happened. I ended up taking a year off before I went to college, working at Arby's. I didn't marry my high school sweetheart. And I never went back to see Sylvia and her little family. It was just a little too close.

The World Of Illusion

Penn and Teller are illusionists. They begin their shows by explaining why what you are about to see is just a trick, and then proceed to make that trick so confounding that it looks like magic. You might believe that they were catching bullets in their teeth, for example. But, as they are quick to point out, there is no way this could happen. They have applied this same ethos to their Showtime television show in which the pair seek to uncover hoaxes and ruses that plague our society today. Think of them as new-age Houdinis.
One particular episode sought to knock a hole in the myth of bottled water. The hoaxbusters set up a number of "taste tests" with plastic bottles of water filled from a garden hose at the back of a restaurant and then sold at inflated prices. Invariably, patrons chose the most expensive and eloquently described labels. They often commented on the delicious sensation they experienced in sampling each of the various choices, even though they all came from the same hose.
I should say at this point that I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and I have made much about the privilege of drinking water that came directly from our own glacier, but that time has passed. I know that I have had some vaguely unpleasant experiences drinking the "local water" when I have traveled to other cities and towns in the United States, but it's still water, and it's pretty clean. Picking a particular brand of bottled water has always seemed a little silly to me, since the recipe is pretty much the same for all of them.
Now we are told that Fiji water will no longer be hauled up from the Artesian wells found on that tropical island. Fiji Water president John Cochran said that his water's namesake nation's decision last week to hike taxes on the mineral water it extracts at an aquifer on the main island Viti Levu by five thousand percent made the move inevitable. That means that you may soon be finding a new and possibly more enticing imported water on your shelves soon: How about a refreshing swig of Bayonne?

One Of Us

When you identify yourself as a part of any group, Middle Aged Teachers For Chocolate Treats for example, you run the risk of painting all Middle Aged Teachers who believe that chocolate treats are yummy as Middle Aged Teachers who believe that chocolate treats are necessary. Others might believe that this opinion is shared with all teachers. Pretty soon there is a call for chocolate treat reform across the country, and then around the globe. It's all a part of the Groucho Marx rule that suggests that you should never be a member of any club that would have you as a member.
Imagine how Muslims in Oregon feel about last week's attempted bomb plot. Nineteen year old Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud planned to blow up a van filled with explosives near a Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Luckily, the explosives were duds, bought from undercover officers, and the cell phone he used to detonate the device instead called the authorities, directing them to his location. That happy coincidence aside, things could have turned out much worse for all of those holiday shoppers. Consequently, things look to turn much worse for those who identify themselves as Muslims in that corner of the country. Portland Mayor Sam Adams said Sunday that he beefed up protection around mosques "and other facilities that might be vulnerable to knuckle-headed retribution" after hearing of the near-miss.
"We left Somalia because of war, and we would like to live in peace as part of the American community," said Kayse Jama, executive director of a local organization founded after the 9/11 attacks to fight anti-Muslim sentiment. "We are Portlanders. We are Oregonians. We are Americans, and we would like to be treated that way. We are your co-workers, your neighbors."
And the rest of us, it would appear, might be knuckleheads who like chocolate treats.

Nietzsche's Dishwasher

How many college graduates does it take to install a dishwasher? If you guessed three, you'd be pretty close. I would put it closer to two and a half, since my wife threw in her towel, of the dish variety, somewhere about halfway through. Her mother and I kept at it though, and when the sun had set, there was a new Kenmore Ultrawash peeking out from under my mother-in-law's kitchen counter. There is still some cosmetic work to be done, but it fills with water and it drains without leaving gigantic puddles on the floor, and so that makes it a big win for me.
The puddles were the first hurdle we encountered. Being the novice plumber that I am, I carelessly overlooked the handle that would have shut off the hot water from the appliance that I was removing to make room for the Ultrawasth. Before we were done, every towel in the house had been used to sop up some mess generated by our quick and easy installation adventure.
After we had the old machine out of its old home, we turned out attention to the spanking-new one that had only recently been uncrated in the entryway. I stared at the instruction booklet and asked my wife to help me imagine where I must have missed something. It became apparent abruptly that all the talk about "getting a dishwasher that just needs to be plugged in" was a lot of high-minded babble, since there was no power cord included with the Ultrawash. Once we had wrestled the beast on its back and found the place where our newly purchased power cord would go, we had to go out and newly purchase said cord. When my wife returned, we found that we were missing the proper hoses and connections to bring water into the Ultrawash, even though my mother-in-law had made a special trip to the hardware store where she was assured that the flex hoses she was given would be "all she needed." Back to the hardware store to get one more little elbow that didn't turn out to be just the thing anyway and so there were some phone calls made to the nearest Sears outlet. They didn't have it, but the one up in the Hilltop Mall had four. Did I mention that this machine came as a "great deal" from Sears? This is when my wife dropped out of the program. She had a life to live, after all.
My mother-in-law and I made the trip up the highway to find the elusive connections, and after some poking around and shrugs of shoulders from employees who don't install dishwashers, the bag that I found was revealed to be just the thing. "It's what all the installers take out with them when they go to put in a new dishwasher."
Our questions about why these parts couldn't be included with the purchase of your average Ultrawash were met with blank stares. "This is the thing the installers use," said the mildly pleasant Sears droid. And so we headed back to the damp confines of my mother-in-law's kitchen, where we discovered that the fitting on one end of the elbow that we had hoped would solve our problem turned out to be just a shade too big. With the local hardware stores closing for the day, we were left with a trudge across town to Home Depot where after some mildly pleasant interaction we found a fitting that would, at last, connect the Ultrawash to the water that would be used to wash the dishes inside.
When the smoke was cleared and the machine was shoved back under the kitchen counter where it will undoubtedly live a long and purposeful life, we picked up our tools and towels and congratulated each other for the tenacity we had shown in our collaboration. And we hadn't called each other names. But we did reserve a special chunk of bitterness for the mildly pleasant folks at Sears who managed to let us down at each step of our process. Had the machine come with a plug and hoses in the first place, it would have been an hour or two of briefly moist installation. Instead there were half a dozen different false starts, and almost as many trips to various locations to pick up this or that piece in hopes that it would solve our problem. The simple solution, for me, will be this: to avoid the mildly pleasant folks at Sears, even if the deal seems too good to be true. Since it probably is.

A New Chapter

Are you sitting around, staring out the window at your mailbox, waiting for the delivery of your share of General Motors' payback to the American people. Your generous taxpayer donation of forty-nine and a half billion dollars helped keep GM from ending up on the side of the road, another rusted-out casualty of the Great Recession. That amounts to about one hundred and fifty million dollars per person.
I sense your skepticism. Why would some giant corporation suddenly turn benevolent and share their prosperity with the people who made it possible for them to come back from the dead? Maybe you didn't take advantage of the fact that we owned a car company for a while there. I didn't get a chance to head over to Detroit for lunch in the executive dining room. Nor did I manage to find the time to send all of my ideas for flying cars, deluxe paint jobs, and cup holders to the powers that be. That's okay, since I am sure they've been very busy trying to figure out how to pay back all that money.
The truth is, GM isn't going to pay back the fifty billion dollars, and I hope they forgive my rounding that figure up. Instead, they are working on the much more pedestrian amount of the pure loan: six point seven billion. Or seven billion, to be fair. How did they turn things around so fast? Back when this whole package was being put together, the President put thirteen and a half billion dollars in an escrow account for use as working capital while GM sorted out their bankruptcy. That's the cash that is finding its way back to the U.S. Treasury. And that initial public option? The world's biggest? The White House would like us to know that all of that money will be back in our metaphorical pockets by the middle of 2012. So, if you're camped out next to your mailbox, you might want to bring a good book. It could be a while before we get our piece of the pie.

The Big Jello Sheriff Of The House

My younger brother, the very insightful man that he is, was helping me string lights around my yard. After a while, our conversation veered from the very simple instructions and requests that decorating our house for the holidays required. It's a simple enough task, why not catch up on current events?
"That whole Korea thing made me think about Bill Cosby," he said as he passed me another strand of multi-colored bulbs.
I thought about it for a moment, then asked him to finish his thought. Mostly because I knew that he would.
"It's like that whole covers thing on 'To My Brother Russell,'" and now it started becoming more clear. Besides having spent all of those formative years listening to the same Bill Cosby records he did, I also had plenty of experience stealing covers from my sibling, and having that favor returned just as often. There were plenty of nights when we should have been asleep, but brotherly angst and silliness made for a lot of extra reminders from our father to knock it off. As the middle brother, I got to experience both extremes. Sometimes I ended up on the floor. Sometimes I ended up with all the pillows. All that pushing and shoving, living in such close quarters, it's a lot like the DMZ.
Except I love my brothers. All that fuss and bluster, punches and bruises, and nobody died. Coexisting in cramped quarters. Going our own ways when the circumstances required. Coming together when things needed to get done. Like stringing lights. It's the key to world peace: Brotherhood.