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Today’s article in the Globe about a non profit that builds and donates raised-bed gardens to low-income households along with Dick’s post on Victory Gardens got me thinking about The Omnivore’s Dilemma again. As I’ve said before, anyone who eats should read this book by Michael Pollan – it will truly change the way you think about food! Of course, whether that translates to changed behavior is a different story.  I haven’t eaten fast food for over 20 years, ever since I realized how bad it made me feel, and I avoid transfat and processed foods, but I have not become a “localvore,” the term for those who only eat locally produced food; I still buy strawberries in the winter and make salads every night, all year. The new dilemma is:  how much can one person do, and will it make a difference anyway?  A recent column by Pollan in the New York Times Magazine, entitled “Why Bother,” takes on this malaise and with typical Pollan thoroughness digs down to find its cause.  He traces it to the division of labor, allowing specialization, which has given us our modern civilization with all its advantages, but which has also created, in the words of the poet, Wendell Berry, whom Pollan quotes, “a split between what we think and what we do.”  Berry was writing about this issue during the oil crisis of the seventies (remember that quaint time of lines at the gas pump, when everyone was driving smaller cars, turning their heat down and not using their automatic dishwashers or clothes dryers?)  which he called a “crisis of character” caused by our overreliance on specialists to handle our every need.  This dependence has led to a feeling of helplessness in the face of an overwhelming problem such as climate change, so we decide to “cross our fingers and talk about the promise of ethanol and nuclear power–new liquids and electrons to power the same old cars and houses and lives.”  But Pollan is not hopeless, and his point is that we can, and should, bother, that we can and should try to grow a little of the food we eat. The benefits are many and to quote Berry again, “is one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems — the way that ’solutions’ like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do – actually beget other solutions”  (increased health and well-being for starters).  Can we really feed ourselves?  Maybe not entirely, but Pollan points out that the World War II Victory Gardens invoked by Dick Howe supplied more than 40% of our produce.  So, I second the motion, let’s get out there and plant something!

Let’s take a pause and refresh ourselves with a bit of poetry for Sunday morning.  I’ve been thinking a lot about Robert Frost lately, especially with the attention that Brian Hall is getting for his new novel of the poet’s life, Fall of Frost.  He is also getting some heat for taking a nonconventional approach to a revered figure in American letters and a novelist’s liberties with the hearts and minds of his ‘characters,’ but the Boston Globe calls it ‘intensely moving and supremely intelligent.’ In any event, while sitting on my porch last weekend I was watching the first tiny, unfurling leaves of the maple across the street, of so new a green as to be gold and thought of this poem by Frost:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Deceptively simple, like all of Frost’s poems! Here’s another favorite:

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As a student at UML, in a Sociology class, Chancellor Marty Meehan read a book called Death at an Early Age, by Jonathan Kozol.  It changed the way he thought about education and equality.  Today, Meehan introduced Jonathan Kozol to a packed room at the Leary library.  Present were faculty, students, teachers, members of the school department, and interested community members. Current Lowell Superintendent Karla Baehr was in the audience along with future superintendent Chris Augusta Scott. Dana Mohler-Faria, president of Bridgewater State College and special advisor for education to Governor Patrick, sat on the panel of respondents and told the crowd he feels a ”sense of urgency” about our children and that education is the governor’s number one priority.

Kozol is a brave and compassionate man who has spent his career saying uncomfortable things about poverty, race and class.  Today’s lecture was entitled “Public Education Under Siege:  The Challenges for Educators in our Nation’s Separate and Unequal Schools.”  He sees the challenges that face urban teachers stemming from too little resources and too much testing, testing that is relentless because of the sword of AYP that hangs over the heads of principals and districts.  He is outraged that a poverty-stricken district, whose children may never have had the advantage of 2 or 3 years of quality pre-school (the norm in wealthy and even middle-class families), will be punished and have their funding decreased when these children fail a test in the third grade.  Studies have shown that early childhood education is the greatest predictor we have of student success, and many of the neediest children never get it or don’t get enough.  (This is a sore point with us in Lowell, since pre-school transportation was cut in 2003 and never restored.) Thus, the pressure is on idealistic, impassioned young teachers to become “drill sargents for the state,” and the pressure is on urban districts to squeeze out creativity, enrichment, even recess, to avoid the harsh penalties of the No Child Left Behind Act. As he points out, no one is opposed to useful, diagnostic testing that can give valuable and timely feedback to educators about a child’s needs and strengths. His thoughts on NCLB:  “It can’t be fixed; it needs to be rejected.”

But Kozol isn’t all gloom and doom. He complimented Lowell on being in certain ways “a wonderful exception, partly because of demographics and partly because of leadership.”   He deeply reveres the profession of teaching and the mystical chemistry that can occur between teacher and child that can result in a magical learning environment (something that is totally absent from the rigid formulations of NCLB).  He visited a Boston first-grade classroom over a school year in the course of writing his latest book, Letters to a Young Teacher, and his descriptions of his visits were vivid, delightful and heartwarming. For more information about this impassioned crusador for children, his writings, and his causes, you can visit Education Action! 

Not having much time for novels lately, I’ve read some great short stories, all in The New Yorker, and wanted to pass along these gems to interested readers.  Raj, Bohemian by Hari Kunzru starts out like all the other postmodern, plotless stories that seem to emerge from a void to which they return with barely a ripple.  We meet a group of young people living a seemingly idealistic and artfully managed (though silly) existence.  They have parties, they hang out, etc. The narrator is one of the group and quite pleased their collective lifestlyle. Scoffing at, yet somehow buying into this picture, the reader (at least this reader) is as shocked as the hero by the actual reality of his friends’ lives, only revealed because of Raj, a newcomer and a ‘wheeler-dealer.’  Only after the sordid reality is unveiled does one look back and question, what was Constantine doing in Sunita’s apartment?  How did these people live? And when the narrator sees the truth and goes on his mission of revenge it is chilling, like Raskilnikov bent on murder in Crime and Punishment.  I liked it a lot.  The Bellringer, by John Burnside is a quiet story with an edge.  As in William Trevor, ordinary lives are revealed, simple events unfold, a life is being lived.  Burnside doesn’t quite have Trevor’s mastery of the form, but this was a good story.  (Speaking of Trevor, he was mentioned in the Globe Ideas section today, a passing reference in a book review by Richard Eder, comparing him to the American short story writer Tobias Wolff, who in the end falls a little short, for “Trevor’s blade can barely seem to move as it draws heart’s blood.”  Well said!)  Finally, I was floored by Jeffrey Eugenides’ Great Experiment.  As an indictment of both intellectualism and capitalism, as a sorrowful rumination upon our natures, our illusions and our history, it reminded me of Steinbeck’s The Winter of our Dicontent.  So, three great stories, my pantheon of writers of short fiction enlarged by two, and I think I might try something by Wolff who is, according to Eder, ‘the closest we have to William Trevor.’ 

I’ve been reading some books about teenagers lately.  Ready or Not, Here Life Comes, by Dr. Mel Levine had me wishing I had done a lot of things differently as a parent over the last decade. Certainly, one often wishes there were a child-rearing manual available, particularly during the teenage years, so I would recommend this book as being full of helpful hints and insights. I especially like his stance on the overmedication of kids (mostly boys) who all seem to be ADD or ADHD these days. However, his contention that parents, schools and our culture are not preparing children adequately to be adults must be taken with a grain of salt. After thinking it over and discussing with a friend who teaches Junior High in Hartford, Connecticut, it seems that this is not a new phenomenom. People, as a rule, just aren’t that good at being planful, self-aware and knowledgeable about their strengths and weaknesses. Those skills take years to hone and can be gained only through often painful experiences. That said, there is nothing wrong with trying to inculcate these abilities in our children.  As Socrates said, ‘the unexamined life isn’t worth living.’  Then again, look what happened to him!

For more about Levine’s book, see my review.

I am more of a novel reader.  Short stories are so, well, short.  And it seems that a vague, stream-of-consciousness, self-regarding, navel-gazing type of writing dominates the genre these days – a story begins and ends, at random, more like a fragment or a poem.   Sometimes the writing is great. Sometimes a phrase, character or situation will resonate and linger in your mind; however, the whole is usually less than the sum of its parts.  The story itself makes no lasting impression.  Still, as a regular, not to say religious, reader of The New Yorker magazine, once renowned for its short fiction, I do read every story that they publish, and I’ve been rewarded by becoming familiar with three authors whose efforts far exceed the average. These are the great William Trevor from Ireland, the bizarre, yet profound American George Saunders and  Canadian author Alice Munro.  These three achieve all the mood, emotion and character development that one might wish, but add dramatic intensity and actual plotting — their writing consistently reaches a level that can be called art.  For more on Alice Munro’s recent story in the February 11/18 issue of the New Yorker, ”Free Radicals,” look under book reviews.

Bob Martin, gritty poet and songwriter of Lowell’s past and present, will be celebrating the CD release of his first album, Midwest Farm Disaster, first recorded in 1972, tomorrow night, 8:00 pm, at the Brewery Exchange.  I’ve seen Bob perform many times, at the folk festival and in other venues around town and I can attest that he just keeps getting better. I own his last two albums (The River Turns the Wheel, and Next to Nothin’), but never got my hands on the first one, which will be available tomorrow night. To top it off, he’ll be joined by local singer and songwriter, Sandy Spence.  They put on a great show with many tributes to the city they both know and love so well. For information, see Bob’s website. 

Terry Trout, a Daley School math teacher, sent me the following review of the book It’s Being Done by Karin Chenoweth, which is a study of the traits good schools share. According to Mr. Trout, “Halfway through the book, it hit me: Am I part of the solution or part of the problem? Have I silently agreed or vocally espoused the excuses such as we’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got or you don’t understand our kids, etc? I had to face the fact that my students had not performed at the levels demonstrated by the book’s sampling of schools. I had mixed feelings in response to the book. I was excited that other schools are doing it, inspired even. Then discouraged and overwhelmed because I’ve worked hard and not seen nearly the results others have accomplished. Before reinforcing my self-protective defense systems, I must acknowledge that I still have much to learn. This book has affected me at a deep level and my hope is that it will aid the discussion as we work to build an environment where our students will find academic success.” For more about the book, check here.

I’ve been reading The Iliad and have been struck by its relevance to modern life – pretty amazing for a work that is over 2500 years old.  Once you find a translation that you like and get used to the long lists of warriors (including background information on each), the gory violence, the repetitiveness and the elaborate similes, you find that compelling universal themes begin to emerge. Besides the big issues of the meaning of life, the role of fate, and the importance of a moral vision, there are amusing and insightful descriptions of normal human behavior.  For instance, the Goddess Thetis in her constant watchfulness and ceaseless meddling to benefit her son, the great warrior Achilles, resembles the ‘helicopter Moms’ of today. {If you haven’t heard this term, it refers to those mothers who are always hovering overhead “with the ferocity of a red-caped, flying squirrel” to quote an internet definition (the site also has an amusing quiz)}.    more »

Whatever you think of Kerouac’s writing or his exploits later in life, he was of Lowell, steeped in the city and its rhythms.  Lowell was his muse, and the current exhibit at the Boott Cotton Mills Museum never loses sight of the importance to the author of his hometown.  The centerpiece of the exhibit, entitled “Lowell: Where the Road Begins,” is of course the famous Scroll (the original 120 foot long manuscript of On the Road), which dominates the room in a long, diagonal, glass-topped case.  It is something to see (even the ragged end which was literally ‘eaten by the dog’) but it doesn’t stand alone.  There are fascinating photos of Kerouac, his family and friends, and of Lowell, along with excerpts from his books and letters, articles about him and reviews of his books.  All this provides a rich context for contemplating this young man from Lowell, who at one time took the literary world by storm, who was compared to Whitman and Wolfe, who suffered a long decline but whose reputation has risen again.  One of the most intriguing displays is an old Royal typewriter on which visitors can type a message and pin it to a bulletin board (I liked the one that said:  Jack, you were the first rapper).  NPS Interpreter, Jeff Wyman, pointed out that the typewriter is a favorite with the student groups who visit (one wrote, I’m glad we now have computers.)  Jeff also said that in this last week they have had a surge of visitors from Lowell High and that the students are very engaged with the exhibit, particularly the scenes of Lowell from Jack’s day.  It’s great that the high school and the colleges are getting their students over there; it’s truly an exceptionally well put together exhibit and well worth a visit.  BUT, the exhibit ends SUNDAY, so get down there if you can (the Museum is open daily, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm).