With all of the economic turmoil going on nowadays, it's become commonplace in the media to make references to the Great Depression. We are constantly hearing predictions that, within a year, there will be apple sellers on Broadway and people throwing themsleves out of window. No doubt bank night at the movies will make a comeback, too.
Of all the things I have seen or read about the Depression, perhaps my favorite is a cartoon I once saw about the bank failures so common in those days. It shows a probably unemployed and certainly dispirited man sitting on a park bench, talking to a squirrel. If memory
serves, the squirrel is labeled "economist". The squirrel asks the man why he didn't save some of his earnings and put it in the bank when times were good.
The man replies curtly that he did.
I've always thought this cartoon was not just about the victims of Depression-era bank failures but about misfortune in general. The past few years, I have been "privileged" to learn the hard way that there is nothing like misfortune to bring out other people's moralism. There is something about encountering the unfortunate that makes some people respond not with compassion or kind words but an almost instinctive need to find some explanation as to why this unfortunate soul deserves his misfortune.
One of the worst aspects of being out of work, or of being stuck in the wrong kind of work, is having to endure such people. I recall a woman I met in Hillel telling me that, having failed to find a job for nine months out of college, my failure must be due to having been "super picky" about what I wanted in a job. Never mind that, in the recession of 2003, thousands of other recent graduates were meeting the same fate.
But even this pales in comparison to what I like to call proponents of the One Big Flaw. When you are out of work, people seem to love searching for the One Big Flaw that is preventing you from being a success. Your One Big Flaw is then revealed to you--always in a tone of voice that suggests the speaker wants to be helpful and has no idea that his assessment of your One Big Flaw is actually an insult.
Here is a brief list of One Big Flaw theories I have encountered, or have heard from other people that they have encountered. All of them are things I really ought to say to the squirrels in my life who want to find some explanation for why I am where I am right now:
1) "You interview poorly." Because failure in job interviews can never be attributed to the unprofessionalism and sometimes outright duplicity of people who conduct job interviews. I had this said to me once by a good friend who had gotten reports back from people he had sent me to for informational interviews. It could not have been more off the mark. I had actually had more than one person who didn't hire me make a point of contacting me to say how well I interviewed.
2) "You haven't figured out who you really are and what you really want." I really don't understand what it is that makes some people unable to tell the difference between a job hunt and a spiritual quest. One of the better career-related sites I've stumbled on recently makes wonderful hash of the idea that if you just "do what you love", the money will follow. Doing what you love, this veteran career counselor notes, often leads to volunteer work. For goodness sakes, people, stop giving the unemployed advice on how to have a career when what they need is a job--you know, one of those things you rely on to provide money for such non-essential items as food, clothing, and shelter.
3) "You're not putting enough time into it." It's a cliche of job hunting that, when you're out of work, you should treat your job hunt as a full time job. I have yet to meet anyone actually capable of doing this, and the one report I have heard of someone who actually did turned out to be a single mother of three facing eviction. There are not enough hours in the day to do all the things people tell you you absolutely must do if you want to find a job.
4) "You aren't networking enough." Networking is not the be-all and end-all of job hunting, and I've learned, over the past few years, that I'm not especially good at it. Many people aren't. More to the point, many people flat-out don't have much of a network to rely on. We don't all belong to three country clubs. Even more to the point, I have had an awful lot of my time wasted over the years trying to network with people who seemed to have no idea what I was trying to do--no idea that I was looking for referrals to colleagues in their fields who might have a job or know of someone who did. I recall in particular one Madison Avenue lawyer who took me to lunch, forced me to listen to his entire career trajectory since his days running a lemonade stand as a kid, and then said to me, "Well, I won't give you any contacts, because I'm sure you have enough of those." Umm...no. That's kind of why I'm here.
5) "You're not going on enough interviews." Always said with an implication that the job seeker can just magically pull interviews out of his or her you-know-where, this is probably the most condescending piece of advice you will get. And the one that shows the person in question hasn't the faintest idea what it's like to look for work these days.
A friend of mine in New York recently chatted with me online about an interview that wasn't--an experience I'm sure I had at one point or another job hunting. She was scheduled to have an interview but was phoned beforehand and told the company had already chosen another candidate. Subsequently, though, she kept seeing the same position advertised on a major job site, and she called up to see if perhaps she might interview for this position after all. She was curtly told that, yes, the first person who had accepted the job had backed out but that, again, another candidate had been chosen and was about to start.
6) "You need to read more career-related books and take their advice." Umm...I have. And the advice they give is either obvious or contradictory. One of the few infuriating parts of my TEFL training was a section on resume writing in which my trainers gave instructions from a book called The Resume Bible on how to format a resume. I tried meekly to object that I had seen similar books on the subject and that they all gave different advice. Believe it or not, employers have different ideas about what makes for a brilliant cover letter or a perfect resume.
7) "You want too much money." Always a favorite. There's nothing like listening to a gainfully employed person tell you that your unemployment is due to greed. I, on the other hand, have had the experience of doing temp assignments for $8 an hour in New York City and having temp agencies send me to interview for jobs paying less than $30,000 a year--not a living wage in a city where even a studio apartment costs a minimum of $1000 a month.
31 December 2008
30 December 2008
What a Difference a Year Makes
One advantage of keeping a blog is that, at the time of year everyone starts looking back on the past year and discovers he can't remember where he was or what he was doing a year ago, I have a clear record of where I was and what I was doing.
Man, what a difference a year makes! A year ago, I was dreading the most official "unofficial" observation in the history of EFL teaching: an observation that was to determine whether I was to be transferred to another branch of Shane in Taiwan or go home with my tail between my legs.
Well, regular readers of my blog already know how that turned out. On reflection, I know I shouldn't be surprised. Taiwan was a stupid move in a career that, until Russia, was studded with stupid moves. My decision to go to Taiwan was made in haste and desperation. Visions of dollar signs were dancing in my eyes, and I gave little thought to what it would be like to be alone, so far from home and anyone who really spoke my language. I handled my loneliness and misery poorly, and in the end found myself on a flight back to the States.
Now, a year later, I can look at some real progress. I am starting to send money home. Not the fortune I had hoped for when I started out in TEFL, but still, actual American dollars that I will someday actually use to set myself up in graduate school and, beyond that, I hope in a nice row house in a city yet to be determined. I may not love my job all the time, but I can still say it is much better than anything I had in the States before I left, or the disaster of a job I had in Taiwan.
I have learned to look before I leap. Wherever I go next in my career, it will be something I have thoroughly examined. No more going into new territory without getting the lay of the land first. And whatever degree I end up getting will take me into a career that actually brings me not only a steady paycheck but actual satisfaction. Of this I am sure.
So right now, I see only good things ahead.
Man, what a difference a year makes! A year ago, I was dreading the most official "unofficial" observation in the history of EFL teaching: an observation that was to determine whether I was to be transferred to another branch of Shane in Taiwan or go home with my tail between my legs.
Well, regular readers of my blog already know how that turned out. On reflection, I know I shouldn't be surprised. Taiwan was a stupid move in a career that, until Russia, was studded with stupid moves. My decision to go to Taiwan was made in haste and desperation. Visions of dollar signs were dancing in my eyes, and I gave little thought to what it would be like to be alone, so far from home and anyone who really spoke my language. I handled my loneliness and misery poorly, and in the end found myself on a flight back to the States.
Now, a year later, I can look at some real progress. I am starting to send money home. Not the fortune I had hoped for when I started out in TEFL, but still, actual American dollars that I will someday actually use to set myself up in graduate school and, beyond that, I hope in a nice row house in a city yet to be determined. I may not love my job all the time, but I can still say it is much better than anything I had in the States before I left, or the disaster of a job I had in Taiwan.
I have learned to look before I leap. Wherever I go next in my career, it will be something I have thoroughly examined. No more going into new territory without getting the lay of the land first. And whatever degree I end up getting will take me into a career that actually brings me not only a steady paycheck but actual satisfaction. Of this I am sure.
So right now, I see only good things ahead.
The Bristol Stomp
Well, the greatest non-story of the 2008 presidential race is finally over:
Bristol Palin finally gave birth to a baby boy. The media were duly alerted.
I always felt genuinely sorry for this young woman. First, she has had the misfortune of having Sarah Palin as a mother--a grave misfortune indeed. Last night, I began working my way through Dickens' Bleak House, which features a minor character named Mrs. Jellyby. This woman devotes all of her energies to helping settle unemployed British people on African coffee plantations but neglects her own family scandalously. It is hard not to see something of Sarah Palin in Mrs. Jellyby.
Second, she had to have her private decision to marry her boyfriend subjected to all kinds of scrutiny by a hostile media. Perhaps the most disgusting thing I have seen in a long while was Bill Maher getting up on his program and creating a "Free Levi" website--dedicated to freeing Levi Johnston, father of Bristol Palin's baby, whom he dubbed a "political prisoner." I'm sorry--I just don't see humor in encouraging a man to abandon his fiancee and unborn child. Watching this spectacle made me feel that the cultural left had just gone off the deep end.
Most of all, however, I felt Bristol Palin did not deserve the level of attention she got. There just was no story there, and I think the media, to its credit, realized this quickly. It's hard to think of any aspect of life that is made easier by being the focus of a media circus. For about a minute there, Bristol was no doubt a distraction from whoever the latest missing blonde college girl was.
Congratulations, Levi and Bristol. We will now finally stop doing the Bristol Stomp.
Bristol Palin finally gave birth to a baby boy. The media were duly alerted.
I always felt genuinely sorry for this young woman. First, she has had the misfortune of having Sarah Palin as a mother--a grave misfortune indeed. Last night, I began working my way through Dickens' Bleak House, which features a minor character named Mrs. Jellyby. This woman devotes all of her energies to helping settle unemployed British people on African coffee plantations but neglects her own family scandalously. It is hard not to see something of Sarah Palin in Mrs. Jellyby.
Second, she had to have her private decision to marry her boyfriend subjected to all kinds of scrutiny by a hostile media. Perhaps the most disgusting thing I have seen in a long while was Bill Maher getting up on his program and creating a "Free Levi" website--dedicated to freeing Levi Johnston, father of Bristol Palin's baby, whom he dubbed a "political prisoner." I'm sorry--I just don't see humor in encouraging a man to abandon his fiancee and unborn child. Watching this spectacle made me feel that the cultural left had just gone off the deep end.
Most of all, however, I felt Bristol Palin did not deserve the level of attention she got. There just was no story there, and I think the media, to its credit, realized this quickly. It's hard to think of any aspect of life that is made easier by being the focus of a media circus. For about a minute there, Bristol was no doubt a distraction from whoever the latest missing blonde college girl was.
Congratulations, Levi and Bristol. We will now finally stop doing the Bristol Stomp.
23 December 2008
Flying to Moscow (or Leningrad)
One of the things you learn pretty quickly when you work in foreign language teaching is that direct translation from one language into another is not always possible. One book about teaching in my school's resource library about teaching vocabulary (sadly, I forget which one) even argues that you shouldn't try to teach basic words like table and chair as though they have direct, exact translations into the student's native language. A German who goes to England and brings back a table, it is said, will only decide after much examination that this thing the English call a "table" fits into the German conceptual category of a "Tisch".
Personally, I think this example may be taking things a little too far--though in my own limited study of Russian, I have encountered the same kind of problem dealing with the way Russian conceptualizes furniture. Specifically, there is this thing Russians have in their home called a shkaff. English speakers have cupboards, pantries, wardrobes, and hampers to put their belongings in; Russian speakers seem to have only shkaff. As best I can understand the concept, its meaning really is something like "big thing you put things in."
But there are certainly plenty of other concepts that really, really don't translate between cultures. The suburbs, I'm finding, is one of them. As they are now fed a nearly constant diet of American films and television programs, Russians have some inkling of what American suburbs are like. But when they talk about the suburbs of their own cities, it's clear they think of a very different environment.
For one thing, the sheer wastefulness of culs-de-sac, eight-lane highways, and having to drive even to purchase a carton of milk is just not a lifestyle Russia can embrace. Even in Moscow, where something like 80 percent of the country's wealth is concentrated, there aren't enough people who can afford cars to make this kind of lifestyle feasible. Moreover, anyplace where that kind of suburbia might potentially be built has long since been developed in accordance with the dictates of Soviet architecture and urban planning, which, as near as I can tell, tended to favor monstrously ugly and shoddily constructed "tower in the park" development.
As we are now in the middle of the holiday season, I have gotten to learn that Russians have their own version of It's a Wonderful Life--a film that get played and replayed so often during the holidays that most Russians know it word for word. Not surprisingly, the plot of this film is set in motion by drunkenness. On New Year's Eve, a group of men living in Leningrad (or Moscow--I've had Russians tell me the plot of this story several times, but different people have told me differently about where the story is actually set, for reasons that will become apparent) pay a visit to a banya (a traditional kind of Russian sauna), where one of them proceeds to get rolicking drunk. His friends decide to take advantage of his inebriated state and play a trick on him. They convince him that he is really in Moscow (or Leningrad) and must now fly home to Leningrad (or Moscow). They quickly get him into a taxi and to the airport, where he flies "back" to his home city.
When the man arrives in Moscow (or Leningrad), thinking it is Leningrad (or Moscow), he gets in a taxi and tells the man to take him to his address. And behold, it turns out that in Moscow (or Leningrad), there is a street with the exact same name, with a building bearing the exact same number, and having the exact same appearance as the man's really apartment building back in Leningrad (or Moscow). And even stranger--when the drunkard goes up to his apartment, his key opens this other apartment--which looks exactly the same as his real apartment back in Leningrad (or Moscow). The drunkard goes to lie down in what he believes to be his bedroom and soon falls fast asleep.
Well, it turns out that this copycat apartment belongs to a young lady, who soon returns home to find this strange man in her bad. At first she is outraged, but, as can only happen in the movies, the two eventually fall in love and live happily ever after--or, in this case, until a sequel involving their children from subsequent marriages meeting under similar circumstances, involving this exact same apartment in Moscow (or Leningrad).
The entire story is plausible only because there really was that degree of uniformity in architecture and urban planning in the Soviet period. To a lesser extent, this is true even today. Volodya told me once about how new apartment complexes get built in Moscow. They tend to all end up having a very limited number of designs because there is actually a small number of pre-approved designs accepted by the city building and planning authorities. It's not that no other design can be built; it's just that the approval process is faster and cheaper if you're building one of the pre-approved designs. And so developers tend to save themselves the time and cost of doing anything outside the mold.
I find it's not all that hard to accept that the story of this film actually could happen. Outside of its very center, Moscow does take on an extremely cookie-cutter feel. Russian students sometimes ask me which part of Moscow I like best, and I can only reply, sheepishly, that I like the area around the Kremlin best. This is not a lie, and is probably the canned response they expect. But it says a lot that I really can't name my favorite part of Moscow. No matter where I get sent out to teach in-company, I tend to end up feeling like the hapless film hero who ended up in Moscow (or Leningrad). Almost everywhere outside the city center, the cityscape is as follows: a warren of kiosks selling everything from sausages to sandals, some Krushchevkovas (hideous five-story apartment buildings built during the Krushchev era), then some taller, already-dilapidated monstrosities of the Brezhnev era.
None of the neighborhoods really feel like a neighborhood. Unlike in New York, the apartment buildings usually lack ground-level retail space--which is consigned to kiosks and a very few main streets. In the Soviet era, when there was little available for consumers to buy, this kind of planning made a curious kind of sense; now it just makes the city seem that much more dreary and inhopsitable to people.
Personally, I think this example may be taking things a little too far--though in my own limited study of Russian, I have encountered the same kind of problem dealing with the way Russian conceptualizes furniture. Specifically, there is this thing Russians have in their home called a shkaff. English speakers have cupboards, pantries, wardrobes, and hampers to put their belongings in; Russian speakers seem to have only shkaff. As best I can understand the concept, its meaning really is something like "big thing you put things in."
But there are certainly plenty of other concepts that really, really don't translate between cultures. The suburbs, I'm finding, is one of them. As they are now fed a nearly constant diet of American films and television programs, Russians have some inkling of what American suburbs are like. But when they talk about the suburbs of their own cities, it's clear they think of a very different environment.
For one thing, the sheer wastefulness of culs-de-sac, eight-lane highways, and having to drive even to purchase a carton of milk is just not a lifestyle Russia can embrace. Even in Moscow, where something like 80 percent of the country's wealth is concentrated, there aren't enough people who can afford cars to make this kind of lifestyle feasible. Moreover, anyplace where that kind of suburbia might potentially be built has long since been developed in accordance with the dictates of Soviet architecture and urban planning, which, as near as I can tell, tended to favor monstrously ugly and shoddily constructed "tower in the park" development.
As we are now in the middle of the holiday season, I have gotten to learn that Russians have their own version of It's a Wonderful Life--a film that get played and replayed so often during the holidays that most Russians know it word for word. Not surprisingly, the plot of this film is set in motion by drunkenness. On New Year's Eve, a group of men living in Leningrad (or Moscow--I've had Russians tell me the plot of this story several times, but different people have told me differently about where the story is actually set, for reasons that will become apparent) pay a visit to a banya (a traditional kind of Russian sauna), where one of them proceeds to get rolicking drunk. His friends decide to take advantage of his inebriated state and play a trick on him. They convince him that he is really in Moscow (or Leningrad) and must now fly home to Leningrad (or Moscow). They quickly get him into a taxi and to the airport, where he flies "back" to his home city.
When the man arrives in Moscow (or Leningrad), thinking it is Leningrad (or Moscow), he gets in a taxi and tells the man to take him to his address. And behold, it turns out that in Moscow (or Leningrad), there is a street with the exact same name, with a building bearing the exact same number, and having the exact same appearance as the man's really apartment building back in Leningrad (or Moscow). And even stranger--when the drunkard goes up to his apartment, his key opens this other apartment--which looks exactly the same as his real apartment back in Leningrad (or Moscow). The drunkard goes to lie down in what he believes to be his bedroom and soon falls fast asleep.
Well, it turns out that this copycat apartment belongs to a young lady, who soon returns home to find this strange man in her bad. At first she is outraged, but, as can only happen in the movies, the two eventually fall in love and live happily ever after--or, in this case, until a sequel involving their children from subsequent marriages meeting under similar circumstances, involving this exact same apartment in Moscow (or Leningrad).
The entire story is plausible only because there really was that degree of uniformity in architecture and urban planning in the Soviet period. To a lesser extent, this is true even today. Volodya told me once about how new apartment complexes get built in Moscow. They tend to all end up having a very limited number of designs because there is actually a small number of pre-approved designs accepted by the city building and planning authorities. It's not that no other design can be built; it's just that the approval process is faster and cheaper if you're building one of the pre-approved designs. And so developers tend to save themselves the time and cost of doing anything outside the mold.
I find it's not all that hard to accept that the story of this film actually could happen. Outside of its very center, Moscow does take on an extremely cookie-cutter feel. Russian students sometimes ask me which part of Moscow I like best, and I can only reply, sheepishly, that I like the area around the Kremlin best. This is not a lie, and is probably the canned response they expect. But it says a lot that I really can't name my favorite part of Moscow. No matter where I get sent out to teach in-company, I tend to end up feeling like the hapless film hero who ended up in Moscow (or Leningrad). Almost everywhere outside the city center, the cityscape is as follows: a warren of kiosks selling everything from sausages to sandals, some Krushchevkovas (hideous five-story apartment buildings built during the Krushchev era), then some taller, already-dilapidated monstrosities of the Brezhnev era.
None of the neighborhoods really feel like a neighborhood. Unlike in New York, the apartment buildings usually lack ground-level retail space--which is consigned to kiosks and a very few main streets. In the Soviet era, when there was little available for consumers to buy, this kind of planning made a curious kind of sense; now it just makes the city seem that much more dreary and inhopsitable to people.
19 December 2008
Remont-strating
I have commented before on how essential a laptop computer is to the modern EFL teacher. And so I shall not belabor that point here. I shall say only that, in the past week, I have learned just how essential it is, and how difficult it is to make any adjustment to life without it.
Sunday night, I was happily surfing the web when, suddenly, my laptop went black. This had happened in the past, but the problem had always been due to the tenuous nature of my power cords. Two or three months back, my computer battery failed, and I was thereafter forced to keep my laptop plugged in whenever I used it. Not knowing that all laptops are now 110/220 v adaptable, I had purchased a new electric system not long after I came to Russia. It involved one cord that led into a big black box, and another that led out of it into my computer. Not infrequently, these two cords would become deplugged from one another, and my computer would swiftly lose power.
I thought this was what was happening Sunday night, so I didn't panic. Indeed, panic did not begin in earnest until I had reassembled the electric supply chain three times and my computer steadfastly refused to power on. The blue lights on the keyboard indicated I was receiving power, but the computer would not turn on and maintain power for more than a few seconds. Clearly something was wrong.
The next day, I showed it to a fellow teacher who, in addition to having a near-encyclopedic knowledge of British bands, is also well-versed in the ways of man's best electrical friend. She looked at my machine and told me I most likely had a virus. Repair would be possible, but probably less economical than buying a whole new laptop. This struck fear into my heart. The kind of fear that only the thought of an impossible-to-pay $1000 price tag can bring. Nonetheless, my friend said I would need to bring my computer to a repair shop to be certain.
Not being so foolhardy as to try to accomplish this repair in my limited Russian, I asked my Director of Studies to assist me. And so, the following afternoon, we went to a repair shop in the same building as my school's central offices. As he was unable to locate the problem quickly, the repairman insisted on keeping the machine overnight for observation.
I spent an uneasy night wodering how on earth I might raise the money for a new laptop. Visions of organ donation danced in my head (organ donations being close relations of sugar plums).
The next morning, however, to my infinite relief, my Director of Studies called me. She said the repairman had called her. My computer's malfunctioning was due to a faulty power supply--a computer shop had sold me the wrong kind of power cords for my computer--that had fried part of my memory. The memory repair and and new, correct power supply would cost only about $150--about what I had available in cash at the moment. I did a little dance. Then I realized how silly I looked doing a little dance alone in my room, got dressed, and went off to school.
I am most grateful my DOS was able to help in all of this. I know I would have been unequal to the task of making sense of the repairman's assessment of what was wrong with my computer, or of bargaining for a reasonable price for service. Remont (Russian for repair) is not known on either side of the Baltic for being either comprehensible or fair.
I am only too glad I needed to do no remont-strating.
Sunday night, I was happily surfing the web when, suddenly, my laptop went black. This had happened in the past, but the problem had always been due to the tenuous nature of my power cords. Two or three months back, my computer battery failed, and I was thereafter forced to keep my laptop plugged in whenever I used it. Not knowing that all laptops are now 110/220 v adaptable, I had purchased a new electric system not long after I came to Russia. It involved one cord that led into a big black box, and another that led out of it into my computer. Not infrequently, these two cords would become deplugged from one another, and my computer would swiftly lose power.
I thought this was what was happening Sunday night, so I didn't panic. Indeed, panic did not begin in earnest until I had reassembled the electric supply chain three times and my computer steadfastly refused to power on. The blue lights on the keyboard indicated I was receiving power, but the computer would not turn on and maintain power for more than a few seconds. Clearly something was wrong.
The next day, I showed it to a fellow teacher who, in addition to having a near-encyclopedic knowledge of British bands, is also well-versed in the ways of man's best electrical friend. She looked at my machine and told me I most likely had a virus. Repair would be possible, but probably less economical than buying a whole new laptop. This struck fear into my heart. The kind of fear that only the thought of an impossible-to-pay $1000 price tag can bring. Nonetheless, my friend said I would need to bring my computer to a repair shop to be certain.
Not being so foolhardy as to try to accomplish this repair in my limited Russian, I asked my Director of Studies to assist me. And so, the following afternoon, we went to a repair shop in the same building as my school's central offices. As he was unable to locate the problem quickly, the repairman insisted on keeping the machine overnight for observation.
I spent an uneasy night wodering how on earth I might raise the money for a new laptop. Visions of organ donation danced in my head (organ donations being close relations of sugar plums).
The next morning, however, to my infinite relief, my Director of Studies called me. She said the repairman had called her. My computer's malfunctioning was due to a faulty power supply--a computer shop had sold me the wrong kind of power cords for my computer--that had fried part of my memory. The memory repair and and new, correct power supply would cost only about $150--about what I had available in cash at the moment. I did a little dance. Then I realized how silly I looked doing a little dance alone in my room, got dressed, and went off to school.
I am most grateful my DOS was able to help in all of this. I know I would have been unequal to the task of making sense of the repairman's assessment of what was wrong with my computer, or of bargaining for a reasonable price for service. Remont (Russian for repair) is not known on either side of the Baltic for being either comprehensible or fair.
I am only too glad I needed to do no remont-strating.
A Philly Who is Ready for the Race
The weather in Moscow is only now beginning to grow really cold. And by really cold, I mean that we are now experiencing weather similar to that of--you'll never believe this--Texas.
A good friend of mine, a fellow teacher from Texas, tells me that he has been communicating with his family about the weather. Yes, Virginia, that's right--Brits aren't the only ones who have dull conversations about the weather; Americans do it, too. It seems that a cold snap is now in effect over much of the United States, and the temperatures in Odessa, Ukraine and Odessa, Texas are now quite similar. Maybe my observations about how much America and Russia have in common are not so far off, after all.
It is fitting that cold weather is starting to pommel Moscow, for our winter vacation begins in earnest this coming week. Most of the teachers at my school are return home to Britain or America for the break, but I shall be stuck here, lack of money keeping me, literally, grounded. But I shall have three weeks to myself to watch YouTube videos, eat at hours closer to my own preference, and maybe get caught up with a little reading.
I shall also be spending this time getting caught up on graduate school applications. I have completed two so far--for programs in Jewish education in New York and Los Angeles. But my most recent conversation with my career counselor has suggested some other paths to me. I have given some thought to looking for university jobs other than actual teaching, and my test suggested to Brenda that I might do well as a career counselor, university administrator, or international student advisor. The latter path is the most appealing to me, since it would involve counseling work as well as the opportunity to meet and work with people from, literally, all over the world.
At the same time, however, it looks as though this path may also bring me closer to fulfilling a longstanding fantasy of mine. Not long after I started really working in New York, I began to have serious fantasies of relocating to Philadelphia. A co-worker I had at the time, who hailed from Philly, told me the best description of the city he could give me was as follows: imagine Brooklyn without Manhattan next to it.
Well, to my mind at the time, that idea sounded like heaven itself. I had just moved from a cramped apartment on West 172nd Street in Washington Heights to a large bedroom in an off-the-beaten-path (I had not yet figured out yet just how off-the-beaten-path) loft-style building in Brooklyn. I found myself quite enjoying my new borough. What I liked most was the one thing Manhattanites tend to put down Brooklyn for--its smaller scale. Manhattan is a borough of skycrapers, screeching taxicabs, and stratospheric incomes; Brooklyn is a borough of row houses, rousing games of . While Brooklyn might not have fit well with my ideas of what it would be like to live in New York, it fit well with dreams I had once had of living in a city.
Imagine no Manhattan. It was easy, and I did try. No Upper East Side snobbiness. No hustle into "the City" (I quickly came to hate this moniker for the borough beyond the East River, but just as quickly came to use it as effortlessly as native Brooklynites) every morning to earn your daily bread. No need for newspapers that told you no news of your own borough. No transit system that could get you to Broadway and 34th in an hour (I soon learned that almost any Brooklyn-Manhattan commute took an hour) but could get you to Bay Ridge only in two. If Philadelphia was Brooklyn without Manhattan, that was a dream I could embrace. And in many ways, I still do.
A few months later, finding myself between jobs again, I ended up in Philadelphia for an interview with a local law firm. I took the opportunity to explore the city a bit--admittedly, mostly the historic district and the area around Penn, which has been rechristened University City. What I found was very much to my liking. While I didn't get the job, I held onto the idea that Philadelphia might be the place for me.
Looking for programs that might lead me toward being an international student advisor, I found a good program at, of all places, the University of Pennsylvania. I had been looking into education programs at Penn before this, but it was amazing to find a program that so clearly fit this new goal, a master's program in something called Intercultural Communication. The degree prepares graduates to work in a variety of settings involving cultural exchange and international endeavor--not just in university international student offices and study abroad programs, but also in corporate settings. I seem to have stumbled upon something that uses my talents and interests while giving me marketability and versatility. And, to boot, will give the opportunity to go live in Philly for a year, possibly longer.
I find myself chomping at the bit thinking of the kinds of graduate programs I might be in next fall. They all seem like things that will take me to the kind of destination in life I've been seeking for a long time--satisfying work, dependable middle-class status, and residence in a city that fits me well. But when I look at this program, I find myself truly a filly who is ready for the race (no, I have not seen The Flower Drum Song too many times!). I feel ready to go back and fight--not in desperation, not in fear, but with resolve and intelligence--for the life I really want.
A few more months and I'll be able to do just that.
A good friend of mine, a fellow teacher from Texas, tells me that he has been communicating with his family about the weather. Yes, Virginia, that's right--Brits aren't the only ones who have dull conversations about the weather; Americans do it, too. It seems that a cold snap is now in effect over much of the United States, and the temperatures in Odessa, Ukraine and Odessa, Texas are now quite similar. Maybe my observations about how much America and Russia have in common are not so far off, after all.
It is fitting that cold weather is starting to pommel Moscow, for our winter vacation begins in earnest this coming week. Most of the teachers at my school are return home to Britain or America for the break, but I shall be stuck here, lack of money keeping me, literally, grounded. But I shall have three weeks to myself to watch YouTube videos, eat at hours closer to my own preference, and maybe get caught up with a little reading.
I shall also be spending this time getting caught up on graduate school applications. I have completed two so far--for programs in Jewish education in New York and Los Angeles. But my most recent conversation with my career counselor has suggested some other paths to me. I have given some thought to looking for university jobs other than actual teaching, and my test suggested to Brenda that I might do well as a career counselor, university administrator, or international student advisor. The latter path is the most appealing to me, since it would involve counseling work as well as the opportunity to meet and work with people from, literally, all over the world.
At the same time, however, it looks as though this path may also bring me closer to fulfilling a longstanding fantasy of mine. Not long after I started really working in New York, I began to have serious fantasies of relocating to Philadelphia. A co-worker I had at the time, who hailed from Philly, told me the best description of the city he could give me was as follows: imagine Brooklyn without Manhattan next to it.
Well, to my mind at the time, that idea sounded like heaven itself. I had just moved from a cramped apartment on West 172nd Street in Washington Heights to a large bedroom in an off-the-beaten-path (I had not yet figured out yet just how off-the-beaten-path) loft-style building in Brooklyn. I found myself quite enjoying my new borough. What I liked most was the one thing Manhattanites tend to put down Brooklyn for--its smaller scale. Manhattan is a borough of skycrapers, screeching taxicabs, and stratospheric incomes; Brooklyn is a borough of row houses, rousing games of . While Brooklyn might not have fit well with my ideas of what it would be like to live in New York, it fit well with dreams I had once had of living in a city.
Imagine no Manhattan. It was easy, and I did try. No Upper East Side snobbiness. No hustle into "the City" (I quickly came to hate this moniker for the borough beyond the East River, but just as quickly came to use it as effortlessly as native Brooklynites) every morning to earn your daily bread. No need for newspapers that told you no news of your own borough. No transit system that could get you to Broadway and 34th in an hour (I soon learned that almost any Brooklyn-Manhattan commute took an hour) but could get you to Bay Ridge only in two. If Philadelphia was Brooklyn without Manhattan, that was a dream I could embrace. And in many ways, I still do.
A few months later, finding myself between jobs again, I ended up in Philadelphia for an interview with a local law firm. I took the opportunity to explore the city a bit--admittedly, mostly the historic district and the area around Penn, which has been rechristened University City. What I found was very much to my liking. While I didn't get the job, I held onto the idea that Philadelphia might be the place for me.
Looking for programs that might lead me toward being an international student advisor, I found a good program at, of all places, the University of Pennsylvania. I had been looking into education programs at Penn before this, but it was amazing to find a program that so clearly fit this new goal, a master's program in something called Intercultural Communication. The degree prepares graduates to work in a variety of settings involving cultural exchange and international endeavor--not just in university international student offices and study abroad programs, but also in corporate settings. I seem to have stumbled upon something that uses my talents and interests while giving me marketability and versatility. And, to boot, will give the opportunity to go live in Philly for a year, possibly longer.
I find myself chomping at the bit thinking of the kinds of graduate programs I might be in next fall. They all seem like things that will take me to the kind of destination in life I've been seeking for a long time--satisfying work, dependable middle-class status, and residence in a city that fits me well. But when I look at this program, I find myself truly a filly who is ready for the race (no, I have not seen The Flower Drum Song too many times!). I feel ready to go back and fight--not in desperation, not in fear, but with resolve and intelligence--for the life I really want.
A few more months and I'll be able to do just that.
13 December 2008
The Type? Writer.
Theoretically, computers are machines like any others. I've heard all my life that their only real ability, when you get right down to it, is to process an endless series of ones and zeros in what is known as binary code. But I've never been able to believe it. Deep down, I know computers are just like people. They have unresolved issues from their childhoods. They have mother-in-laws who come to visit. And they have off-days.
I guess that, when my laptop started acting up during my observation, it was just having a bad hair day. Because, when I got it home and plugged it into my own power supply and hooked it up to my own internet connection, whatever problem the touch-pad mouse replacement had been having suddenly disappeared. Very strange. Maybe my computer was just picking out the homesickness vibes I've been sending out lately.
Whatever the actual cause of my computer's bizarre behavior, I was relieved to have the mouse pad working again, because on that particular night, I was to take a career test my career counselor had arranged for me. It would have been difficult to take the test elsewhere, because my school has recently imposed a draconian usage policy designed to lower its internet bill. Briefly, the three computers available to teachers now have a combined daily bandwidth limit, and once this bandwidth limit is reached on any given day, there is no more internet for anyone, for any purpose. A couple of days ago, this limit was reached before two in the afternoon (our school's offices are open from about 9:00 in the morning to about 9:30 at night). I can easily envision fights ensuing over bandwidth issues in the near future, and I prefer not to be a cause of these fights.
In any event, I dutifully took my assigned career test, which proved to be shorter than I had expected. The result is that I am apparently something called an INFJ on the Myers-Briggs personality scale. From looking around a bit on the net, I have found out that INFJs are "future-oriented" (my shrink in New York frequently accuses me, not always unjustly, of living in the future instead of enjoying my present); naturally idealistic (Check); and prefer work that enables them to help people and use their creative talents (Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Any more checks and I could found a republic in Central Europe).
At least one site I looked at indicated that INFJs often struggle with figuring out exactly what to do with themselves. It's good to know I'm neither alone nor crazy because this has been true for me; roughly one in ever 60 or 70 people is an INFJ. The even better news is that this assessment seems to indicate I'm finally barking up the right trees when it comes to what to do with my life. INFJs tend to do well working in educational, counseling, and creative roles.
They also tend to make good writers. Amazing, isn't it, that a personality test could get me so well. People have been telling me I write well as long as I can remember. A major challenge and difficulty for me has been figuring out where to put that writing talent to some kind of productive use. But I have a sense I'm getting closer.
I asked my former shrink in New York, a man in whom I have a great deal of trust and confidence, what he makes of Myers-Briggs and similar kinds of personality assessments. He told me they are not gospel but not worthless either; he also seemed to agree with what this assessment had determined about me. Indeed, I can say it fits in well with what has been true of my life thus far. Every career decision I have made was, at least initially, motivated by a desire to do something where I got to be creative and help others. What I now home my counselor can do for me is help me find the most suitable path like that.
I may not be where I want to be, but I am further along than I was. I know I will reach my destination. And this assessment has given me that knowledge.
I guess that, when my laptop started acting up during my observation, it was just having a bad hair day. Because, when I got it home and plugged it into my own power supply and hooked it up to my own internet connection, whatever problem the touch-pad mouse replacement had been having suddenly disappeared. Very strange. Maybe my computer was just picking out the homesickness vibes I've been sending out lately.
Whatever the actual cause of my computer's bizarre behavior, I was relieved to have the mouse pad working again, because on that particular night, I was to take a career test my career counselor had arranged for me. It would have been difficult to take the test elsewhere, because my school has recently imposed a draconian usage policy designed to lower its internet bill. Briefly, the three computers available to teachers now have a combined daily bandwidth limit, and once this bandwidth limit is reached on any given day, there is no more internet for anyone, for any purpose. A couple of days ago, this limit was reached before two in the afternoon (our school's offices are open from about 9:00 in the morning to about 9:30 at night). I can easily envision fights ensuing over bandwidth issues in the near future, and I prefer not to be a cause of these fights.
In any event, I dutifully took my assigned career test, which proved to be shorter than I had expected. The result is that I am apparently something called an INFJ on the Myers-Briggs personality scale. From looking around a bit on the net, I have found out that INFJs are "future-oriented" (my shrink in New York frequently accuses me, not always unjustly, of living in the future instead of enjoying my present); naturally idealistic (Check); and prefer work that enables them to help people and use their creative talents (Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Any more checks and I could found a republic in Central Europe).
At least one site I looked at indicated that INFJs often struggle with figuring out exactly what to do with themselves. It's good to know I'm neither alone nor crazy because this has been true for me; roughly one in ever 60 or 70 people is an INFJ. The even better news is that this assessment seems to indicate I'm finally barking up the right trees when it comes to what to do with my life. INFJs tend to do well working in educational, counseling, and creative roles.
They also tend to make good writers. Amazing, isn't it, that a personality test could get me so well. People have been telling me I write well as long as I can remember. A major challenge and difficulty for me has been figuring out where to put that writing talent to some kind of productive use. But I have a sense I'm getting closer.
I asked my former shrink in New York, a man in whom I have a great deal of trust and confidence, what he makes of Myers-Briggs and similar kinds of personality assessments. He told me they are not gospel but not worthless either; he also seemed to agree with what this assessment had determined about me. Indeed, I can say it fits in well with what has been true of my life thus far. Every career decision I have made was, at least initially, motivated by a desire to do something where I got to be creative and help others. What I now home my counselor can do for me is help me find the most suitable path like that.
I may not be where I want to be, but I am further along than I was. I know I will reach my destination. And this assessment has given me that knowledge.
10 December 2008
Of Mouses and Men
To the modern EFL teacher stationed abroad, a laptop computer ends up serving as many things. First of all, it's your poor man's post and telegraph office, since virtually all your communication home ends up being my e-mail. In this age of Skype, it's your long-distance telephone, too; today's EFL teacher can stay in constant contact with the world back home, so long as he has a working laptop and a reliable internet connection. Now that CDs are going the way of the Milly Vanilly, your laptop becomes your jukebox and stereo, too--as well as an invaluable resource for lesson planning. Thanks to YouTube, your laptop becomes your television; I've been able to watch everything from obscure documentaries on the Crusades to Sarah Palin's latest gaffe. And, now that iTunes and a million similar services are starting to offer video sales and rental, it can even be your cinema. Take away an EFL teacher's laptop, and you take away his whole access to the world back home.
I may have the joy of undergoing such a discovery--albeit for a short time. Tonight, I had a class observed by my director of studies for the second time. I have an evening class that would strike most teachers back home as somewhat unusual but that I am told is fairly typical for in-company work. This class has a rotating cast of characters. When I came to teach it for the first time, I was told I would have ten students. So far, I have met five, and of these, only one comes almost every time (he has missed class a couple of times because of business trips abroad but is otherwise a very committed and diligent student). The others come only when they really have nothing better to do--or at least, that what's their spotty attendance seems to indicate.
This leaves me in something of a quandary when it comes to planning lessons for this class. Often, the class ends up being a one-on-one, as only my regular (whom I shall call Roman) shows up. But since I never know in advance when this will be the case, I feel compelled to plan two different lessons: a one-on-one lesson in case only Roman is there, and a group-oriented lesson in case other people come. When only Roman is there, I try to avoid introducing major new topics or grammar, so that the other students don't miss anything essential.
Tonight was a Roman-only lesson. I had a lesson prepared to work on indirect discourse and what might be called future-in-the-past situations. In case you missed it in freshman English, indirect discourse (also known as reported speech) occurs whenever we tell what someone else said, but don't give a direct quote with quotation marks. The sentence John said, "I'll do it" is direct discourse; if we write instead John said he would do it, we have shifted to indirect discourse. Future-in-the-past situations are such gems as would in the sentence He realized he would never see her again.
For Russian speakers, indirect discourse and future-in-the-past situations can be challenging, because Russian does not shift tenses when moving from direct to indirect discourse or when dealing with a future-in-the-past situation. In Russian, you can actually say John said he will go to the store, even if the going to the store occurred in the past; in English, of course, this is not possible unless the going to the store will happen sometime in the future. Russian also does not have a tense shift for future-in-the past; in Russia, He realized he would never see her again would be rendered as He realized he will never see her again. Doing this backshifting with tenses is not intuitive to Russian speakers and requires careful explanation and practice.
I chose to focus on these topics for a one-on-one lesson because, in an earlier one-on-one lesson, Roman had specifically requested it. He has been to Canada before and will be going to America shortly and has found difficulty dealing with these situations before. I had a fairly creative lesson prepared using a song by the Andrew Sisters that had a lot of indirect discourse. I knew it would be a hit.
Unfortunately, when I booted up my computer, the touch-pad it has in lieu of a mouse chose tonight to fail. I couldn't move my cursor enough to get the song playing. After about a minute of fumbling, I was forced to shift gears and give Roman the lesson I had prepared for a whole group.
A broken touch-pad shouldn't cause major problems, but it will be damned inconvenient for me. Because of the way my room is arranged, I am pretty much forced to use my computer lying in bed; I have gotten very used to watching films with my laptop lying on my chest, the screen a few scant inches from my face. I have a table on which I could rest my laptop while using the Internet, but I lack a chair to sit on while I browse--hence, my modus operandi of leaving my laptop my chest.
All of this means that, until I can find some way to reconoiter, or can get my school to give me a chair for my room (a process I expect to take a while given how long it took for the school to get me a wardrobe), my laptop will be essentially useless. I am hoping I can buy a new, optical mouse and figure out a way to manipulate it with my fingers so that it works, but doing this is likely to be unbelievably inconvenient.
I may have the joy of undergoing such a discovery--albeit for a short time. Tonight, I had a class observed by my director of studies for the second time. I have an evening class that would strike most teachers back home as somewhat unusual but that I am told is fairly typical for in-company work. This class has a rotating cast of characters. When I came to teach it for the first time, I was told I would have ten students. So far, I have met five, and of these, only one comes almost every time (he has missed class a couple of times because of business trips abroad but is otherwise a very committed and diligent student). The others come only when they really have nothing better to do--or at least, that what's their spotty attendance seems to indicate.
This leaves me in something of a quandary when it comes to planning lessons for this class. Often, the class ends up being a one-on-one, as only my regular (whom I shall call Roman) shows up. But since I never know in advance when this will be the case, I feel compelled to plan two different lessons: a one-on-one lesson in case only Roman is there, and a group-oriented lesson in case other people come. When only Roman is there, I try to avoid introducing major new topics or grammar, so that the other students don't miss anything essential.
Tonight was a Roman-only lesson. I had a lesson prepared to work on indirect discourse and what might be called future-in-the-past situations. In case you missed it in freshman English, indirect discourse (also known as reported speech) occurs whenever we tell what someone else said, but don't give a direct quote with quotation marks. The sentence John said, "I'll do it" is direct discourse; if we write instead John said he would do it, we have shifted to indirect discourse. Future-in-the-past situations are such gems as would in the sentence He realized he would never see her again.
For Russian speakers, indirect discourse and future-in-the-past situations can be challenging, because Russian does not shift tenses when moving from direct to indirect discourse or when dealing with a future-in-the-past situation. In Russian, you can actually say John said he will go to the store, even if the going to the store occurred in the past; in English, of course, this is not possible unless the going to the store will happen sometime in the future. Russian also does not have a tense shift for future-in-the past; in Russia, He realized he would never see her again would be rendered as He realized he will never see her again. Doing this backshifting with tenses is not intuitive to Russian speakers and requires careful explanation and practice.
I chose to focus on these topics for a one-on-one lesson because, in an earlier one-on-one lesson, Roman had specifically requested it. He has been to Canada before and will be going to America shortly and has found difficulty dealing with these situations before. I had a fairly creative lesson prepared using a song by the Andrew Sisters that had a lot of indirect discourse. I knew it would be a hit.
Unfortunately, when I booted up my computer, the touch-pad it has in lieu of a mouse chose tonight to fail. I couldn't move my cursor enough to get the song playing. After about a minute of fumbling, I was forced to shift gears and give Roman the lesson I had prepared for a whole group.
A broken touch-pad shouldn't cause major problems, but it will be damned inconvenient for me. Because of the way my room is arranged, I am pretty much forced to use my computer lying in bed; I have gotten very used to watching films with my laptop lying on my chest, the screen a few scant inches from my face. I have a table on which I could rest my laptop while using the Internet, but I lack a chair to sit on while I browse--hence, my modus operandi of leaving my laptop my chest.
All of this means that, until I can find some way to reconoiter, or can get my school to give me a chair for my room (a process I expect to take a while given how long it took for the school to get me a wardrobe), my laptop will be essentially useless. I am hoping I can buy a new, optical mouse and figure out a way to manipulate it with my fingers so that it works, but doing this is likely to be unbelievably inconvenient.
04 December 2008
I Don't Understand the Parisians
This will not be the first time I have noted that I began this blog with no intention of providing social or political commentary. Until this year, I had a general lack of interest in politics, a lack of interest I developed in college. My time at Columbia was in many ways a time of turning inward; I was so consumed with trying to figure out who I was that I largely lost interest in the wider world around me. Politics seemed incapable of providing any wisdom that would guide my life on a day-to-day level, and so I felt it wasn't worth the time to worry about.
All of that has changed. I guess this election campaign has made me see that more was at stake than I had thought, for my country and for the world. I am genuinely glad that Barack Obama will become president of the United States on January 20th. Whether he will work any great wonderwork for the country remains to be seen. But change is in the air, not just for me but for my country.
The bailouts--the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street and the proposed bailout of the auto industry--have recently attracted my interest. Both are quite vexing to me, not for any particular ideological reason but because of what they reveal about what has happened to the American character in recent years. I am angry that so much has been given to the country's largest banks, on the assumption they would use it to make loans and end the credit crisis, without any oversight whatsoever. I'm sorry, but $350 billion is not the price of a lemonade at a child's lemonade stand. It represents upwards of $1000 for every man, woman, and child in the country, and it ought not to have been handed out without clear instructions as to how it was to be used.
But the proposed bailout of the auto industry makes me angrier, and for reasons that defy clear political or ideological classification. I am not the hardcore conservative I once was. My own checkered career since graduation has made me more aware of how easy it is for people to fall through the cracks, for reasons having nothing to do with their moral fibre. So my objections to this bailout are not the objections of a conservative objecting to welfare.
No, my objections are deeper than that. My feeling is that this bailout will only serve to reward the stewards of the Big Three (a good friend of mind now calls them "The Little Three") who got us into this mess, and who undertook no sacrifices to avoid the catastrophe they are now asking Washington to help them avert.
There is so much more these men could have done. They could have refused stock options, given up their seven-figure salaries, and sold off the corporate jets long before they became the object of national ridicule. Having so done, they could have gone to the unions and the workers and asked everyone to work together in a spirit of shared sacrifice--not merely told, but also shown, their workers that everyone in the company was in the same boat. But they did none of that.
Commentators have noted that the Big Three are "too big to fail". Maybe. But if they are, they are also too big to have been run so incompetently for so long. The CEOs of Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford continued for years to receive hefty compensation as their factories turned out crap no one wanted to buy.
This is not the first time of late that Americans have watched people in high places act as though they were entitled to reward not for a job well done, not merely for showing up to work each day, but just for being who they are. The spectacle of Enron was shocking, to say the least. But in a way, all Americans have been living the life of the Big Three executives, the life not merely of Riley but of Ken Lay.
Americans have long crowed about their national prosperity. For many years, however, that crowing was based on something. Americans had the world's highest standard of living, we understood, because we had worked for it. American ingenuity had given the world the phonograph and the cinema and the Tin Lizzie. We worked hard to produce things the world wanted to buy. The chicken in every pot and the two cars in every garage were our reward for that hard work.
Somewhere along the line, something changed. We started to think we were entitled to this wealth not because our factories were the most efficient or our products the best. We started to think we were entitled to it simply because we were Americans. We treated wealth not as a reward for hard work but as a birthright. We deserved SUVs the size of woolly mammoths and $2.00 gasoline just because we were us.
At the same time, our images of the wealthy elite changed. Once, we had admired the Henry Fords and Thomas Edisons who had given us our cars and electric lights and had reaped the rewards of their inventiveness and hard word; now, those Americans who admire the very rich admire a very different creature, a woman whose claim to fame consists solely in having been born an heiress and having put up a pornographic tape of herself on the internet. It's no wonder Americans are so obsessed with Paris Hilton. In a thousand ways, we have all become Parisians.
Because of these changes, I don't recognize my country any more. To quote Leslie Caron, I don't understand the Parisians. Who are these strange creatures? Not the people I was taught Americans were supposed to be.
I hope for all our sakes, we say no to this bailout of the auto industry. I feel for the people in Michigan and other rustbelt states who will lose their jobs and have to make a difficult transition. As a more progressive person than I once was, I hope that our government will provide them with the aid they need to make it through until either the Japanese automakers pick up the pieces of the Big Three or new industry develops in these regions. In a civilized country, everyone is entitled to food, clothing, and a decent roof over their heads.
But what everyone is not entitled to is a life in the lap of luxury--the good life without the good effort and hard work that make it possible. America can no longer persist in that delusion. The costs over the long term are far too great.
Let us hope our nation's leaders have the sense to pull the plug on the American auto industry, as swiftly as General Motors pulled the plug on the electric car.
All of that has changed. I guess this election campaign has made me see that more was at stake than I had thought, for my country and for the world. I am genuinely glad that Barack Obama will become president of the United States on January 20th. Whether he will work any great wonderwork for the country remains to be seen. But change is in the air, not just for me but for my country.
The bailouts--the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street and the proposed bailout of the auto industry--have recently attracted my interest. Both are quite vexing to me, not for any particular ideological reason but because of what they reveal about what has happened to the American character in recent years. I am angry that so much has been given to the country's largest banks, on the assumption they would use it to make loans and end the credit crisis, without any oversight whatsoever. I'm sorry, but $350 billion is not the price of a lemonade at a child's lemonade stand. It represents upwards of $1000 for every man, woman, and child in the country, and it ought not to have been handed out without clear instructions as to how it was to be used.
But the proposed bailout of the auto industry makes me angrier, and for reasons that defy clear political or ideological classification. I am not the hardcore conservative I once was. My own checkered career since graduation has made me more aware of how easy it is for people to fall through the cracks, for reasons having nothing to do with their moral fibre. So my objections to this bailout are not the objections of a conservative objecting to welfare.
No, my objections are deeper than that. My feeling is that this bailout will only serve to reward the stewards of the Big Three (a good friend of mind now calls them "The Little Three") who got us into this mess, and who undertook no sacrifices to avoid the catastrophe they are now asking Washington to help them avert.
There is so much more these men could have done. They could have refused stock options, given up their seven-figure salaries, and sold off the corporate jets long before they became the object of national ridicule. Having so done, they could have gone to the unions and the workers and asked everyone to work together in a spirit of shared sacrifice--not merely told, but also shown, their workers that everyone in the company was in the same boat. But they did none of that.
Commentators have noted that the Big Three are "too big to fail". Maybe. But if they are, they are also too big to have been run so incompetently for so long. The CEOs of Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford continued for years to receive hefty compensation as their factories turned out crap no one wanted to buy.
This is not the first time of late that Americans have watched people in high places act as though they were entitled to reward not for a job well done, not merely for showing up to work each day, but just for being who they are. The spectacle of Enron was shocking, to say the least. But in a way, all Americans have been living the life of the Big Three executives, the life not merely of Riley but of Ken Lay.
Americans have long crowed about their national prosperity. For many years, however, that crowing was based on something. Americans had the world's highest standard of living, we understood, because we had worked for it. American ingenuity had given the world the phonograph and the cinema and the Tin Lizzie. We worked hard to produce things the world wanted to buy. The chicken in every pot and the two cars in every garage were our reward for that hard work.
Somewhere along the line, something changed. We started to think we were entitled to this wealth not because our factories were the most efficient or our products the best. We started to think we were entitled to it simply because we were Americans. We treated wealth not as a reward for hard work but as a birthright. We deserved SUVs the size of woolly mammoths and $2.00 gasoline just because we were us.
At the same time, our images of the wealthy elite changed. Once, we had admired the Henry Fords and Thomas Edisons who had given us our cars and electric lights and had reaped the rewards of their inventiveness and hard word; now, those Americans who admire the very rich admire a very different creature, a woman whose claim to fame consists solely in having been born an heiress and having put up a pornographic tape of herself on the internet. It's no wonder Americans are so obsessed with Paris Hilton. In a thousand ways, we have all become Parisians.
Because of these changes, I don't recognize my country any more. To quote Leslie Caron, I don't understand the Parisians. Who are these strange creatures? Not the people I was taught Americans were supposed to be.
I hope for all our sakes, we say no to this bailout of the auto industry. I feel for the people in Michigan and other rustbelt states who will lose their jobs and have to make a difficult transition. As a more progressive person than I once was, I hope that our government will provide them with the aid they need to make it through until either the Japanese automakers pick up the pieces of the Big Three or new industry develops in these regions. In a civilized country, everyone is entitled to food, clothing, and a decent roof over their heads.
But what everyone is not entitled to is a life in the lap of luxury--the good life without the good effort and hard work that make it possible. America can no longer persist in that delusion. The costs over the long term are far too great.
Let us hope our nation's leaders have the sense to pull the plug on the American auto industry, as swiftly as General Motors pulled the plug on the electric car.
Glass Out of Masonry
Intellectually, I know that only eight time zones separate Moscow and New York. In an age of jet travel and broadband, this really isn't so far. If I am willing to stay up (and I am almost always willing), I can chat up friends back home. But at times, the distance between Moscow and New York can seem overwhelming.
One of those times came today, when I spoke to a career counselor I had worked with briefly before I left America over a year ago. I met this woman in the oddest way. At some point in what seemed like an interminable and fruitless job search, someone suggested I look into professional organizations in the public relations field. One of the organizations he suggested was a group called Women in Communications. Naturally, I had misgivings about going to what I presumed would be a women-only organization. But after I was assured that men were welcome to, and often did, attend the group for networking purposes, I resolved to go.
The event I went to was held in the Hearst Building. For those of you who don't live in New York, the Hearst Building is about the oddest bit of architecture to be found in the city. When construction originally began on the building in the 1920s, it was intended to be a large skyscraper, like the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building. But then the Depression struck, and work on the building stopped with only four stories complete.
Fast forward seventy years, and work again resumed on the Hearst Building--but not to build the structure originally planned in the Jazz Age. A new group of architects decided instead to have a massive glass-and-steal monstrosity emerge from the existing masonry building--the new coming out of the old, if you will. For a while, when I worked in a law firm whose offices were located near the construction site, I could watch its progress. But until this meeting, I had never had a reason to go into it. I tended to avert my eyes when I walked by the Hearst Building, because it was truly ugly. I loathe to use a cliche, but on a street of more coherent and consistent buildings, it really did stick out like a sore thumb.
Well, that day, going to the event for Women in Communications, so did I. Looking around, I saw no other males in sight. By this I do not mean that I saw very few males. I mean, I saw not one. Not a husband or boyfriend of an attendee. And certainly not, as I had been told, men in the industry looking to network.
I was beginning to contemplate going home and burying my head in embarassment when this woman, whom I shall call Brenda, walked over to me. We spoke briefly, and I found out she was a career counselor. She apologized for not having any more business cards--I imagined she had given out quite a few that evening--but she wrote down her contact information for me and told me she might be able to help me out.
I met with Brenda only twice before leaving New York. I think that by the time I met her, I had already decided it was time to give up on trying to hold onto my New York life. A person can only bang his head against brick walls so many times before a concussion--or worse--ensues, and I was nearing that point. But nonetheless, Brenda was striking in her helpfulness and professionalism.
Thinking about my graduate school applications and general career aimlessness a few days ago, I bethought myself that it might be a good idea to contact Brenda again and try to get her take on things. Education isn't the field she knows best, but I thought at the very least I could get her to refer me to a colleague who could help me sort out some of my current dilemmas about what to apply to and where to go. And so I e-mailed her.
To my surprise, Brenda indicated that she had several clients who worked in education, including some who, like me, were teaching abroad. I agreed to set up a telephone meeting with her, and tonight we had it.
Mostly, in this meeting, I caught her up on what had happened in my career since I saw her last--which is to say, everything that has happened during the time this blog has been in existence. I told her a bit about my frustrations with being an in-company teacher--mainly, the sense that I am more of an entertainer than a real teacher, that my students don't really have the time, energy, or inclination to study English in a serious way, and that, when all is said and done, I am probably better suited to teaching something else. She suggested a deeper analysis of what type of career I might be suited for, a kind of analysis I wish I had undertaken before I left college. Ah, well. Regret is an emotion I am trying to banish, and so I shall not dwell on this point.
What I hope for most, out of wherever these discussions with Brenda go, is to become a glass building rising out of a masonry foundation. I know I will likely end up taking a direction I had not originally planned or hoped for, but it will be, at last, a real direction--a plan that will result in completion. I think that, for too long, I have treated job hunting as just reaching out and grabbing at anything that looked like a life preserver. Now, I want to treat it as looking for what I really am suited for, so that wherever I go next, it will be something that is well thought out. No more knocking about blindly for me.
I told Brenda that I was mainly looking for a way to establish a normal, middle-class life back home. Though I am glad I have had a chance to come to Russia and see a way of life I would never have seen in Brooklyn, I know that living abroad is not a long-term path for me. I am not jingoistic, but ultimately, my country is home in a way Russia never will be, and I hope to go back to it next year--wiser, more experienced, and ready to resume construction on the Hearst Building that is my life.
One of those times came today, when I spoke to a career counselor I had worked with briefly before I left America over a year ago. I met this woman in the oddest way. At some point in what seemed like an interminable and fruitless job search, someone suggested I look into professional organizations in the public relations field. One of the organizations he suggested was a group called Women in Communications. Naturally, I had misgivings about going to what I presumed would be a women-only organization. But after I was assured that men were welcome to, and often did, attend the group for networking purposes, I resolved to go.
The event I went to was held in the Hearst Building. For those of you who don't live in New York, the Hearst Building is about the oddest bit of architecture to be found in the city. When construction originally began on the building in the 1920s, it was intended to be a large skyscraper, like the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building. But then the Depression struck, and work on the building stopped with only four stories complete.
Fast forward seventy years, and work again resumed on the Hearst Building--but not to build the structure originally planned in the Jazz Age. A new group of architects decided instead to have a massive glass-and-steal monstrosity emerge from the existing masonry building--the new coming out of the old, if you will. For a while, when I worked in a law firm whose offices were located near the construction site, I could watch its progress. But until this meeting, I had never had a reason to go into it. I tended to avert my eyes when I walked by the Hearst Building, because it was truly ugly. I loathe to use a cliche, but on a street of more coherent and consistent buildings, it really did stick out like a sore thumb.
Well, that day, going to the event for Women in Communications, so did I. Looking around, I saw no other males in sight. By this I do not mean that I saw very few males. I mean, I saw not one. Not a husband or boyfriend of an attendee. And certainly not, as I had been told, men in the industry looking to network.
I was beginning to contemplate going home and burying my head in embarassment when this woman, whom I shall call Brenda, walked over to me. We spoke briefly, and I found out she was a career counselor. She apologized for not having any more business cards--I imagined she had given out quite a few that evening--but she wrote down her contact information for me and told me she might be able to help me out.
I met with Brenda only twice before leaving New York. I think that by the time I met her, I had already decided it was time to give up on trying to hold onto my New York life. A person can only bang his head against brick walls so many times before a concussion--or worse--ensues, and I was nearing that point. But nonetheless, Brenda was striking in her helpfulness and professionalism.
Thinking about my graduate school applications and general career aimlessness a few days ago, I bethought myself that it might be a good idea to contact Brenda again and try to get her take on things. Education isn't the field she knows best, but I thought at the very least I could get her to refer me to a colleague who could help me sort out some of my current dilemmas about what to apply to and where to go. And so I e-mailed her.
To my surprise, Brenda indicated that she had several clients who worked in education, including some who, like me, were teaching abroad. I agreed to set up a telephone meeting with her, and tonight we had it.
Mostly, in this meeting, I caught her up on what had happened in my career since I saw her last--which is to say, everything that has happened during the time this blog has been in existence. I told her a bit about my frustrations with being an in-company teacher--mainly, the sense that I am more of an entertainer than a real teacher, that my students don't really have the time, energy, or inclination to study English in a serious way, and that, when all is said and done, I am probably better suited to teaching something else. She suggested a deeper analysis of what type of career I might be suited for, a kind of analysis I wish I had undertaken before I left college. Ah, well. Regret is an emotion I am trying to banish, and so I shall not dwell on this point.
What I hope for most, out of wherever these discussions with Brenda go, is to become a glass building rising out of a masonry foundation. I know I will likely end up taking a direction I had not originally planned or hoped for, but it will be, at last, a real direction--a plan that will result in completion. I think that, for too long, I have treated job hunting as just reaching out and grabbing at anything that looked like a life preserver. Now, I want to treat it as looking for what I really am suited for, so that wherever I go next, it will be something that is well thought out. No more knocking about blindly for me.
I told Brenda that I was mainly looking for a way to establish a normal, middle-class life back home. Though I am glad I have had a chance to come to Russia and see a way of life I would never have seen in Brooklyn, I know that living abroad is not a long-term path for me. I am not jingoistic, but ultimately, my country is home in a way Russia never will be, and I hope to go back to it next year--wiser, more experienced, and ready to resume construction on the Hearst Building that is my life.
28 November 2008
Thankful But Anxious
Last week, I telephoned a career counselor whom I had seen a couple times in New York to set up a time to speak again. Having been floundering--I might even say foundering--in my career since college, I decided it was time to seek advice from a competent and, I hoped, objective professional. Mostly, I wanted help sorting out the various options I am presently considering for What To Do With the Rest of My Life--the question that nags at me persistently and almost constantly.
We had exchanged a couple of e-mails, and the counselor had asked me to call to discuss when we could have a fuller conversation. I suggested today, forgetting completely that it would be Thanksgiving in America. So far am I from life back home that Turkey Day had totally slipped my mind.
I do have a lot to be thankful for this year. I know this because, when I find myself anxious (which is fairly often), I try to think of things for which I grateful as a way of calming down. At the head of the list is having a job that gives me the appreciation of my students and, occasionally, the opportunity to learn interesting things myself. I am grateful to be in a far better situation than I was in Taiwan. And I am grateful for the insight that so many of my problems since graduation have been caused by needless fear and anxiety.
Nonetheless, there is still a lot to be anxious about. The current economic crisis has everyone anxious, and I am no exception. My job may not be as secure as I had hoped, not because of any failure on my part in the classroom--I actually got good marks on my first and so far only classroom observation--but because of the economic storm engulfing the world. Someone high up in my school's administration has told me not to worry, that during Russia's last crisis in the late 1990s, the school had kept every one of its teachers and simply divided the reduced teaching load amongst them. But having had so many things go belly-up or just fail to come together over the last few years, it's hard to avoid the thought that this too many not last.
There's also the matter of my graduate school admissions--though here I also have some cause for cheer. I have completed applications to two programs in Jewish education and am finally close to having an admissions interview at one of them, to which I sent my application before leaving home this spring. My chances of getting into this program are pretty good. But whether this is really the best field for me, I am less certain than I was in April.s
I had hoped that my time in Russia would enable me to sort out graduate programs and find a clear direction. So far, this has not happened. I have looked into Jewish education, teacher training programs, library science programs, and, more recently, master's programs in higher education. But I still feel unable to make up my mind--a major reason for my decision to seek the advice of a professional. My indecision has been due partly to my recurrent anxiety, partly to having to adjust to life in Russia, and partly to knowing that all of these options are major commitments.
But on the thankful side, I can at least be thankful that, unlike during my time in New York, I am not going head-on into something for which I am neither qualified nor suited, and that I have learned at least to seek out and even occasionally take the advice of people older and wiser--or at least wiser--than I. And I am blessed to have so many such people in my life.
To all of them, I say thank you, and wish a joyous and happy Thanksgiving.
We had exchanged a couple of e-mails, and the counselor had asked me to call to discuss when we could have a fuller conversation. I suggested today, forgetting completely that it would be Thanksgiving in America. So far am I from life back home that Turkey Day had totally slipped my mind.
I do have a lot to be thankful for this year. I know this because, when I find myself anxious (which is fairly often), I try to think of things for which I grateful as a way of calming down. At the head of the list is having a job that gives me the appreciation of my students and, occasionally, the opportunity to learn interesting things myself. I am grateful to be in a far better situation than I was in Taiwan. And I am grateful for the insight that so many of my problems since graduation have been caused by needless fear and anxiety.
Nonetheless, there is still a lot to be anxious about. The current economic crisis has everyone anxious, and I am no exception. My job may not be as secure as I had hoped, not because of any failure on my part in the classroom--I actually got good marks on my first and so far only classroom observation--but because of the economic storm engulfing the world. Someone high up in my school's administration has told me not to worry, that during Russia's last crisis in the late 1990s, the school had kept every one of its teachers and simply divided the reduced teaching load amongst them. But having had so many things go belly-up or just fail to come together over the last few years, it's hard to avoid the thought that this too many not last.
There's also the matter of my graduate school admissions--though here I also have some cause for cheer. I have completed applications to two programs in Jewish education and am finally close to having an admissions interview at one of them, to which I sent my application before leaving home this spring. My chances of getting into this program are pretty good. But whether this is really the best field for me, I am less certain than I was in April.s
I had hoped that my time in Russia would enable me to sort out graduate programs and find a clear direction. So far, this has not happened. I have looked into Jewish education, teacher training programs, library science programs, and, more recently, master's programs in higher education. But I still feel unable to make up my mind--a major reason for my decision to seek the advice of a professional. My indecision has been due partly to my recurrent anxiety, partly to having to adjust to life in Russia, and partly to knowing that all of these options are major commitments.
But on the thankful side, I can at least be thankful that, unlike during my time in New York, I am not going head-on into something for which I am neither qualified nor suited, and that I have learned at least to seek out and even occasionally take the advice of people older and wiser--or at least wiser--than I. And I am blessed to have so many such people in my life.
To all of them, I say thank you, and wish a joyous and happy Thanksgiving.
Das Vadanya, Volodya
Yesterday, I was waiting for my evening class to begin when I received a text message from someone in my school's in-company department. She wanted to know how many times I have taught Volodya in the past months and whether there had been any cancellations.
I immediately called her, wanting to know why she needed this information so urgently. She said the person in charge of English instruction at Volodya's company needed to settle the bill. Apparently, my lessons with Volodya are now a casualty of the world economic crisis; the company has to retrench, and lessons like these are the first thing to go. My last lesson with Volodya will be next Tuesday.
I have learned so much from him, about not just how this country works, but how it worked in the recent, Communist past. I got to hear about strategies for obtaining "deficit" goods (goods the government could not or would not produce in sufficient quantities), dealing with interminable lines to buy basic groceries (which apparently existed as recently as the mid-1990s), and protecting your savings in a country that lacks a sound banking system and that, for several years after Communism's downfall, lacked a stable currency.
Alas, my Tuesday and Thursday mornings with Volodya are to be no more. Das Vadanya, Volodya. From me, you got practice with the third conditional and discussions of Jennifer Wilbanks and Andrea Yates. From you, I got a peek into another world.
I immediately called her, wanting to know why she needed this information so urgently. She said the person in charge of English instruction at Volodya's company needed to settle the bill. Apparently, my lessons with Volodya are now a casualty of the world economic crisis; the company has to retrench, and lessons like these are the first thing to go. My last lesson with Volodya will be next Tuesday.
I have learned so much from him, about not just how this country works, but how it worked in the recent, Communist past. I got to hear about strategies for obtaining "deficit" goods (goods the government could not or would not produce in sufficient quantities), dealing with interminable lines to buy basic groceries (which apparently existed as recently as the mid-1990s), and protecting your savings in a country that lacks a sound banking system and that, for several years after Communism's downfall, lacked a stable currency.
Alas, my Tuesday and Thursday mornings with Volodya are to be no more. Das Vadanya, Volodya. From me, you got practice with the third conditional and discussions of Jennifer Wilbanks and Andrea Yates. From you, I got a peek into another world.
The Wardrobe
To all the regular readers of my blog, I must offer an apology. I have been a very infrequent blogger of late, largely because my schedule has become hectic and busy, and my adventures have been few and far between. Winter is really the busy season for EFL teachers in Russia; my school has had me teaching close to the maximum number of hours my contract allows, and between teaching, lesson preparation, and travel, I have had little time to sit and blog.
Nonetheless, I do have some news to report from Moscow. We have had snow most of this week, a fact which, in my opinion, marks the beginning in earnest of the Russian winter. The temperature has been at about the freezing point, and I go out each day in a warm coat and scarf, but I cannot say I have been much colder than I would be at home this time of year.
I suppose I ought to feel some marvel at being in Russia in the snow, and indeed, last weekend, when a fellow teacher and I ended up walking through Red Square while flurries came down, there was a certain magic about it. But I cannot help knowing that the winter in Russia is long and likely to get far colder. A British administrator at my school who studied in Russia during her time at university remarked that it's not uncommon for the temperature to reach -20 Celsius in January. I dread that extremity of cold, but I imagine I will find some way to make do, as I managed for several months to make do without a washing machine and as I managed, until very recently, to make do without a proper wardrobe for my clothes.
Regarding the lack of a wardrobe: it was corrected last weekend. Sunday afternoon, I was sitting at home when the doorbell rang. As I was not expecting anyone, I had no idea who it could be.
It turned out to be too men delivering a wardrobe my school had promised me. And, it turned out, not just any wardrobe, but a big honking thing that takes up an amazing amount of space in my room. One thing I have learned, having had several experiences teaching Russians in their homes, is that Russians seem to take the same philosophy toward furniture that many New Yorkers take toward their dogs: the smaller the apartment, the bigger the furniture.
My school had been promising me a wardrobe ever since September, when, a new roommate having moved into my flat, the administrator in charge of housing came round for an inspection. When she expressed how appalled she was at seeing my dirty clothes in a massive pile on my bedroom floor (I fully expect to find Jimmy Hoffa in this pile any day now), I explained with a fair amount of exasperation that, lacking both a washing machine and a proper wardrobe, I had not much choice but to have a never-disappearing pile of clothes on the floor. The administrator promised me a washer and a wardrobe.
As I have already recounted, the washer was delivered in short order. Getting the wardrobe, however, became a much more dragged-out affair. Every time I came into my school's central office, I made inquiries about it and was told that negotations with my landlady over this wardrobe were in progress. I had expressed a wish to have one of the two massive bookcases in my room removed. This the landlady apparently proved unwilling to agree to. And so I assumed that the wardrobe was never to come.
I was quite surprised, then, when the men with the wardrobe showed up last Sunday. With all deliberate speed--and by this I do mean speed worthy of a court desegregation order--they brought in the wardrobe. I tried to explain to them, with my limited Russian, that I thought they were to remove a bookcase, and that they should probably do this before they brought in the wardrobe, but I failed to get this idea across. The wardrobe was dumped in what passes for our front hall, as there was no room for it in my bedroom.
Monday evening, I returned home from my evening class to find the wardrobe had been installed in my bedroom, but no furniture had been removed.
Ah, well. At least I have space enough to hang all of my wet clothes after I have taken them out of the washer. With any luck, the pile on my bedroom floor will finally disappear.
Nonetheless, I do have some news to report from Moscow. We have had snow most of this week, a fact which, in my opinion, marks the beginning in earnest of the Russian winter. The temperature has been at about the freezing point, and I go out each day in a warm coat and scarf, but I cannot say I have been much colder than I would be at home this time of year.
I suppose I ought to feel some marvel at being in Russia in the snow, and indeed, last weekend, when a fellow teacher and I ended up walking through Red Square while flurries came down, there was a certain magic about it. But I cannot help knowing that the winter in Russia is long and likely to get far colder. A British administrator at my school who studied in Russia during her time at university remarked that it's not uncommon for the temperature to reach -20 Celsius in January. I dread that extremity of cold, but I imagine I will find some way to make do, as I managed for several months to make do without a washing machine and as I managed, until very recently, to make do without a proper wardrobe for my clothes.
Regarding the lack of a wardrobe: it was corrected last weekend. Sunday afternoon, I was sitting at home when the doorbell rang. As I was not expecting anyone, I had no idea who it could be.
It turned out to be too men delivering a wardrobe my school had promised me. And, it turned out, not just any wardrobe, but a big honking thing that takes up an amazing amount of space in my room. One thing I have learned, having had several experiences teaching Russians in their homes, is that Russians seem to take the same philosophy toward furniture that many New Yorkers take toward their dogs: the smaller the apartment, the bigger the furniture.
My school had been promising me a wardrobe ever since September, when, a new roommate having moved into my flat, the administrator in charge of housing came round for an inspection. When she expressed how appalled she was at seeing my dirty clothes in a massive pile on my bedroom floor (I fully expect to find Jimmy Hoffa in this pile any day now), I explained with a fair amount of exasperation that, lacking both a washing machine and a proper wardrobe, I had not much choice but to have a never-disappearing pile of clothes on the floor. The administrator promised me a washer and a wardrobe.
As I have already recounted, the washer was delivered in short order. Getting the wardrobe, however, became a much more dragged-out affair. Every time I came into my school's central office, I made inquiries about it and was told that negotations with my landlady over this wardrobe were in progress. I had expressed a wish to have one of the two massive bookcases in my room removed. This the landlady apparently proved unwilling to agree to. And so I assumed that the wardrobe was never to come.
I was quite surprised, then, when the men with the wardrobe showed up last Sunday. With all deliberate speed--and by this I do mean speed worthy of a court desegregation order--they brought in the wardrobe. I tried to explain to them, with my limited Russian, that I thought they were to remove a bookcase, and that they should probably do this before they brought in the wardrobe, but I failed to get this idea across. The wardrobe was dumped in what passes for our front hall, as there was no room for it in my bedroom.
Monday evening, I returned home from my evening class to find the wardrobe had been installed in my bedroom, but no furniture had been removed.
Ah, well. At least I have space enough to hang all of my wet clothes after I have taken them out of the washer. With any luck, the pile on my bedroom floor will finally disappear.
09 November 2008
The World Turned Right Side Up
When I began this blog, a bit more than a year ago, I made a vow that, come what may, the one thing I was not going to talk about was politics. There are already far too many political blogs out there. I myself am generally not horribly interested in the topic, preferring to focus my energies on smaller-scale things than who becomes president of the United States. But in the aftermath of last Tuesday's national election, I suppose I cannot help adding my two cents to the political conversation.
An African-American man has been elected president of the United States. For the past week, as I have called up family and old friends in the United States, I have repeatedly quipped that there must be pigs flying past their windows. But the more I think about that joke, the more I realize how wrong that joke is. For in fact, it does not surprise me that such a thing could happen--has now happened--in America.
In my heart, I have never believed that most white Americans are racists. Were they at one time? Definitely. But not any more. I never felt any need to examine the "Bradley effect"--the supposed propensity of white voters to tell pollsters they would vote for a black candidate, but then not do it in the actual voting booth. I had faith in the goodness of the American people, and that faith has proven justified.
Even more so, I had faith in my generation--the generation raised on Sesame Street and Bill Cosby, a generation of unparalleled ethnic and racial diversity. By all accounts, my generation voted overwhelmingly for Obama. And this does not, in fact, surprise me. We have sat side by side in college lecture halls, worked together in the same companies, and never once thought this was anything remarkable, anything other than the way things ought to be.
Maybe now we can all grow up. Maybe race finally is truly a thing of the past in America. White people in urban America can stop being afraid of people whose skin happens to be the same shade as the president-elect; black people can stop feeling as though the deck is stacked against them.
Like Michelle Obama, I am now really proud of my country; unlike her, I can only wish I were there to see firsthand where her husband will us.
An African-American man has been elected president of the United States. For the past week, as I have called up family and old friends in the United States, I have repeatedly quipped that there must be pigs flying past their windows. But the more I think about that joke, the more I realize how wrong that joke is. For in fact, it does not surprise me that such a thing could happen--has now happened--in America.
In my heart, I have never believed that most white Americans are racists. Were they at one time? Definitely. But not any more. I never felt any need to examine the "Bradley effect"--the supposed propensity of white voters to tell pollsters they would vote for a black candidate, but then not do it in the actual voting booth. I had faith in the goodness of the American people, and that faith has proven justified.
Even more so, I had faith in my generation--the generation raised on Sesame Street and Bill Cosby, a generation of unparalleled ethnic and racial diversity. By all accounts, my generation voted overwhelmingly for Obama. And this does not, in fact, surprise me. We have sat side by side in college lecture halls, worked together in the same companies, and never once thought this was anything remarkable, anything other than the way things ought to be.
Maybe now we can all grow up. Maybe race finally is truly a thing of the past in America. White people in urban America can stop being afraid of people whose skin happens to be the same shade as the president-elect; black people can stop feeling as though the deck is stacked against them.
Like Michelle Obama, I am now really proud of my country; unlike her, I can only wish I were there to see firsthand where her husband will us.
Homesick...But Still Here
I suppose I ought to have some really good excuse for failing to blog much in the past month. The frequency of my blogging has gone down quite a bit; in Taiwan, I would blog so frequently in part because there just was nothing else to do where I was, and my class load did not consume as much of my time as it does here. In Moscow, however, my class load has increased, my social life is fuller, and I find I have less time to report everything of even minor interest said by my students.
Moreover, I have had more than a touch of homesickness of late. The realization, early last month, that I had been away from New York a full year sparked off a bit of depression. To think of it, a full year had passed since I had last wandered through Park Slope at sunset, eaten an oversized sandwich at Fine & Shapiro's, or approached Brooklyn from the pedestrian promenade of the Brooklyn Bridge. And ever since, my mind has turned back there, again and again, wondering if I would ever make it home.
This weekend, however, I spoke to someone who gave me the verbal kick in the pants I needed to get out of this. I've come to see some advantages to my situation here I had not noticed before in my sea of homesickness.
For one, I actually have a job where I seem to be appreciated for my mind, not just as a warm body. This week, I won my school's recently-inaugurated lesson planning contest after I submitted my Charleston Contest lesson plan (I was, however, disappointed to learn that the prize was the equivalent of $50 in rubles, and not one genuine loving cup). I may not have as many students as a "real teacher" back home, but the students who are able to come regularly to my classes seem to like me, and have no complaints about me as their teacher. In short, I feel as if I am actually succeeding here, in a way I never succeeded at any job back home.
So with that more positive attitude, I will attempt to be in more regular correspondence.
Moreover, I have had more than a touch of homesickness of late. The realization, early last month, that I had been away from New York a full year sparked off a bit of depression. To think of it, a full year had passed since I had last wandered through Park Slope at sunset, eaten an oversized sandwich at Fine & Shapiro's, or approached Brooklyn from the pedestrian promenade of the Brooklyn Bridge. And ever since, my mind has turned back there, again and again, wondering if I would ever make it home.
This weekend, however, I spoke to someone who gave me the verbal kick in the pants I needed to get out of this. I've come to see some advantages to my situation here I had not noticed before in my sea of homesickness.
For one, I actually have a job where I seem to be appreciated for my mind, not just as a warm body. This week, I won my school's recently-inaugurated lesson planning contest after I submitted my Charleston Contest lesson plan (I was, however, disappointed to learn that the prize was the equivalent of $50 in rubles, and not one genuine loving cup). I may not have as many students as a "real teacher" back home, but the students who are able to come regularly to my classes seem to like me, and have no complaints about me as their teacher. In short, I feel as if I am actually succeeding here, in a way I never succeeded at any job back home.
So with that more positive attitude, I will attempt to be in more regular correspondence.
20 October 2008
Twenty-Three Redo
Well, I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later:
Tonight, George Bailey, Mary Hatch, and the rest of the 1928 graduating class at Bedford Falls High School did the Charleston right into the gym swimming pool, in my EFL class.
When I came to Russia, I hoped that I would eventually have a chance to bring the big Charleston contest back into my classroom. And that opportunity finally came today, in an Intermediate class I teach at a company that manufactures automotive parts.
The last time I used the Charleston contest scene, I really had done it for no real purpose than my own desire to show video in class. I had learned about the video dictation technique (briefly, in a video dictation, half the class sees the video and describes it to the other half, who cannot see) in CELTA training and wanted a chance to try it out. But I had not really thought through what I could use it for, and the lesson that came out if it was highly botched.
Tonight's replay was totally different--probably a sign that my teaching skills are improving. I chose to use the scene with a class that I know has trouble figuring out when and how to use the past simple (I went), the past continuous (I was going), and the past perfect (I had gone). Giving it some thought this weekend, I decided the best way to clear up this confusing was with a bit of video. And so I started planning a way to exploit It's a Wonderful Life to clarify distinctions among these verb tenses.
This time around, I prepared slips of paper with everything that happens in the four minutes of video I showed and had my student (only one actually showed up tonight) put them in the proper order. Then I asked questions geared to getting him to understand a need for the past continuous or past perfect, as required.
All in all, I was quite satisifed with how this lesson progressed tonight. And this despite a couple of embarassing technical glitches: at one point, my laptop's cord came unplugged, and at another, my video player froze, requiring me to reboot the computer. At least my student is a good-natured guy who took it in stride. While I fiddled with my laptop, I had him chat with me about his work, which requires him to go on weekly business trips to Rostov-on-Don, Nizhnii Novgorod, and various other cities in Russia.
But I think this lesson really helped him. He said he will be doing some review of these tenses on his own, but I had the satisfying feeling, walking home tonight, that I had actually accomplished something. There is no feeling like it in the world.
Tonight, George Bailey, Mary Hatch, and the rest of the 1928 graduating class at Bedford Falls High School did the Charleston right into the gym swimming pool, in my EFL class.
When I came to Russia, I hoped that I would eventually have a chance to bring the big Charleston contest back into my classroom. And that opportunity finally came today, in an Intermediate class I teach at a company that manufactures automotive parts.
The last time I used the Charleston contest scene, I really had done it for no real purpose than my own desire to show video in class. I had learned about the video dictation technique (briefly, in a video dictation, half the class sees the video and describes it to the other half, who cannot see) in CELTA training and wanted a chance to try it out. But I had not really thought through what I could use it for, and the lesson that came out if it was highly botched.
Tonight's replay was totally different--probably a sign that my teaching skills are improving. I chose to use the scene with a class that I know has trouble figuring out when and how to use the past simple (I went), the past continuous (I was going), and the past perfect (I had gone). Giving it some thought this weekend, I decided the best way to clear up this confusing was with a bit of video. And so I started planning a way to exploit It's a Wonderful Life to clarify distinctions among these verb tenses.
This time around, I prepared slips of paper with everything that happens in the four minutes of video I showed and had my student (only one actually showed up tonight) put them in the proper order. Then I asked questions geared to getting him to understand a need for the past continuous or past perfect, as required.
All in all, I was quite satisifed with how this lesson progressed tonight. And this despite a couple of embarassing technical glitches: at one point, my laptop's cord came unplugged, and at another, my video player froze, requiring me to reboot the computer. At least my student is a good-natured guy who took it in stride. While I fiddled with my laptop, I had him chat with me about his work, which requires him to go on weekly business trips to Rostov-on-Don, Nizhnii Novgorod, and various other cities in Russia.
But I think this lesson really helped him. He said he will be doing some review of these tenses on his own, but I had the satisfying feeling, walking home tonight, that I had actually accomplished something. There is no feeling like it in the world.
11 October 2008
Time, Tide, and Trolley Wait for Every Man
If I saw Meet Me in St. Louis once as a child, I must have seen it a thousand times. My favorite scene--probably everyone's--is the one of Judy Garland singing her heart out on the trolley. I think that scene is permanently etched on my brain, beyond forgetting, like the look of Park Slope. The trolley itself is a perfect picture of nostalgia and whimsy, the kind of thing only Hollywood could produce. The people on it seem honestly to believe there is no better mode of travel.
I think about this scene every so often as I move about in Moscow. Having already described the wonders of the Moscow Metro, I won't bother to comment on it. Rather, I will confine myself in this post to describing the other forms of transit available in Moscow: the marshutka, the trolley, and the trolleybus, and the bus. These ways of getting about are indespensible to the city, yet differ widely in the level of comfort and convenience they offer travellers.
First, the marshutka. A marshutka is a vehicle somewhat larger than an American cargo van. It seats somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen passengers and usually makes relatively short runs. Recently, I discovered that a marshutka route exists that will take from practically in front of my building to the nearest Metro station--a real boon in the mornings, since it spares me the 15 minutes or so I would otherwise have to spend walking to the Metro, and thus enables me to sleep 15 minutes longer. You get into the Metro, pay the driver (or don't--I've sometimes gotten into the Metro only to realize I never paid the marshutka driver), and the marshutka starts moving as soon as the driver deems there to be a sufficient number of passengers--or, in some cases, as soon as another marshutka behind him starts honking its horn loudly enough to goad him into motion. It then rattles along the street, hitting every trolley track hard enough to jolt you close enough to the moon to see Alice Kramden. But at least the run is short, and you soon arrive at wherever you needed the marshutka to take you.
After the marshutka, the form of surface transit I use the most is probably the trolley or the trolleybus (a trolleybus is a trolley without any actual tracks--it gets its power from an overhead wire but has regular rubber wheels and can weave in traffic a bit more). In Moscow, neither of these forms of transit is very comfortable; indeed, I find it hard to imagine any means of travelling more different from the trolley Judy Garland took to the Fair Grounds.
You get onto the trolley or trolleybus after shoving your way through a tremendous crowd. Trolleys and trolleybuses require a different kind of ticket from the one used on the Metro, which I am often forced to purchase from the driver (there are places to purchase a ticket in advance, but there never seems to be one near or open when I need to get on a trolley or trolleybus). Moreover, trolleys and trolleybuses are invariably overcrowded.
Between the trolley and the trolleybus, I have a decided preference for the latter. Like many Americans, I came to Russia with a whistful and nostalgic view of trolleys. But after riding on them in Moscow, I have come to detest them. The main reason for my newfound hatred of trolleys is that, due to some sort of traffic accident ahead of them, they often get quite literally stuck in their tracks. I see with some regularity five or six trolleys lined up behind an auto accident, completely unable to move because the cars involved in the accident cannot be moved until the police have arrived and taken pictures. Just before Judy Garland got on the trolley, someone told her that time, tide, and trolley wait for no man; in Moscow, time and tide have a similar impatience, but the trolley waits for every man.
I suppose the problem of trolleys stopped dead because of an automobile accident could be solved by having a designated trolley lane in which cars would not be permitted to drive (though this would still cause problems at turns). This is how some light rail systems operate. But I doubt Moscow could ever fully implement such a system, because it would require too many changes to the street.
Another irritating aspect of trolleys and trolleybuses is that it is often necessary to board them in the middle of the street (a major reason, I've since found out, that they were phased out in most American cities by the end of the 1950s). In a few places, this can be a real safety concern, as cars don't necessarily obey laws that prohibit them from driving right in front of a trolley or trolleybus stop. Still another problem is that trolley and trolleybuses stops are not always sufficently clear or noticeable; often, the only indication of a stop is a small sign with a "T" (trolley) or "TB" (trolleybus) market on it, hanging from the trolley's electrical line.
Finally, there's the regular bus, the only form of Moscow surface transit with parallels in American cities. I have little to remark about them; I cannot even say clearly whether busses in Moscow are better or worse than in New York. On the one hand, Moscow busses do not stop every two blocks as New York (especially Manhattan) busses seem to. Nor have I had as many experiences as I had in New York of waiting a half-hour for a bus and then having three of them come at once. On the other hand, the busses in Moscow are every bit as overcrowded as in New York. The worst busses are the ones on the outskirts of Moscow that take people to major shopping centers. But all of them are pretty bad.
Trolleys, trolleybuses, and busses all have a few inconveniences in common. The worst, in my view, is the payment system. As I have noted, it is possible to buy a ticket for all of them from small booths on the streets, but these are neither sufficient in number nor available near many stops. The vehicles themselves all have an annoying turnstile through which you have to put a ticket that can be bought from the driver. But as you attempt to buy this ticket, all of the other passengers (who seem somehow to have a ticket already) shove right into you to pass.
I think about this scene every so often as I move about in Moscow. Having already described the wonders of the Moscow Metro, I won't bother to comment on it. Rather, I will confine myself in this post to describing the other forms of transit available in Moscow: the marshutka, the trolley, and the trolleybus, and the bus. These ways of getting about are indespensible to the city, yet differ widely in the level of comfort and convenience they offer travellers.
First, the marshutka. A marshutka is a vehicle somewhat larger than an American cargo van. It seats somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen passengers and usually makes relatively short runs. Recently, I discovered that a marshutka route exists that will take from practically in front of my building to the nearest Metro station--a real boon in the mornings, since it spares me the 15 minutes or so I would otherwise have to spend walking to the Metro, and thus enables me to sleep 15 minutes longer. You get into the Metro, pay the driver (or don't--I've sometimes gotten into the Metro only to realize I never paid the marshutka driver), and the marshutka starts moving as soon as the driver deems there to be a sufficient number of passengers--or, in some cases, as soon as another marshutka behind him starts honking its horn loudly enough to goad him into motion. It then rattles along the street, hitting every trolley track hard enough to jolt you close enough to the moon to see Alice Kramden. But at least the run is short, and you soon arrive at wherever you needed the marshutka to take you.
After the marshutka, the form of surface transit I use the most is probably the trolley or the trolleybus (a trolleybus is a trolley without any actual tracks--it gets its power from an overhead wire but has regular rubber wheels and can weave in traffic a bit more). In Moscow, neither of these forms of transit is very comfortable; indeed, I find it hard to imagine any means of travelling more different from the trolley Judy Garland took to the Fair Grounds.
You get onto the trolley or trolleybus after shoving your way through a tremendous crowd. Trolleys and trolleybuses require a different kind of ticket from the one used on the Metro, which I am often forced to purchase from the driver (there are places to purchase a ticket in advance, but there never seems to be one near or open when I need to get on a trolley or trolleybus). Moreover, trolleys and trolleybuses are invariably overcrowded.
Between the trolley and the trolleybus, I have a decided preference for the latter. Like many Americans, I came to Russia with a whistful and nostalgic view of trolleys. But after riding on them in Moscow, I have come to detest them. The main reason for my newfound hatred of trolleys is that, due to some sort of traffic accident ahead of them, they often get quite literally stuck in their tracks. I see with some regularity five or six trolleys lined up behind an auto accident, completely unable to move because the cars involved in the accident cannot be moved until the police have arrived and taken pictures. Just before Judy Garland got on the trolley, someone told her that time, tide, and trolley wait for no man; in Moscow, time and tide have a similar impatience, but the trolley waits for every man.
I suppose the problem of trolleys stopped dead because of an automobile accident could be solved by having a designated trolley lane in which cars would not be permitted to drive (though this would still cause problems at turns). This is how some light rail systems operate. But I doubt Moscow could ever fully implement such a system, because it would require too many changes to the street.
Another irritating aspect of trolleys and trolleybuses is that it is often necessary to board them in the middle of the street (a major reason, I've since found out, that they were phased out in most American cities by the end of the 1950s). In a few places, this can be a real safety concern, as cars don't necessarily obey laws that prohibit them from driving right in front of a trolley or trolleybus stop. Still another problem is that trolley and trolleybuses stops are not always sufficently clear or noticeable; often, the only indication of a stop is a small sign with a "T" (trolley) or "TB" (trolleybus) market on it, hanging from the trolley's electrical line.
Finally, there's the regular bus, the only form of Moscow surface transit with parallels in American cities. I have little to remark about them; I cannot even say clearly whether busses in Moscow are better or worse than in New York. On the one hand, Moscow busses do not stop every two blocks as New York (especially Manhattan) busses seem to. Nor have I had as many experiences as I had in New York of waiting a half-hour for a bus and then having three of them come at once. On the other hand, the busses in Moscow are every bit as overcrowded as in New York. The worst busses are the ones on the outskirts of Moscow that take people to major shopping centers. But all of them are pretty bad.
Trolleys, trolleybuses, and busses all have a few inconveniences in common. The worst, in my view, is the payment system. As I have noted, it is possible to buy a ticket for all of them from small booths on the streets, but these are neither sufficient in number nor available near many stops. The vehicles themselves all have an annoying turnstile through which you have to put a ticket that can be bought from the driver. But as you attempt to buy this ticket, all of the other passengers (who seem somehow to have a ticket already) shove right into you to pass.
24 September 2008
525,600 Minutes
Yes, you understood the title right: the Far East Side Minyan has been delivering the finest in commentary on Taoyuan, Taiwan; then Wichita, Kansas; and now Moscow, Russia there is to offer, for almost one solid year. On September 30th, 2007, I sat down at my laptop, in the home of a couple of good friends on the Upper West Side with whom I was then staying, and set to create the blog I had promised various friends I would keep during what I expected to be a stint of a year or two in Taiwan. Before I even left New York, I had already written five posts.
Well, things have been topsy-turvy since then, as those of you who have been following this blog for a solid year already know. Taiwan aggressively did not work out. The Far East Side Minyan became, temporarily, the Midwest Side Minyan, then (albeit without a formal change of name) the East Side of Europe Minyan.
But in a way, it was the beginning of the end--the end of dealing with life in a spirit of desperation, clutching at any straw that floated into my field of vision instead of figuring out what I really wanted out of life and how to go about getting it. Bit by bit, I know I am getting to where I belong in the world. Moscow is an important step--but just a step--in that direction. But things are working out here better than I expected or even hoped when I accepted the position in January. I know I have a long-term future in teaching (though probably not in teaching EFL), and I am taking steps to prepare for that future. My application to an education program at American Jewish University remains pending, but I have most of my materials together for an application to an education program at Jewish Theological Seminary, which I will dispatch in a couple of months.
So progress has happened the past year, even if not in the ways I had hoped for when I left for Taiwan. I am doing something amazing, each and every day, and am on the cusp (if being a year away from something can be called the cusp) of something even more amazing. It's hard not to look on all of that with a great measure of gratitude.
The realization that my life in New York is almost 525,600 minutes behind me has had some effects. I suppose homesickness was bound to set in sooner or later; it's an evitable side effect of deciding (or in my case, feeling forced) to roam the world. But I find my thoughts turning toward the mess of a city between the East River and Nassau County more and more these days. Part of the reason for that, I know, is that I am nearing the anniversary of my departure. I timed leaving New York to make sure it happened after the cycle of the Jewish holidays in the fall that begins with Rosh Hashannah and ends with Simchat Torah. And behold, Rosh Hashannah is upon us once again. This year, my body will spend the High Holidays at a synagogue two blocks from my apartment building (to think I had to go halfway around the world to end up within walking distance of a shul), but my heart will spend it where it spends it every year: at 100th Street and West End Avenue, among cherished friends I have seen in almost a year.
Today, peering through the New York Times website to find information on Wall Street's financial meltdown, I noticed a story about a new Google service that will give subway directions in New York. There have been services like this before; I got a lot of cheers three years ago when I introduced my friends to a site called hopstop.com that did much the same thing (previously, only driving directions had been available online, which are pretty much worthless in a city where even the billionaire mayor is a straphanger). The big difference in Google's service is that it coordinates with other regional transit authorities, like the PATH trains between Manhattan and New Jersey and the Long Island Rail Road. Curious to see how well it compared to what I remembered of hopstop.com, I clicked on a link and set about investigating Google's service.
Here's what I found out: the service failed to give the best directions between my last address in New York and my last place of employment. In twenty minutes of trying different addresses, not once did I get directions involving a bus line--something I regularly pulled up on hopstop.com when I lived in New York. But I did get to see, on the now all-too-familar Google maps (they appear on television news these days, for goodness sake), a red line snaking up from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side, the route I cursed every Saturday morning for two years as I rode the G train, then the A/C, then the 2/3 (often at a snail's pace, since far more weekends than not, the 2/3 express became the 1 local because of track work).
And that somehow brought back a host of other memories--afternoons browsing at the Strand bookstore near Union Square, the cozy look Park Slope had at sunset in autumn, the annual announcement from my rabbi that "Manhattanhenge" (a day in the summer when the sun perfectly aligns with the Manhattan street grid) was nearing. All afternoon, as I prepared for a new class I started teaching tonight, home flooded back to me.
It's weird to think I've now been in Moscow almost five months, a fact I let my students discover tonight during a getting-to-know-you activity. And it's weirder still to think that the chance are good of my being back in New York, and in New York's Jewish community, only 525,600 minutes from now.
Well, things have been topsy-turvy since then, as those of you who have been following this blog for a solid year already know. Taiwan aggressively did not work out. The Far East Side Minyan became, temporarily, the Midwest Side Minyan, then (albeit without a formal change of name) the East Side of Europe Minyan.
But in a way, it was the beginning of the end--the end of dealing with life in a spirit of desperation, clutching at any straw that floated into my field of vision instead of figuring out what I really wanted out of life and how to go about getting it. Bit by bit, I know I am getting to where I belong in the world. Moscow is an important step--but just a step--in that direction. But things are working out here better than I expected or even hoped when I accepted the position in January. I know I have a long-term future in teaching (though probably not in teaching EFL), and I am taking steps to prepare for that future. My application to an education program at American Jewish University remains pending, but I have most of my materials together for an application to an education program at Jewish Theological Seminary, which I will dispatch in a couple of months.
So progress has happened the past year, even if not in the ways I had hoped for when I left for Taiwan. I am doing something amazing, each and every day, and am on the cusp (if being a year away from something can be called the cusp) of something even more amazing. It's hard not to look on all of that with a great measure of gratitude.
The realization that my life in New York is almost 525,600 minutes behind me has had some effects. I suppose homesickness was bound to set in sooner or later; it's an evitable side effect of deciding (or in my case, feeling forced) to roam the world. But I find my thoughts turning toward the mess of a city between the East River and Nassau County more and more these days. Part of the reason for that, I know, is that I am nearing the anniversary of my departure. I timed leaving New York to make sure it happened after the cycle of the Jewish holidays in the fall that begins with Rosh Hashannah and ends with Simchat Torah. And behold, Rosh Hashannah is upon us once again. This year, my body will spend the High Holidays at a synagogue two blocks from my apartment building (to think I had to go halfway around the world to end up within walking distance of a shul), but my heart will spend it where it spends it every year: at 100th Street and West End Avenue, among cherished friends I have seen in almost a year.
Today, peering through the New York Times website to find information on Wall Street's financial meltdown, I noticed a story about a new Google service that will give subway directions in New York. There have been services like this before; I got a lot of cheers three years ago when I introduced my friends to a site called hopstop.com that did much the same thing (previously, only driving directions had been available online, which are pretty much worthless in a city where even the billionaire mayor is a straphanger). The big difference in Google's service is that it coordinates with other regional transit authorities, like the PATH trains between Manhattan and New Jersey and the Long Island Rail Road. Curious to see how well it compared to what I remembered of hopstop.com, I clicked on a link and set about investigating Google's service.
Here's what I found out: the service failed to give the best directions between my last address in New York and my last place of employment. In twenty minutes of trying different addresses, not once did I get directions involving a bus line--something I regularly pulled up on hopstop.com when I lived in New York. But I did get to see, on the now all-too-familar Google maps (they appear on television news these days, for goodness sake), a red line snaking up from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side, the route I cursed every Saturday morning for two years as I rode the G train, then the A/C, then the 2/3 (often at a snail's pace, since far more weekends than not, the 2/3 express became the 1 local because of track work).
And that somehow brought back a host of other memories--afternoons browsing at the Strand bookstore near Union Square, the cozy look Park Slope had at sunset in autumn, the annual announcement from my rabbi that "Manhattanhenge" (a day in the summer when the sun perfectly aligns with the Manhattan street grid) was nearing. All afternoon, as I prepared for a new class I started teaching tonight, home flooded back to me.
It's weird to think I've now been in Moscow almost five months, a fact I let my students discover tonight during a getting-to-know-you activity. And it's weirder still to think that the chance are good of my being back in New York, and in New York's Jewish community, only 525,600 minutes from now.
21 September 2008
The Fanta Menace
I ended up having a rather dull weekend for two main reasons. The first is that I was stuck in the apartment much of Saturday while a repairman came and installed our new washing machine. Installed the machine is at last, but it is not quite ready for prime time; apparently, in order to get it to work, I need to turn some kind of tap under the sink, and the tap in question absolutely refuses to budge. The repairman tried to show me how to get it to work, but the language barrier inevitably got in our way. I will have to try to sort this out in my school's Central Office tomorrow.
The other reason I had a dull weekend was that I signed up to proctor mock examinations at my school. Preparation classes for the First Certificate Exam (FCE) and Certificate in Advanced English (CAE) are a big part of our business, it seems, and a few Sundays a year, we run mock examinations to help our students get used to real exam conditions. My part in this was to proctor two young women taking a practice FCE exam--that is to say, reading a travel guide to Ukraine while the young women in question worked away. Later, I got to be part of the listening section of the test, which involves getting two test-takers to try to have fairly mundane conversations with the "interlocutor" (as we are called...the name makes me wonder where Mr. Tambo and Mr. Bones are hiding), and with each other.
In the midst of all this tedium, however, I got to spend a bit of time watching YouTube videos. I have discovered lately that, because of lax enforcement of copyright laws, YouTube is a gold mine of film and television treasures and "treasures" from years past. So far, I have seen History Channel documentaries on the Ku Klux Klan, the Reformation, and religious conceptions of Hell; the entire ouevre of James Burke, famous for Connections and The Day the Universe Changed; and a couple of recent Jane Austen adaptations (including a version of Sense and Sensibility that actually managed to get the book damn near spot-on). But having little better to do this weekend, I ended up tackling Michael Moore, in his own Bowling for Columbine and in an indy documentary from five years ago called The Corporation.
When it first appeared, The Corporation was the kind of movie I would have rather died tha go see. I was far more politically conservative then, and the last thing I felt a need to watch was what I presumed would be a three-hour diatribe on the evils of the capitalist system. But, my views having mellowed a bit since then, I thought it might be time to give The Corporation a fairer hearing.
The main thesis of The Corporation is that the modern corporation, which not only claims but has been given many of the legal rights of a person, is an essentially psychopathic person: devoid of ethical standards, remorseless, and willing to do anything and everything to achieve its malevolent ends. At best, the film contends, corporations are amoral, and worst actively evil. The film traces the rise of corporations all the way back to the enclosures of the commons in England that ultimately led to the industrial revolution.
Naturally, the film trots out numerous instances of corporate wrongdoing over the years, from Bechtel's attempts to corner the Bolivian water supply in 2000 to the "business plot" to depose Franklin Roosevelt by force. Allegations that IBM was involved in the running of the Nazi death camps are given ample screen time.
While I am more sympathetic to discussions of this kind of corporate wrongdoing than I was a few years ago, I found myself largely unconvinced that the existence of the corporation per se was the ultimate cause of all these horrors. In the absence of limited liability corporations, wealthy businessmen acting alone might have committed many of the same injustices the film lays at the feet of corporations. In some instances, the film clearly chose to ignore inconvenient counter evidence (ignoring, for instance, that IBM lost control of its German subsidiaries in 1941 and also manufactured weapons for the Allies during the Second World War, all of which would indicate that IBM was not simply a villain with respect to the Nazi regime).
Moreover, the film frequently faults corporations for blind indifference to what economists call "externalities" (effects of a transaction that are borne by people who are not parties to the transaction). But the film ignores that, as economists use the term, an externality is not simply a euphemism for evils like pollution but a term that encompasses positive as well as negative effects borne by the general public. For instance, when the owner of a seed store sells someone seeds he uses to plant a garden in front of his house, this may have a positive impact on both property values and perceived quality of life in a neighborhood. But by only discussing negative externalities, the film in many ways distorts the record of corporations.
At other times, the film simply failed to prove that the evils it discussed were caused specifically by the existence of corporations as such. A case in point is its discussion of how a Fox television station chose to squelch a news story about how a hormone Monsanto manufactured to be used on cows was linked to cancer in humans. It is clear that the story was squelched largely because Fox became concerned that Monsanto would pull its advertising. But this kind of manipulation of the news occurred long before the modern corporation (look at how biased reporting was in the days of Adams and Jefferson).
But what I found hardest to stomach were the times The Corporation veered completely off the deep end. The biggest example of this came in a discussion of how Coca-Cola reacted to the beginning of the Second World War. As the film presents it, Coke's biggest concern was that it would not able to keep its bottling plants in Germany churning out Coca-Cola during the war. This ultimately proved to be the case as the war interrupted supplies of the kola nut to Germany. Coke's solution to this was to start producing an orange drink called Fanta (still marketed and popular in many countries, including the United States).
My big reaction to this was a big "So What?" It's hard to see any way in which selling or not selling Coca-Cola in Hitler's Germany would have had any effect on the Nazi regime. Selling sweetened and flavored carbonated water is a morally neutral act. Unlike in the case of South Africa, it's unclear that divestment in Nazi Germany would have produced any results, particularly with a madman like Hitler at the helm. The film made no allegation that Coca-Cola benefitted in any way from concentration camp or other unfree labor during the Nazi years, nor even that it sought to do so. Calling Fanta "the Nazi drink" (as Michael Moore did at one point in the film) is a bit like saying that, because people in Communist Russia ate bread, eating bread is somehow immoral.
In another instance, the film failed because it failed to differentiate between a real solution and mere grandstanding. Showing scenes in which a group of California attorneys called for the state attorney general to revoke Unocal's charter because of its "many crimes against humanity," the film seemed to argue that goverment can reign in corporate power by using existing powers to disband corporations that are acting against the public interest. What this argument ignores, however, is taht Unocal and myriad firms like it can just re-establish themselves in places where the law is more lax (like Delaware or South Dakota).
To The Corporation's credit, however, it at least did not devolve into calls for a communist revolution; indeed, the film did acknowledge (however briefly) that injustice has been committed in the service of proletarian revolution as well as in the service of profit. But in a way, this failure actually worked against the film, insofar as it presents no real alternative to the existence of corporations. Especially in the modern world, there does not seem to really be one. There are whole industries (automobiles, computers, airlines) that not only could not operate with their present efficiency, but could not operate at all, if they were not operated by corporations. No individual--not even a Bill Gates--has the capital to maintain and run Motorola or General Motors. In these instances, the only viable alternative to the corporation is government ownership.
I am not saying that government management of a field of human endeavor is inherently a bad thing; clearly, we are better off having municipal fire departments than we were in the days when fire protection was a private business and a fire company would just pass you buy if you weren't one of its customers. But living in a country that is still suffering the after-effects of far too much direct government management of industry, I know that having the government produce our automobiles and our toothpaste is not really a solution, either.
The other reason I had a dull weekend was that I signed up to proctor mock examinations at my school. Preparation classes for the First Certificate Exam (FCE) and Certificate in Advanced English (CAE) are a big part of our business, it seems, and a few Sundays a year, we run mock examinations to help our students get used to real exam conditions. My part in this was to proctor two young women taking a practice FCE exam--that is to say, reading a travel guide to Ukraine while the young women in question worked away. Later, I got to be part of the listening section of the test, which involves getting two test-takers to try to have fairly mundane conversations with the "interlocutor" (as we are called...the name makes me wonder where Mr. Tambo and Mr. Bones are hiding), and with each other.
In the midst of all this tedium, however, I got to spend a bit of time watching YouTube videos. I have discovered lately that, because of lax enforcement of copyright laws, YouTube is a gold mine of film and television treasures and "treasures" from years past. So far, I have seen History Channel documentaries on the Ku Klux Klan, the Reformation, and religious conceptions of Hell; the entire ouevre of James Burke, famous for Connections and The Day the Universe Changed; and a couple of recent Jane Austen adaptations (including a version of Sense and Sensibility that actually managed to get the book damn near spot-on). But having little better to do this weekend, I ended up tackling Michael Moore, in his own Bowling for Columbine and in an indy documentary from five years ago called The Corporation.
When it first appeared, The Corporation was the kind of movie I would have rather died tha go see. I was far more politically conservative then, and the last thing I felt a need to watch was what I presumed would be a three-hour diatribe on the evils of the capitalist system. But, my views having mellowed a bit since then, I thought it might be time to give The Corporation a fairer hearing.
The main thesis of The Corporation is that the modern corporation, which not only claims but has been given many of the legal rights of a person, is an essentially psychopathic person: devoid of ethical standards, remorseless, and willing to do anything and everything to achieve its malevolent ends. At best, the film contends, corporations are amoral, and worst actively evil. The film traces the rise of corporations all the way back to the enclosures of the commons in England that ultimately led to the industrial revolution.
Naturally, the film trots out numerous instances of corporate wrongdoing over the years, from Bechtel's attempts to corner the Bolivian water supply in 2000 to the "business plot" to depose Franklin Roosevelt by force. Allegations that IBM was involved in the running of the Nazi death camps are given ample screen time.
While I am more sympathetic to discussions of this kind of corporate wrongdoing than I was a few years ago, I found myself largely unconvinced that the existence of the corporation per se was the ultimate cause of all these horrors. In the absence of limited liability corporations, wealthy businessmen acting alone might have committed many of the same injustices the film lays at the feet of corporations. In some instances, the film clearly chose to ignore inconvenient counter evidence (ignoring, for instance, that IBM lost control of its German subsidiaries in 1941 and also manufactured weapons for the Allies during the Second World War, all of which would indicate that IBM was not simply a villain with respect to the Nazi regime).
Moreover, the film frequently faults corporations for blind indifference to what economists call "externalities" (effects of a transaction that are borne by people who are not parties to the transaction). But the film ignores that, as economists use the term, an externality is not simply a euphemism for evils like pollution but a term that encompasses positive as well as negative effects borne by the general public. For instance, when the owner of a seed store sells someone seeds he uses to plant a garden in front of his house, this may have a positive impact on both property values and perceived quality of life in a neighborhood. But by only discussing negative externalities, the film in many ways distorts the record of corporations.
At other times, the film simply failed to prove that the evils it discussed were caused specifically by the existence of corporations as such. A case in point is its discussion of how a Fox television station chose to squelch a news story about how a hormone Monsanto manufactured to be used on cows was linked to cancer in humans. It is clear that the story was squelched largely because Fox became concerned that Monsanto would pull its advertising. But this kind of manipulation of the news occurred long before the modern corporation (look at how biased reporting was in the days of Adams and Jefferson).
But what I found hardest to stomach were the times The Corporation veered completely off the deep end. The biggest example of this came in a discussion of how Coca-Cola reacted to the beginning of the Second World War. As the film presents it, Coke's biggest concern was that it would not able to keep its bottling plants in Germany churning out Coca-Cola during the war. This ultimately proved to be the case as the war interrupted supplies of the kola nut to Germany. Coke's solution to this was to start producing an orange drink called Fanta (still marketed and popular in many countries, including the United States).
My big reaction to this was a big "So What?" It's hard to see any way in which selling or not selling Coca-Cola in Hitler's Germany would have had any effect on the Nazi regime. Selling sweetened and flavored carbonated water is a morally neutral act. Unlike in the case of South Africa, it's unclear that divestment in Nazi Germany would have produced any results, particularly with a madman like Hitler at the helm. The film made no allegation that Coca-Cola benefitted in any way from concentration camp or other unfree labor during the Nazi years, nor even that it sought to do so. Calling Fanta "the Nazi drink" (as Michael Moore did at one point in the film) is a bit like saying that, because people in Communist Russia ate bread, eating bread is somehow immoral.
In another instance, the film failed because it failed to differentiate between a real solution and mere grandstanding. Showing scenes in which a group of California attorneys called for the state attorney general to revoke Unocal's charter because of its "many crimes against humanity," the film seemed to argue that goverment can reign in corporate power by using existing powers to disband corporations that are acting against the public interest. What this argument ignores, however, is taht Unocal and myriad firms like it can just re-establish themselves in places where the law is more lax (like Delaware or South Dakota).
To The Corporation's credit, however, it at least did not devolve into calls for a communist revolution; indeed, the film did acknowledge (however briefly) that injustice has been committed in the service of proletarian revolution as well as in the service of profit. But in a way, this failure actually worked against the film, insofar as it presents no real alternative to the existence of corporations. Especially in the modern world, there does not seem to really be one. There are whole industries (automobiles, computers, airlines) that not only could not operate with their present efficiency, but could not operate at all, if they were not operated by corporations. No individual--not even a Bill Gates--has the capital to maintain and run Motorola or General Motors. In these instances, the only viable alternative to the corporation is government ownership.
I am not saying that government management of a field of human endeavor is inherently a bad thing; clearly, we are better off having municipal fire departments than we were in the days when fire protection was a private business and a fire company would just pass you buy if you weren't one of its customers. But living in a country that is still suffering the after-effects of far too much direct government management of industry, I know that having the government produce our automobiles and our toothpaste is not really a solution, either.
15 September 2008
Life's Grand on the Collective Farm
I ended up staying home sick today (I'll spare you any graphic details of illness; let's just say this was all due to a bad plate of Hungarian ghoulash and leave it at that). Whatever I had, I knew was not serious enough to warrant a trip to the doctor, so I self-medicated with Sprite and plenty of Web browsing until, in the late afternoon, I felt well enough to venture outside in search of something to eat.
In retrospect, though, it was a good thing I did stay home, because it meant I was home when a woman in my school's central office rang about 4:00 to ask if I would be home at six. I told her I would and asked why she needed to know. And then I heard words I have been longing to hear ever since I arrived in Moscow four months ago:
"Alexei [the school driver and sometime handyman] is delivering a washing machine to your flat."
For the past four months, I have managed my laundry situation (if you can call it managing) through a method I call Ignoring the Massive Pile of Dirty Clothes on Your Bedroom Floor. Basically, I wash clothes every two to three days, on an as-needed basis, but always planning ahead to be sure I won't run out of clothes faster than air-drying can get anything dry enough to wear. I assume this to be about two days for a pair of slacks hung on a hanger in the hall closet, a bit less if I can get a bit of steam pipe in the bathroom free to clean them (trickier now that a new roommate has moved in and I must now share the steam pipe with him).
I guess that, in the modern age, we don't get much chance to be rhapsodically joyful about technology. The latest in digital television may get a few oohs and ahs at a trade show, but it doesn't seem magical the way television must have when it was introduced to the world at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. Even the Internet we take for granted. I finally have a great Internet connection that doesn't cut out every two minutes, and what do I use it for? Mostly, online Scrabble (and the occasional Blog post, of course).
But after living without a washer for four months, finally having one gives me a feeling I can only explain by describing, fittingly, a piece of retro Soviet art. All over Moscow, there are souvenir vendors selling reproductions of Soviet propaganda posters, I assume mostly to foreign tourists. One of them shows two figures in the foreground: a man in overalls and a cap and a woman with her hair in a kerchief, obviously farmers. In the background is a tractor, probably the first these people have ever had or seen. The woman has her hand cupped up to her mouth and is shouting, presumably, at the people of the 1930s who would have seen this picture. Underneath this scene is something in Russian that, while I can't translate it, probably means something like, "Ain't life grand on the collective farm?"
Okay, obviously this is a propaganda poster and a total distortion of life in Stalinist Russia (a more realistic poster would say something like, "ain't life grand now that Pop's been shot for having five kopecks more than our neighbor down the road"). But something like that excitement over a new piece of technology is what I briefly got to experience today. This machine will mean no more massive pile of clothes on my floor. It will mean no more having to hope to God that a pair of socks dries in time for me to wear it tomorrow, when I realize I didn't have quite as many clean pairs saved up on my dresser as I thought I had.
And so, for one shining moment at least, life is grand here on the collective farm.
In retrospect, though, it was a good thing I did stay home, because it meant I was home when a woman in my school's central office rang about 4:00 to ask if I would be home at six. I told her I would and asked why she needed to know. And then I heard words I have been longing to hear ever since I arrived in Moscow four months ago:
"Alexei [the school driver and sometime handyman] is delivering a washing machine to your flat."
For the past four months, I have managed my laundry situation (if you can call it managing) through a method I call Ignoring the Massive Pile of Dirty Clothes on Your Bedroom Floor. Basically, I wash clothes every two to three days, on an as-needed basis, but always planning ahead to be sure I won't run out of clothes faster than air-drying can get anything dry enough to wear. I assume this to be about two days for a pair of slacks hung on a hanger in the hall closet, a bit less if I can get a bit of steam pipe in the bathroom free to clean them (trickier now that a new roommate has moved in and I must now share the steam pipe with him).
I guess that, in the modern age, we don't get much chance to be rhapsodically joyful about technology. The latest in digital television may get a few oohs and ahs at a trade show, but it doesn't seem magical the way television must have when it was introduced to the world at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. Even the Internet we take for granted. I finally have a great Internet connection that doesn't cut out every two minutes, and what do I use it for? Mostly, online Scrabble (and the occasional Blog post, of course).
But after living without a washer for four months, finally having one gives me a feeling I can only explain by describing, fittingly, a piece of retro Soviet art. All over Moscow, there are souvenir vendors selling reproductions of Soviet propaganda posters, I assume mostly to foreign tourists. One of them shows two figures in the foreground: a man in overalls and a cap and a woman with her hair in a kerchief, obviously farmers. In the background is a tractor, probably the first these people have ever had or seen. The woman has her hand cupped up to her mouth and is shouting, presumably, at the people of the 1930s who would have seen this picture. Underneath this scene is something in Russian that, while I can't translate it, probably means something like, "Ain't life grand on the collective farm?"
Okay, obviously this is a propaganda poster and a total distortion of life in Stalinist Russia (a more realistic poster would say something like, "ain't life grand now that Pop's been shot for having five kopecks more than our neighbor down the road"). But something like that excitement over a new piece of technology is what I briefly got to experience today. This machine will mean no more massive pile of clothes on my floor. It will mean no more having to hope to God that a pair of socks dries in time for me to wear it tomorrow, when I realize I didn't have quite as many clean pairs saved up on my dresser as I thought I had.
And so, for one shining moment at least, life is grand here on the collective farm.
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