I'm no girly girl when it comes to movies. I like action – Broken Arrow still ranks as one of my all-time favorite movies – and nothing saves a rainy day like Austin Powers. So I went with great expectations to see George Clooney in The American. I love seeing Mr. Clooney, shirtless and spaniel-eyed, acting his heart out with those minimalist jaw twitches that pass for deep angst. Having just gobbled down The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo, I was eager to view Clooney tromping around a snowy Swedish landscape. I was also looking forward to the Italian setting without having to suffer through Julia Roberts eating her heart out in Eat, Pray, Love to reach a size 6 on a fat day.
However, I'm sorry to report that I drifted into sleep mode halfway through The American. I had to let my mind roam to get my money's worth and make it to the end. Here are some of the questions that kept me awake that night:
Why do Swedish assassins look like Saturday Night Live comics?
Where did all of the people in that cute Italian hilltop town go while Clooney endlessly wandered their curvy stone streets?
Is it really a rule that hookers don't kiss their clients on the mouth? Also, if a john gives a hooker oral sex, as Clooney's character Jack apparently does with the prostitute Clara (Violante Placido), is the hooker then so grateful that she kisses him anyway? Most women I know would rather kiss on the mouth before oral sex.
In the scene where they swim by the river, was Clara's thong arranged deliberately to ride up one beautiful butt cheek? Or does she have the same problem with thongs that most women do, which is why we're always backing into corners to pluck them free?
Just how did Jack make that gun out of car parts? There are endless scenes of him machining parts that could rival CSI: Miami's porno lab sequences, but there are some steps missing here. Like, a hundred. It looked to me like he bought a perfectly serviceable gun to begin with. And is it really that profitable to handcraft a gun and sell it on the black market?
Do they sell that wash-and-wear color that lets ace sniper Mathilde (Thekla Reuten) change her hair color every day? There could be a big profit in that. Maybe more than in guns.
Obviously, director Anton Corbijn is paying homage to the Spaghetti Western here – a movie typically made by Italians, starring Italian actors and one American, as in Clint Eastwood movies. There's even a meta movie moment here, where a Spaghetti Western is playing on the little TV in the bar where Clooney takes his lonely self every night. But why remake them at all?
Couldn't Corbijn have come up with a friskier music score? The relentless drilling of the dirge-like background music here made my teeth ache.
Clooney is cast as a sensitive, regretful assassin. You know, good at his job, but guilty about his sins, yadda yadda. In case we don't get that on our own, we have the wise priest in this movie (Paolo Bonacelli, who has the world's most photogenic face) tell us this in a series of cliches. If we're still too thick to understand that Jack is a real human, not a cartoon, he has a butterfly tattoo and reads butterfly books! He even knows which species are endangered! And – spoiler alert – in his final tragic scene, as the hooker with the heart of gold and the pink thong gets Jack's gobs of cash, we get to see one of those little endangered fellas fly away. What are we to conclude from this? That movies like this are endangered?
Maybe there's a happy ending to The American after all.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Do College Costs + Retirement = Canada?
“So how long do you plan to keep working?” asked a friend recently, after he'd waxed poetic about his own crafty retirement plan (take his pension at 65, sell his Massachusetts house and move to Florida, play tennis year-round, live happily ever after).
“Um. Forever?” I suggested. “I plan to die at my keyboard.”
I wasn't joking. Between the economic free fall and putting kids through college, my husband and I will be working for the rest of our lives.
That's why we made an offer on a house in Canada yesterday.
Why Canada? I've loved Prince Edward Island, Canada, ever since I started vacationing there some fifteen years ago. The island is gorgeous (see photos at http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=yfp-t-892-s&va=prince+edward+island+canada), laid back, friendly, green-minded, and there's fiddle music everywhere you go. It felt like home the first moment I hiked the red dirt roads between flowering potato fields.
“Yes, that's fine, but what about the winter?” various friends countered, so I tried traveling to PEI then, too, and found other things to love, like the ice fishing shacks stacked like bright Legos along Malpeque Bay and the snow tornadoes rising like long-skirted fairies in the fields.
But I digress. We made an offer on a house located in the remote eastern corner of PEI because there's no way that my husband and I can afford to retire here in the U.S. We haven't seen the inside of the house – there was no realtor around, and we had to leave the next day – but we peered into the windows from the rotted deck, and we'd seen the listing sheet online. We know that this farmhouse supposedly has five bedrooms and two bathrooms.
We also know that the house is being sold “as is.” That's a little scary, because Canadian realtors tend to be honest to a fault. When I surf www.mls.ca with these simple criteria: “Prince Edward Island, $25,000 to $75,000 price range, two bedrooms or more,” I regularly read descriptions like these: “This house has been neglected. Needs a strong arm.” Or, “Small country home that has been left vacant for a few years. Needs a real clean up. The property has no source of heat. Had a wood stove and previous owner took it.”
With this particular house, the phrase that struck me was this one: “Being sold with furnishings and other items too numerous to mention.” What happened to the owner, I wondered, that he would flee or fade away without emptying his house?
Finally, I called our realtor, Anne. She's a trim, no-nonsense woman who used to make her living fishing for lobster; last summer, she showed me a few houses while wearing knee-high green rubber boots. “I don't know where the old fella went that lived there,” she said, “but I can call his nephew down the road and find out more if you're interested.”
That's how the island works: if you know one person, you know six, without any degrees of separation. When Anne called back, though, she couldn't tell me much. Apparently this was an estate sale, someone's children selling it for someone who had died. The “old fella,” presumably.
“What about the septic system?” I asked.
“Doubt anybody knows much about that,” Anne said.
“How do I know if I'd have to replace it?”
“Guess you'd have to just dig it up,” she said. “But I wouldn't recommend it. You might want to leave it be.”
“You mean we'd just buy the house, and hope for the best?” I asked.
“That's about the size of things,” she said. “If it fails, you'd know it.”
This did not sound promising. On the other hand, if the old fella hadn't been using the septic system in a while, everything probably had time to drain.
So we made the offer, and now we're waiting to see if it was accepted. We'll find out this Friday. Meanwhile, I'm biting my nails.
Despite the fact that we love PEI – and this house, in particular, with its charming century-old architecture, peaceful farmland views, and proximity to our favorite beach – I know that this plan is more whimsical than logical. For starters, we have no money. Like so many people, we were nearly flattened by the economic downturn. My husband was laid off twice and two of the start-up companies he joined went under. We struggled to stay afloat as our oldest child started college and we paid health care costs out of pocket for one year, then a second. We finally decided to sell our house and buy a smaller one.
That's when the real estate market crashed. Our first buyer pulled a runner after we'd gotten locked into buying that smaller house, so we ended up with a bridge loan for a year, until we found another buyer. Goodbye, savings. Hello, credit cards.
With no spare cash under our mattress, we'll now have to dip into our retirement funds to finance the purchase of this house. Yet another bad idea: Why take a 10 percent hit, rather than wait until we're old enough to pull the money out without having to pay taxes on it?
Our only arguments in favor of doing so are admittedly weak: our retirement funds are stagnating with the limp stock market, making us think real estate can't be worse, and the PEI house we want to buy is one that we can easily imagine loving full-time. Plus, it's for sale right now at an asking price that's half of its assessed value.
“Prince Edward Island is too far away,” another friend complains. “Why can't you find a retirement spot closer to home?”
Where could we go? Ohio? Pennsylvania? Tennessee? Even those states are more expensive. We're not alone in thinking that Canada is the answer. Far from it: the number of U.S. citizens choosing to live in Canada hit a 30-year high recently (http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2101397c-fe7c-4adf-a2d1-8665cb29ac66&k=0
The last time Canada saw such an enormous influx of U.S. citizens was during the political turmoil of the Vietnam war. Now, many are choosing Canada both for economic and political reasons. Our own reasons are simple: we love Canada, and the cost of living in the U.S. has killed us. Once our kids are grown, we imagine eventually selling this house in New England, which is about the same size as the one on PEI but worth ten times more. We'll have red dirt roads and fiddle music, potato fields and freshly steamed mussels to keep us happy. We'll still be working until we drop to pay back our debts. But we can freelance remotely for the same U.S. companies from Canada – my husband as a software engineer, me as a writer – while we make goat cheese, have a few hens of our own, and grow our own vegetables, all without a crippling mortgage and punishing health care costs.
It's a crazy dream. But it's less of a fiscal nightmare than what we've experienced here.
Or am I missing something? Should we back out of this house deal now, while there's still time to be sensible?
“Um. Forever?” I suggested. “I plan to die at my keyboard.”
I wasn't joking. Between the economic free fall and putting kids through college, my husband and I will be working for the rest of our lives.
That's why we made an offer on a house in Canada yesterday.
Why Canada? I've loved Prince Edward Island, Canada, ever since I started vacationing there some fifteen years ago. The island is gorgeous (see photos at http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=yfp-t-892-s&va=prince+edward+island+canada), laid back, friendly, green-minded, and there's fiddle music everywhere you go. It felt like home the first moment I hiked the red dirt roads between flowering potato fields.
“Yes, that's fine, but what about the winter?” various friends countered, so I tried traveling to PEI then, too, and found other things to love, like the ice fishing shacks stacked like bright Legos along Malpeque Bay and the snow tornadoes rising like long-skirted fairies in the fields.
But I digress. We made an offer on a house located in the remote eastern corner of PEI because there's no way that my husband and I can afford to retire here in the U.S. We haven't seen the inside of the house – there was no realtor around, and we had to leave the next day – but we peered into the windows from the rotted deck, and we'd seen the listing sheet online. We know that this farmhouse supposedly has five bedrooms and two bathrooms.
We also know that the house is being sold “as is.” That's a little scary, because Canadian realtors tend to be honest to a fault. When I surf www.mls.ca with these simple criteria: “Prince Edward Island, $25,000 to $75,000 price range, two bedrooms or more,” I regularly read descriptions like these: “This house has been neglected. Needs a strong arm.” Or, “Small country home that has been left vacant for a few years. Needs a real clean up. The property has no source of heat. Had a wood stove and previous owner took it.”
With this particular house, the phrase that struck me was this one: “Being sold with furnishings and other items too numerous to mention.” What happened to the owner, I wondered, that he would flee or fade away without emptying his house?
Finally, I called our realtor, Anne. She's a trim, no-nonsense woman who used to make her living fishing for lobster; last summer, she showed me a few houses while wearing knee-high green rubber boots. “I don't know where the old fella went that lived there,” she said, “but I can call his nephew down the road and find out more if you're interested.”
That's how the island works: if you know one person, you know six, without any degrees of separation. When Anne called back, though, she couldn't tell me much. Apparently this was an estate sale, someone's children selling it for someone who had died. The “old fella,” presumably.
“What about the septic system?” I asked.
“Doubt anybody knows much about that,” Anne said.
“How do I know if I'd have to replace it?”
“Guess you'd have to just dig it up,” she said. “But I wouldn't recommend it. You might want to leave it be.”
“You mean we'd just buy the house, and hope for the best?” I asked.
“That's about the size of things,” she said. “If it fails, you'd know it.”
This did not sound promising. On the other hand, if the old fella hadn't been using the septic system in a while, everything probably had time to drain.
So we made the offer, and now we're waiting to see if it was accepted. We'll find out this Friday. Meanwhile, I'm biting my nails.
Despite the fact that we love PEI – and this house, in particular, with its charming century-old architecture, peaceful farmland views, and proximity to our favorite beach – I know that this plan is more whimsical than logical. For starters, we have no money. Like so many people, we were nearly flattened by the economic downturn. My husband was laid off twice and two of the start-up companies he joined went under. We struggled to stay afloat as our oldest child started college and we paid health care costs out of pocket for one year, then a second. We finally decided to sell our house and buy a smaller one.
That's when the real estate market crashed. Our first buyer pulled a runner after we'd gotten locked into buying that smaller house, so we ended up with a bridge loan for a year, until we found another buyer. Goodbye, savings. Hello, credit cards.
With no spare cash under our mattress, we'll now have to dip into our retirement funds to finance the purchase of this house. Yet another bad idea: Why take a 10 percent hit, rather than wait until we're old enough to pull the money out without having to pay taxes on it?
Our only arguments in favor of doing so are admittedly weak: our retirement funds are stagnating with the limp stock market, making us think real estate can't be worse, and the PEI house we want to buy is one that we can easily imagine loving full-time. Plus, it's for sale right now at an asking price that's half of its assessed value.
“Prince Edward Island is too far away,” another friend complains. “Why can't you find a retirement spot closer to home?”
Where could we go? Ohio? Pennsylvania? Tennessee? Even those states are more expensive. We're not alone in thinking that Canada is the answer. Far from it: the number of U.S. citizens choosing to live in Canada hit a 30-year high recently (http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2101397c-fe7c-4adf-a2d1-8665cb29ac66&k=0
The last time Canada saw such an enormous influx of U.S. citizens was during the political turmoil of the Vietnam war. Now, many are choosing Canada both for economic and political reasons. Our own reasons are simple: we love Canada, and the cost of living in the U.S. has killed us. Once our kids are grown, we imagine eventually selling this house in New England, which is about the same size as the one on PEI but worth ten times more. We'll have red dirt roads and fiddle music, potato fields and freshly steamed mussels to keep us happy. We'll still be working until we drop to pay back our debts. But we can freelance remotely for the same U.S. companies from Canada – my husband as a software engineer, me as a writer – while we make goat cheese, have a few hens of our own, and grow our own vegetables, all without a crippling mortgage and punishing health care costs.
It's a crazy dream. But it's less of a fiscal nightmare than what we've experienced here.
Or am I missing something? Should we back out of this house deal now, while there's still time to be sensible?
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Is the Grass Greener in Canada?
I was vacationing in Prince Edward Island, Canada this summer when I came across this article in The Globe and Mail: “The World Would Love to Be Canadian” (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/g8-g20/news/the-world-would-love-to-be-canadian/article1612707/). The writer, Joe Friesen, cites this startling statistic: “Given the choice, 53 percent of adults in the world's 24 leading economies said they would immigrate to Canada.”
I'm teetering on the edge of joining them.
This isn't a whimsical decision on my part. It's been brewing since 1974, when my father took our family on our one and only camping trip. He rented an RV and we headed north from Massachusetts to Prince Edward Island, which he described as “a peaceful emerald isle of enchantment, where the sands are red and the waters sparkle silver.” Dad had never read Anne of Green Gables (http://www.anneofgreengables.com/), but he made PEI sound tantalizing, like the Land of Oz without the Wicked Witch and her horrible flying monkeys.
Sadly, my mother did not take to camping. “Just more chores for me!” she declared, and forced us to turn around in Maine after driving a grand total of four hours. My parents were divorced soon after that.
Fast forward to my own divorce. When my first husband and I split up, I had two young children; I was dead set on giving them a family vacation, man or no man. Affording a beach vacation in New England was impossible on my single-parent salary, so I convinced a friend and her kids to join us on a week-long trip to Prince Edward Island after spotting an ad for a cottage there that rented for just $400 a week.
We drove twelve hours north from Massachusetts with our kids making more noise in that van than most rock concerts. Between the various stops to pee and feed them all, it was midnight by the time we reached the island. (In those days, the only way to get to PEI was the ferry.) The cottage was on a rutted red dirt road (still plenty of those up there, for all of you Anne of Green Gables fans). I was shaking with fatigue by the time we arrived. It was pitch black all around us, but the sky was a bowl of stars and we could smell the sea.
We woke the next morning to the sound of fiddle music. I sat up and looked out my window at Rustico Bay, where great blue herons dotted the shore. Tall purple and pink lupins waved like some Disney cartoon animation; I half expected the flowers to sing. Across the bay was a tall white church, and that's where the fiddle music was coming from: a festival that we attended that very afternoon. I was hooked on PEI from that moment on.
I've gone back to Prince Edward Island every summer for the past 14 years, and sometimes in the fall or even winter, when the snow blows across the potato fields and the roads disappear out from under you. There is never a time when I don't love it.
Yes, there are certainly moments while driving up Route 95 through Maine (where the State motto should be “Maine, the Infinite State”) when I think, “This is so not worth it.” Even in New Brunswick, where I've come to love the Bay of Fundy's rocky shoreline and the long stretches of farmland with their big brown loaves of hay and spotted cows, I sometimes think, “Why can't I find a closer place to love?” Then I cross the Confederation Bridge from the mainland to Prince Edward Island and fall in love with the place all over again. The colors seem brighter and the air is clearer here than anywhere else on earth.
The Globe and Mail article reports that more than three-quarters of those surveyed in China said they'd prefer to live in Canada, followed by Mexico and India at nearly 70 percent. Most respondents perceived Canada as a place where rights and freedoms are respected on a deeper level than anywhere else.
Is this true? By now, I've explored most parts of Canada, including many of its cities, from Vancouver to Ottawa, from Montreal to St. John. There is urban blight, as there is in the U.S., and visible evidence of unemployment – the Canadian unemployment rate is just over 8 percent overall. Certainly Canada isn't free of crime or substance abuse. The last time I was in St. John with my mother, one drunken spacey fellow stepped onto the escalator behind Mom and rested his chin on her shoulder, passing out for a second until she barked at him to back off.
Yet, wherever I've been in Canada, there is an overall feeling of goodwill from most people – my husband calls most Canadians “pathologically friendly” because of their willingness to chat you up – and generosity abounds. Most recently, I was staying at a friend's house on PEI when another friend brought her bike over for my husband to pump up the tire. Within minutes, we were joined by two other neighbors, both asking if we needed help. They stayed for an hour.
Three years ago, my brother and I went in on a small summer cottage on PEI. It's a typical cottage, mostly porch, overlooking Malpeque Bay. I bought it online, sight unseen, and we've camped out in it happily every summer, renting out empty weeks to help sustain the costs of having an extra house. This summer, I spotted the perfect year-round house for sale in the more remote eastern part of the island, near our favorite beach. Now we're trying to decide whether to buy that one as well. This sounds luxurious, even decadent, this idea of having second homes – but neither costs more than most new cars here.
If we bought the farmhouse, I imagine one day retiring there with my second husband, or living there half of every year after the last of our five kids is off to college. I dream of raising alpacas and selling the wool; my husband is arguing on behalf of goats and cheese-making. Both are pipe dreams at this point. Sensibly, we'd probably do better just doing what we do now: writing and software engineering. But it's the simplicity of having a ramshackle farmhouse on Prince Edward Island that lures us – and the good neighbors I know we'd find there.
Should we, or shouldn't we, go for this dream? Am I fooling myself about Canada because the news headlines here are so awful (think war, oil spills, harsh immigration legislation)? Is it a purely escapist impulse, the kind we all have when fantasizing about living in our favorite vacation spots, that makes me want to flee north of the border? Or is Canada really a better place to live?
I'm teetering on the edge of joining them.
This isn't a whimsical decision on my part. It's been brewing since 1974, when my father took our family on our one and only camping trip. He rented an RV and we headed north from Massachusetts to Prince Edward Island, which he described as “a peaceful emerald isle of enchantment, where the sands are red and the waters sparkle silver.” Dad had never read Anne of Green Gables (http://www.anneofgreengables.com/), but he made PEI sound tantalizing, like the Land of Oz without the Wicked Witch and her horrible flying monkeys.
Sadly, my mother did not take to camping. “Just more chores for me!” she declared, and forced us to turn around in Maine after driving a grand total of four hours. My parents were divorced soon after that.
Fast forward to my own divorce. When my first husband and I split up, I had two young children; I was dead set on giving them a family vacation, man or no man. Affording a beach vacation in New England was impossible on my single-parent salary, so I convinced a friend and her kids to join us on a week-long trip to Prince Edward Island after spotting an ad for a cottage there that rented for just $400 a week.
We drove twelve hours north from Massachusetts with our kids making more noise in that van than most rock concerts. Between the various stops to pee and feed them all, it was midnight by the time we reached the island. (In those days, the only way to get to PEI was the ferry.) The cottage was on a rutted red dirt road (still plenty of those up there, for all of you Anne of Green Gables fans). I was shaking with fatigue by the time we arrived. It was pitch black all around us, but the sky was a bowl of stars and we could smell the sea.
We woke the next morning to the sound of fiddle music. I sat up and looked out my window at Rustico Bay, where great blue herons dotted the shore. Tall purple and pink lupins waved like some Disney cartoon animation; I half expected the flowers to sing. Across the bay was a tall white church, and that's where the fiddle music was coming from: a festival that we attended that very afternoon. I was hooked on PEI from that moment on.
I've gone back to Prince Edward Island every summer for the past 14 years, and sometimes in the fall or even winter, when the snow blows across the potato fields and the roads disappear out from under you. There is never a time when I don't love it.
Yes, there are certainly moments while driving up Route 95 through Maine (where the State motto should be “Maine, the Infinite State”) when I think, “This is so not worth it.” Even in New Brunswick, where I've come to love the Bay of Fundy's rocky shoreline and the long stretches of farmland with their big brown loaves of hay and spotted cows, I sometimes think, “Why can't I find a closer place to love?” Then I cross the Confederation Bridge from the mainland to Prince Edward Island and fall in love with the place all over again. The colors seem brighter and the air is clearer here than anywhere else on earth.
The Globe and Mail article reports that more than three-quarters of those surveyed in China said they'd prefer to live in Canada, followed by Mexico and India at nearly 70 percent. Most respondents perceived Canada as a place where rights and freedoms are respected on a deeper level than anywhere else.
Is this true? By now, I've explored most parts of Canada, including many of its cities, from Vancouver to Ottawa, from Montreal to St. John. There is urban blight, as there is in the U.S., and visible evidence of unemployment – the Canadian unemployment rate is just over 8 percent overall. Certainly Canada isn't free of crime or substance abuse. The last time I was in St. John with my mother, one drunken spacey fellow stepped onto the escalator behind Mom and rested his chin on her shoulder, passing out for a second until she barked at him to back off.
Yet, wherever I've been in Canada, there is an overall feeling of goodwill from most people – my husband calls most Canadians “pathologically friendly” because of their willingness to chat you up – and generosity abounds. Most recently, I was staying at a friend's house on PEI when another friend brought her bike over for my husband to pump up the tire. Within minutes, we were joined by two other neighbors, both asking if we needed help. They stayed for an hour.
Three years ago, my brother and I went in on a small summer cottage on PEI. It's a typical cottage, mostly porch, overlooking Malpeque Bay. I bought it online, sight unseen, and we've camped out in it happily every summer, renting out empty weeks to help sustain the costs of having an extra house. This summer, I spotted the perfect year-round house for sale in the more remote eastern part of the island, near our favorite beach. Now we're trying to decide whether to buy that one as well. This sounds luxurious, even decadent, this idea of having second homes – but neither costs more than most new cars here.
If we bought the farmhouse, I imagine one day retiring there with my second husband, or living there half of every year after the last of our five kids is off to college. I dream of raising alpacas and selling the wool; my husband is arguing on behalf of goats and cheese-making. Both are pipe dreams at this point. Sensibly, we'd probably do better just doing what we do now: writing and software engineering. But it's the simplicity of having a ramshackle farmhouse on Prince Edward Island that lures us – and the good neighbors I know we'd find there.
Should we, or shouldn't we, go for this dream? Am I fooling myself about Canada because the news headlines here are so awful (think war, oil spills, harsh immigration legislation)? Is it a purely escapist impulse, the kind we all have when fantasizing about living in our favorite vacation spots, that makes me want to flee north of the border? Or is Canada really a better place to live?
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Author Photo: Where's My Body Double When I Need Her?
Occasionally, I'm lucky enough to be invited to visit with book club members who have chosen my memoir as their monthly selection. I make a point of joining any book club within half a day's drive, because the members inevitably have such sharp observations that I always come away with something new to think about.
Last night was no exception. In fact, I was stubbing my toe on sharp observations before I'd even made it through the front door.
“You're the author?” asked a woman in obvious disbelief as I headed up the sidewalk and greeted several people gathered on the porch.
“I am,” I said, waving my book as proof. “It's an honor to be here. Thank you for inviting me.”
This woman continued to stare at me as I climbed up the steps. She wasn't hostile, exactly, but she was looking at me in a way that made me glance down quickly to be sure that I'd remembered the essentials: my purse, my notes, my pants.
While we waited for the hostess to answer the doorbell, this woman and I stood eye-to-eye while the other book club members shifted their feet around us like nervous ponies ready to bolt. “Were you expecting another author tonight instead?” I asked after a few moments.
My challenger shook her head vehemently. “Oh, no. We read your book for tonight. I just expected you to be...” and here she deliberately paused to look at the author photo on the back of the book. “Taller,” she finished.
“And younger?” I suggested.
“Well,” she said, and then the hostess opened the door.
Saved, I thought, but no. This woman wasn't done with me yet.
“When did you have this picture taken?” she demanded.
“Not soon enough,” I said. “I probably should have gotten it taken ten years ago, at least.”
With that, thankfully, everyone laughed and we moved into the house, where things proceeded more normally.
Still, her remarks stung. I had struggled, like all writers do, with finding the “right” look for my author photo. Unless you're Stephen King or Jodi Picoult, the publisher doesn't send you out on tour or pay for your book jacket photo. Most authors are left to sink or swim on our own dimes. Some of us ask our husbands and friends to take our pictures, while others bravely go out and risk paying for a professional photographer, hoping this might make a difference in sales.
How much does an author photo really count when it comes to selling the book? I have no idea. I only knew that I didn't want to end up with an author photo like any of the ones that Catherine Lacey gathered for her recent blog http://htmlgiant.com/author-news/author-photo-failures , all of which I'd seen while snooping at my local library to consider the photographic possibilities.
The thing is, how many possibilities are there for an author's photo? You can do black-and-white (artsy and classic) or color (fun and contemporary). Beyond that, your decisions are still limited: head on hand or arms folded? Smiling or not serious? Leaning or not leaning? And, if you are leaning, do you lean on a tree or a barn or a fence? That's about it. Oh, unless you want to add a pet (a dog if you're a mystery writer, a cat if you're a romance writer, a camel if you're a travel writer).
Not a lot to choose from, right? Plus, for writers like me, with a mortgage and kids in college, funds are sorely limited. I knew that I'd be lucky to afford a passport photo at my local post office. (Yes, I considered it.)
Then I had another creative brainstorm: What if I just hired my daughter as a body double? She's 21, blonde, blue-eyed and gorgeous. It wouldn't matter what kind of photo or pose she took, because my daughter is in that flawless bloom of young womanhood where she could be wearing a paintball mask and still look good.
Books might not sell better with a gorgeous author, but it couldn't hurt. I wished that I had the sort of look that can sell a book, like the young and lovely Vindala Vida, author of The Lovers, or exotic Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Unaccustomed Earth. Hotties have an easier time marketing just about anything in our society, from detergent to shoes – unless you go in the other direction and market a product with someone noticeably dorky, like that little troll of a guy who has built his empire out of playing the downtrodden Windows PC guy on those Mac commercials.
If I used a body double, though, I'd have to send her to my book signings and media appearances. What would I do if I ever ended up on The Today Show or Jon Stewart? I couldn't disappoint Jon Stewart! He's the conscience of our country!
On the other hand, there was some merit in this idea: If I had a body double, I'd get a lot more writing done. And my daughter loves to travel.
In the end, though, I let go of the body double idea. Here's the real truth: I wanted to be on my own book jacket. After all, my book and I had traveled this far together. How could I abandon my memoir now?
In the end, I hired a neighbor – an art student who is building a photography business from the ground up http://mariahgale.com/ and was therefore in my price range. Mariah lives across the street and came over one evening to photograph me in the back yard. The process was painless mainly because she was so chatty and relaxed.
Mariah had experience photographing weddings and children, so she had no trouble moving me around various props: an old Adirondack chair, the back garden, the porch. She used a digital camera and was familiar with the many tricks used to massage portraits to perfection. I made her promise not to flatter me too much; on the other hand, I told her that it was fine to make me “look just a little better.”
She did a terrific job. In these photographs, I look older than my daughter, but younger than I am – which was apparently what threw off this particular book club member.
What I love most about my author photo is that there are all kinds of clues to my life: I'm wearing the silver earrings that my daughter and I bought together on a trip to Mexico, as well as the bright woven shawl that my stepdaughter brought me from France. There's a birdhouse in the background that one of my neighbors made me. My dog is there, too, though you can't see him because of the way the pictures are cropped: a white Pekingese that joined our family because I was so sad when my son went away to college.
The author photo does exactly what I wanted it to do: It is a portrait of me, welcoming readers into my life.
Last night was no exception. In fact, I was stubbing my toe on sharp observations before I'd even made it through the front door.
“You're the author?” asked a woman in obvious disbelief as I headed up the sidewalk and greeted several people gathered on the porch.
“I am,” I said, waving my book as proof. “It's an honor to be here. Thank you for inviting me.”
This woman continued to stare at me as I climbed up the steps. She wasn't hostile, exactly, but she was looking at me in a way that made me glance down quickly to be sure that I'd remembered the essentials: my purse, my notes, my pants.
While we waited for the hostess to answer the doorbell, this woman and I stood eye-to-eye while the other book club members shifted their feet around us like nervous ponies ready to bolt. “Were you expecting another author tonight instead?” I asked after a few moments.
My challenger shook her head vehemently. “Oh, no. We read your book for tonight. I just expected you to be...” and here she deliberately paused to look at the author photo on the back of the book. “Taller,” she finished.
“And younger?” I suggested.
“Well,” she said, and then the hostess opened the door.
Saved, I thought, but no. This woman wasn't done with me yet.
“When did you have this picture taken?” she demanded.
“Not soon enough,” I said. “I probably should have gotten it taken ten years ago, at least.”
With that, thankfully, everyone laughed and we moved into the house, where things proceeded more normally.
Still, her remarks stung. I had struggled, like all writers do, with finding the “right” look for my author photo. Unless you're Stephen King or Jodi Picoult, the publisher doesn't send you out on tour or pay for your book jacket photo. Most authors are left to sink or swim on our own dimes. Some of us ask our husbands and friends to take our pictures, while others bravely go out and risk paying for a professional photographer, hoping this might make a difference in sales.
How much does an author photo really count when it comes to selling the book? I have no idea. I only knew that I didn't want to end up with an author photo like any of the ones that Catherine Lacey gathered for her recent blog http://htmlgiant.com/author-news/author-photo-failures , all of which I'd seen while snooping at my local library to consider the photographic possibilities.
The thing is, how many possibilities are there for an author's photo? You can do black-and-white (artsy and classic) or color (fun and contemporary). Beyond that, your decisions are still limited: head on hand or arms folded? Smiling or not serious? Leaning or not leaning? And, if you are leaning, do you lean on a tree or a barn or a fence? That's about it. Oh, unless you want to add a pet (a dog if you're a mystery writer, a cat if you're a romance writer, a camel if you're a travel writer).
Not a lot to choose from, right? Plus, for writers like me, with a mortgage and kids in college, funds are sorely limited. I knew that I'd be lucky to afford a passport photo at my local post office. (Yes, I considered it.)
Then I had another creative brainstorm: What if I just hired my daughter as a body double? She's 21, blonde, blue-eyed and gorgeous. It wouldn't matter what kind of photo or pose she took, because my daughter is in that flawless bloom of young womanhood where she could be wearing a paintball mask and still look good.
Books might not sell better with a gorgeous author, but it couldn't hurt. I wished that I had the sort of look that can sell a book, like the young and lovely Vindala Vida, author of The Lovers, or exotic Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Unaccustomed Earth. Hotties have an easier time marketing just about anything in our society, from detergent to shoes – unless you go in the other direction and market a product with someone noticeably dorky, like that little troll of a guy who has built his empire out of playing the downtrodden Windows PC guy on those Mac commercials.
If I used a body double, though, I'd have to send her to my book signings and media appearances. What would I do if I ever ended up on The Today Show or Jon Stewart? I couldn't disappoint Jon Stewart! He's the conscience of our country!
On the other hand, there was some merit in this idea: If I had a body double, I'd get a lot more writing done. And my daughter loves to travel.
In the end, though, I let go of the body double idea. Here's the real truth: I wanted to be on my own book jacket. After all, my book and I had traveled this far together. How could I abandon my memoir now?
In the end, I hired a neighbor – an art student who is building a photography business from the ground up http://mariahgale.com/ and was therefore in my price range. Mariah lives across the street and came over one evening to photograph me in the back yard. The process was painless mainly because she was so chatty and relaxed.
Mariah had experience photographing weddings and children, so she had no trouble moving me around various props: an old Adirondack chair, the back garden, the porch. She used a digital camera and was familiar with the many tricks used to massage portraits to perfection. I made her promise not to flatter me too much; on the other hand, I told her that it was fine to make me “look just a little better.”
She did a terrific job. In these photographs, I look older than my daughter, but younger than I am – which was apparently what threw off this particular book club member.
What I love most about my author photo is that there are all kinds of clues to my life: I'm wearing the silver earrings that my daughter and I bought together on a trip to Mexico, as well as the bright woven shawl that my stepdaughter brought me from France. There's a birdhouse in the background that one of my neighbors made me. My dog is there, too, though you can't see him because of the way the pictures are cropped: a white Pekingese that joined our family because I was so sad when my son went away to college.
The author photo does exactly what I wanted it to do: It is a portrait of me, welcoming readers into my life.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Sniffing and Sobbing My Way through So You Think You Can Dance
Okay, I admit it: I cried when So You Think You Can Dance judge Nigel Lithgow announced that contestant Alex Wong was going to have to leave the show due to an injury.
I'm sure I was in good company. Like most viewers, I replayed the stunning hip hop routine Alex did with Twitch at least half a dozen times. Wow. Besides, there isn't another reality show on television that provides so many sobfests. Whether it's in homage to a fluid contemporary dance routine or in solidarity with a gushing contestant, I can count on judge Adam Shankman (who I want to be my very own BFF) to get the waterworks going. In fact, I imagine people in living rooms around the country grabbing for tissues as soon as Adam tears up.
Like Adam, I've always been a weep-aholic. I used to lie under the coffee table during certain TV shows because my brother always teased me if I cried. I'd try to hide the sniffles, but my dad would always catch me sliding away and yell, “Holly's leaving us now!” as I belly-snaked along the floor to my Cave of Sorrow beneath the coffee table.
Now that I'm adult, and a mother besides, I cry even more easily: over the newspaper's headlines of doom, during NPR's even gloomier reports, whenever friends admit scary medical problems or divorces, during certain songs on the radio. Now it's my children who throw me under the bus, rolling their eyes at each other and saying, “Mom's crying again!” as I'm trying to choke down a sob in their dry-eyed company. I couldn't even sit through ten minutes of Up without grabbing for the hankies, and I'm afraid to see Toy Story 3 because I know that seeing Andy leave for college will really push me over the edge.
Which brings me back to So You Think You Can Dance. I'm a newbie to reality TV shows. I started watching this show last year, and like any other creeping addiction, this one had me by the throat before I noticed the needle in my arm. I followed it right to the end, rooting for Jakob and Catherine without knowing anything about how, or why, they were better dancers than the others.
I don't feel the least bit guilty for watching. Unlike most reality TV shows, this one is actually instructive. I had dance lessons as a child, but quit (like many) because it was hard work and people kept trying to tell me what to do. Later, I signed up for a jazz dance class in high school – friends talked me into it – and all I remember from that was this monotonous series of steps to Van Morrison's “It's a Marvelous Night for a Moonbeam,” a song I still can't hear without side-stepping and lifting my arms.
Watching So You Think You Can Dance, I've learned about fluidity and toe pointing, partnering and extensions, different dance styles, why the Quickstep is the Kiss of Death, and the importance of conveying character through dance – sometimes by making your gestures “small” instead of large and overwrought, as Adam taught contestant Kent Boyd, the sweet jug-eared boy from Ohio, last week. (Was that kiss between him and Lauren for real? Sure looked like it to me. You're a long way from Wapakoneta, Kent.) I have even started attending live dance performances in my area because of the show.
I wish I could dance. Instead, I can only marvel: How do these incredible athletes perform such feats of strength – while pretending to be dolls trapped in boxes, hunters and jaguars, Ninja assassins or lovers at a prom? And how do they make me cry almost every time?
I'm going to sit right here with my box of tissues until I figure it out.
I'm sure I was in good company. Like most viewers, I replayed the stunning hip hop routine Alex did with Twitch at least half a dozen times. Wow. Besides, there isn't another reality show on television that provides so many sobfests. Whether it's in homage to a fluid contemporary dance routine or in solidarity with a gushing contestant, I can count on judge Adam Shankman (who I want to be my very own BFF) to get the waterworks going. In fact, I imagine people in living rooms around the country grabbing for tissues as soon as Adam tears up.
Like Adam, I've always been a weep-aholic. I used to lie under the coffee table during certain TV shows because my brother always teased me if I cried. I'd try to hide the sniffles, but my dad would always catch me sliding away and yell, “Holly's leaving us now!” as I belly-snaked along the floor to my Cave of Sorrow beneath the coffee table.
Now that I'm adult, and a mother besides, I cry even more easily: over the newspaper's headlines of doom, during NPR's even gloomier reports, whenever friends admit scary medical problems or divorces, during certain songs on the radio. Now it's my children who throw me under the bus, rolling their eyes at each other and saying, “Mom's crying again!” as I'm trying to choke down a sob in their dry-eyed company. I couldn't even sit through ten minutes of Up without grabbing for the hankies, and I'm afraid to see Toy Story 3 because I know that seeing Andy leave for college will really push me over the edge.
Which brings me back to So You Think You Can Dance. I'm a newbie to reality TV shows. I started watching this show last year, and like any other creeping addiction, this one had me by the throat before I noticed the needle in my arm. I followed it right to the end, rooting for Jakob and Catherine without knowing anything about how, or why, they were better dancers than the others.
I don't feel the least bit guilty for watching. Unlike most reality TV shows, this one is actually instructive. I had dance lessons as a child, but quit (like many) because it was hard work and people kept trying to tell me what to do. Later, I signed up for a jazz dance class in high school – friends talked me into it – and all I remember from that was this monotonous series of steps to Van Morrison's “It's a Marvelous Night for a Moonbeam,” a song I still can't hear without side-stepping and lifting my arms.
Watching So You Think You Can Dance, I've learned about fluidity and toe pointing, partnering and extensions, different dance styles, why the Quickstep is the Kiss of Death, and the importance of conveying character through dance – sometimes by making your gestures “small” instead of large and overwrought, as Adam taught contestant Kent Boyd, the sweet jug-eared boy from Ohio, last week. (Was that kiss between him and Lauren for real? Sure looked like it to me. You're a long way from Wapakoneta, Kent.) I have even started attending live dance performances in my area because of the show.
I wish I could dance. Instead, I can only marvel: How do these incredible athletes perform such feats of strength – while pretending to be dolls trapped in boxes, hunters and jaguars, Ninja assassins or lovers at a prom? And how do they make me cry almost every time?
I'm going to sit right here with my box of tissues until I figure it out.
Friday, July 9, 2010
From One Book Cover to Another: Saying Goodbye to My Gerbils
The paperback of my memoir was released recently, but I barely recognize my own book with the new cover. It hurts my heart to say goodbye to the gerbils on the hardcover edition of The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter. But what else can I do?
In the publishing world, a lot of money and talent is poured into creating the perfect image and identity for every book. You can't always judge a book by its cover, but a cover definitely helps sell the book.
On the grand totem pole of decision making, the author is usually among the last to see a book's cover – after the designers, editors, marketing and sales teams, and publicist. Last year, when the editor of The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter emailed me the cover design for the first time, I was as sweaty-palmed as a girl on her first date. I had reason to be nervous: Since my brother and I were both models for my father's pet books about gerbils, I'd sent the publisher plenty of embarrassing photos to choose from, like that portrait of me at age 12, looking cross-eyed at two gerbil butts while I demonstrate how easy it is to tell males from females.
When I finally took a deep breath and clicked on the editor's attachment, up popped an image that made me laugh out loud: Two gerbils – one brown, one spotted – peeping out of a pair of kiwi-green rubber boots with red trim. It was perfect. I'd even had rubber boots like that when I was a child. What better way to portray the comic story of an eccentric Navy man who became obsessed enough with gerbils to raise nearly 9,000 of them, with his entire family along for the adventure?
The book was launched in May 2009. For the past year, those gerbils have accompanied me to teach classes and do readings, sign books and serve as a pet judge at The American Gerbil Show. Fans seemed to love the cover. One woman put it this way: “That cover just says 'pick me up and read me!'” The book cover was on my web site, and I carried roll-up posters with my gerbils and rubber boots to various events. For a while I even contemplated buying a pair of adult-sized green rubber boots.
Then, as the publisher was getting the paperback ready, I got this startling news: they were creating a new cover. “No more gerbils,” my editor said.
When I asked why, she explained the decision this way: “We'd like your book to reach a wider audience.” She hesitated, then added delicately, “You know, some women just don't like rodents.”
I do know that. My own mother, despite being married to a gerbil farmer, never did develop any fondness for them at all. So what if gerbils put food on our table? “They have tails like rats,” Mom always said. “Ew.”
So, once again, I waited anxiously as the publisher tested different designs with focus groups. I saw two of them – both black-and-white photos of young girls with their backs to the camera, one in a white slip and the other in a bikini – and had mixed feelings. I know that flesh sells. It's also true that black-and-white photos somehow carry more artistic heft. These potential book covers for the paperback of my own memoir were both lovely, moody images in the category of some of my favorite memoirs, like The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls or The Liars' Club by Mary Karr.
On the other hand, they weren't very cheerful pictures, and my own childhood, though decidedly bizarre, was a lot less tragic than theirs. Should my book go out into the world – to beaches and airports, subways and living rooms – with a moody black-and-white photo? I didn't really think so.
At last, my editor sent me the final design for the paperback of The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter. I was so nervous that I made my husband stand beside me while I clicked on the attachment.
Once again, I had to laugh. Because apparently those at the top of the publishing totem pole had come to much the same conclusion that I had: Instead of a black-and-white photo of an adolescent girl poised for something to happen to her, the new cover has a little girl in a polka-dotted play suit running up a hill toward some flowering trees, pigtails flying. She isn't waiting for something to happen to her. She is, instead, gleefully running toward her next adventure.
Admittedly, it's a bit odd, as the author of a memoir, to see my book flashing a photograph of someone who definitely isn't me. I can't help but remember the covers of those other memoirs I've read and loved that have color photographs, like the chubby baby on A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel, and wonder now if those are the author's own photos.
In the end, I suppose what really matters is that the new cover of The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter exudes the energy and joy of a quirky, free-roaming childhood. The design captures the essence of the book, if not the literal subject matter. That little girl and I will become fast friends as we carry my book out into the world together.
In the publishing world, a lot of money and talent is poured into creating the perfect image and identity for every book. You can't always judge a book by its cover, but a cover definitely helps sell the book.
On the grand totem pole of decision making, the author is usually among the last to see a book's cover – after the designers, editors, marketing and sales teams, and publicist. Last year, when the editor of The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter emailed me the cover design for the first time, I was as sweaty-palmed as a girl on her first date. I had reason to be nervous: Since my brother and I were both models for my father's pet books about gerbils, I'd sent the publisher plenty of embarrassing photos to choose from, like that portrait of me at age 12, looking cross-eyed at two gerbil butts while I demonstrate how easy it is to tell males from females.
When I finally took a deep breath and clicked on the editor's attachment, up popped an image that made me laugh out loud: Two gerbils – one brown, one spotted – peeping out of a pair of kiwi-green rubber boots with red trim. It was perfect. I'd even had rubber boots like that when I was a child. What better way to portray the comic story of an eccentric Navy man who became obsessed enough with gerbils to raise nearly 9,000 of them, with his entire family along for the adventure?
The book was launched in May 2009. For the past year, those gerbils have accompanied me to teach classes and do readings, sign books and serve as a pet judge at The American Gerbil Show. Fans seemed to love the cover. One woman put it this way: “That cover just says 'pick me up and read me!'” The book cover was on my web site, and I carried roll-up posters with my gerbils and rubber boots to various events. For a while I even contemplated buying a pair of adult-sized green rubber boots.
Then, as the publisher was getting the paperback ready, I got this startling news: they were creating a new cover. “No more gerbils,” my editor said.
When I asked why, she explained the decision this way: “We'd like your book to reach a wider audience.” She hesitated, then added delicately, “You know, some women just don't like rodents.”
I do know that. My own mother, despite being married to a gerbil farmer, never did develop any fondness for them at all. So what if gerbils put food on our table? “They have tails like rats,” Mom always said. “Ew.”
So, once again, I waited anxiously as the publisher tested different designs with focus groups. I saw two of them – both black-and-white photos of young girls with their backs to the camera, one in a white slip and the other in a bikini – and had mixed feelings. I know that flesh sells. It's also true that black-and-white photos somehow carry more artistic heft. These potential book covers for the paperback of my own memoir were both lovely, moody images in the category of some of my favorite memoirs, like The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls or The Liars' Club by Mary Karr.
On the other hand, they weren't very cheerful pictures, and my own childhood, though decidedly bizarre, was a lot less tragic than theirs. Should my book go out into the world – to beaches and airports, subways and living rooms – with a moody black-and-white photo? I didn't really think so.
At last, my editor sent me the final design for the paperback of The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter. I was so nervous that I made my husband stand beside me while I clicked on the attachment.
Once again, I had to laugh. Because apparently those at the top of the publishing totem pole had come to much the same conclusion that I had: Instead of a black-and-white photo of an adolescent girl poised for something to happen to her, the new cover has a little girl in a polka-dotted play suit running up a hill toward some flowering trees, pigtails flying. She isn't waiting for something to happen to her. She is, instead, gleefully running toward her next adventure.
Admittedly, it's a bit odd, as the author of a memoir, to see my book flashing a photograph of someone who definitely isn't me. I can't help but remember the covers of those other memoirs I've read and loved that have color photographs, like the chubby baby on A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel, and wonder now if those are the author's own photos.
In the end, I suppose what really matters is that the new cover of The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter exudes the energy and joy of a quirky, free-roaming childhood. The design captures the essence of the book, if not the literal subject matter. That little girl and I will become fast friends as we carry my book out into the world together.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Now that School is Out, What Did They Really Learn?
“So what do they teach at that new school, anyway?” my friend Donna asked recently. “Does Aidan still learn math and science? Will he be ready for high school?”
School has been out for a week now, and the kids have moved on to whatever they're doing this summer, notebooks and backpacks happily abandoned in whatever closet they'll live in until we dust them off in September. So Donna's question took me by surprise.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Of course he learned math.”
“I thought it was an alternative school,” she pressed. “What kind of education is it?”
Last fall, my son Aidan started seventh grade at the public junior high school. It was a disaster; my son hated it so much that I had to crowbar him out of the house.
What didn't he like?
Everything. Mostly, Aidan was bored. In his view: There were too many classes. The homework was stupid. The bus ride was too long.
“What a complainer,” my mother sniffed. “Just make him get up and go. Everyone goes to school. You did.”
I did, it was true. And I hated school too. Especially junior high. I was bored. In my view: There were too many classes. The homework was stupid. The bus ride was too long.
Whoops.
Our four older children went to the public high school and did well. All got into good colleges. This caboose of a child is a different story. Aidan isn't the type to sit still when bored. No, he's the kind of kid who, when he wants excitement, will make his own, like the day he got busted in elementary school for running a casino at his desk. His favorite times in seventh grade were when he got sent to the principal's office.
“At least then I'm not sitting in some boring class,” he said.
I had to do something before trouble became Aidan's favorite pastime. I met with his teachers, who just said he had to learn to sit still and control his impulsive behavior. They whispered about ADHD.
I already knew that Aidan had attention and organization problems. I also knew that, under certain circumstances, he could focus better than anyone.
After visiting several private schools in our area, I stumbled across a small Montessori school. Amazingly, they had an opening mid-fall in their seventh grade. Even more amazingly, when I described Aidan's progress, or lack of it, they were up to the challenge.
I knew nothing about Montessori. But I was at the end of my rope: Aidan had to go somewhere that wasn't the school he was in, and nobody else had any openings. I took a deep breath and made the switch.
For a long time, I worried, as Donna did, that Aidan might be missing out by not being in the public school. I quizzed my friends whose children were in seventh grade about what their kids were doing in math, social studies, English, and science to see if I could pinpoint anything that Aidan was missing. I worried, too, that by “letting” him act out in school instead of making him “sit up and fly right,” as my father would have put it, I might be doing Aidan a disservice. We all have to go to school, learn how to get along with others, and put up with supervisors who bore us. Was I spoiling Aidan by pulling him out of the public school? Would he emerge uneducated and unprepared for the so-called “real world?” because he was now going to a crazy school where the kids call the teachers by their first names, wear slippers to class, and can eat snack whenever they want?
Fast forward six months. It is nearly summer, and for their culminating event, Aidan and his classmates at the Montessori School are performing Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. On a real stage, with real costumes and lights. I'm sitting in the audience, and there is Aidan on stage as Lysander, holding hands with Hermia. Aidan is wearing a tunic and tights. He is saying his lines. He is not the best actor on stage, but he's into it, waving his hands around and managing to lie still with his eyes closed while Puck dances wildly around his head.
If you had asked me what I wanted Aidan to learn during his first year of middle school, I would have said math, science, social studies, and maybe how to write a book review. I would never have predicted that Aidan would create, as he did at this school, a model of a half-size camel, which he presented while spouting facts about the desert biome. I never would have predicted how much Aidan loved volunteering with senior citizens, as his middle school does once each week. And I certainly never could have imagined the stories I heard about how, during the middle school field trip backpacking in the White Mountains, Aidan stood up as the moon was rising and started reciting lines from Midsummer Night's Dream.
Did my son learn math at his new school, Donna? Oh yes. He studied language arts and geography, current events and science, too.
But what Aidan really learned was much more important than any of that: His new Montessori school gave Aidan the confidence to be creative and joyful, to ask questions and seek the answers himself. As his teacher wrote in her final progress report, Aidan “embraced learning to understand, rather than studying to get a specific grade on a test.”
And that, to me, is a real education.
School has been out for a week now, and the kids have moved on to whatever they're doing this summer, notebooks and backpacks happily abandoned in whatever closet they'll live in until we dust them off in September. So Donna's question took me by surprise.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Of course he learned math.”
“I thought it was an alternative school,” she pressed. “What kind of education is it?”
Last fall, my son Aidan started seventh grade at the public junior high school. It was a disaster; my son hated it so much that I had to crowbar him out of the house.
What didn't he like?
Everything. Mostly, Aidan was bored. In his view: There were too many classes. The homework was stupid. The bus ride was too long.
“What a complainer,” my mother sniffed. “Just make him get up and go. Everyone goes to school. You did.”
I did, it was true. And I hated school too. Especially junior high. I was bored. In my view: There were too many classes. The homework was stupid. The bus ride was too long.
Whoops.
Our four older children went to the public high school and did well. All got into good colleges. This caboose of a child is a different story. Aidan isn't the type to sit still when bored. No, he's the kind of kid who, when he wants excitement, will make his own, like the day he got busted in elementary school for running a casino at his desk. His favorite times in seventh grade were when he got sent to the principal's office.
“At least then I'm not sitting in some boring class,” he said.
I had to do something before trouble became Aidan's favorite pastime. I met with his teachers, who just said he had to learn to sit still and control his impulsive behavior. They whispered about ADHD.
I already knew that Aidan had attention and organization problems. I also knew that, under certain circumstances, he could focus better than anyone.
After visiting several private schools in our area, I stumbled across a small Montessori school. Amazingly, they had an opening mid-fall in their seventh grade. Even more amazingly, when I described Aidan's progress, or lack of it, they were up to the challenge.
I knew nothing about Montessori. But I was at the end of my rope: Aidan had to go somewhere that wasn't the school he was in, and nobody else had any openings. I took a deep breath and made the switch.
For a long time, I worried, as Donna did, that Aidan might be missing out by not being in the public school. I quizzed my friends whose children were in seventh grade about what their kids were doing in math, social studies, English, and science to see if I could pinpoint anything that Aidan was missing. I worried, too, that by “letting” him act out in school instead of making him “sit up and fly right,” as my father would have put it, I might be doing Aidan a disservice. We all have to go to school, learn how to get along with others, and put up with supervisors who bore us. Was I spoiling Aidan by pulling him out of the public school? Would he emerge uneducated and unprepared for the so-called “real world?” because he was now going to a crazy school where the kids call the teachers by their first names, wear slippers to class, and can eat snack whenever they want?
Fast forward six months. It is nearly summer, and for their culminating event, Aidan and his classmates at the Montessori School are performing Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. On a real stage, with real costumes and lights. I'm sitting in the audience, and there is Aidan on stage as Lysander, holding hands with Hermia. Aidan is wearing a tunic and tights. He is saying his lines. He is not the best actor on stage, but he's into it, waving his hands around and managing to lie still with his eyes closed while Puck dances wildly around his head.
If you had asked me what I wanted Aidan to learn during his first year of middle school, I would have said math, science, social studies, and maybe how to write a book review. I would never have predicted that Aidan would create, as he did at this school, a model of a half-size camel, which he presented while spouting facts about the desert biome. I never would have predicted how much Aidan loved volunteering with senior citizens, as his middle school does once each week. And I certainly never could have imagined the stories I heard about how, during the middle school field trip backpacking in the White Mountains, Aidan stood up as the moon was rising and started reciting lines from Midsummer Night's Dream.
Did my son learn math at his new school, Donna? Oh yes. He studied language arts and geography, current events and science, too.
But what Aidan really learned was much more important than any of that: His new Montessori school gave Aidan the confidence to be creative and joyful, to ask questions and seek the answers himself. As his teacher wrote in her final progress report, Aidan “embraced learning to understand, rather than studying to get a specific grade on a test.”
And that, to me, is a real education.
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