Monthly Archives: September 2011

Brissue

Posted on September 12, 2011 | 71 comments

Cover of "The Meaning of Tingo: And Other...

Cover via Amazon

Today I am continuing with my new feature: Made-It-Up Mondays.

I am throwing out a 100% made-up word (that I actually use in real life) and I am asking you to a) define the word, and b) then use the word in a sentence that indicates how the word could be used.

Why? Because someone recently gave me the book The Meaning of Tingo: And Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World.

For example:

“Slampadato” is an Italian word, a noun, meaning one who is addicted to the UV glow of tanning salons.

We don’t really have a word for that in English, do we?

When I can’t find the right word on the word-shelf to fit my mood or predicament, I just make one up.

When we last played this game, the word was ARBORCADE, and the person who came closest to defining the word the way I actually use the word was Brian Henke. He guessed that an arborcade was:

that well-intended planting of trees across the back of your yard that you pictured as a beautiful, well-maintained sanctuary for people and wildlife that has grown into a wild, impenetrable tangle of growth that could swallow small children and now has barricaded you from some of your favorite neighbors.

We have, in fact, planted a boat-load of trees in the back of our house in an attempt to “arborcade” ourselves off from the enormous school that looms in our backyard.

Continuing alphabetically, this week, a made-up word that I often use is:

BRISSUE

What the heck is that? When would you say it? Define it and give me a sentence in which you show me how you would use it.

You know, if it were a real word. 😉

Whoever comes closest to defining it the way I actually use it will get a mention and a link to his or her blog, if applicable.

71 Comments

Posted in Tingo Tuesday

Tagged Dictionaries, English language, Games, made up words, The Meaning of Tingo: And Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World, Word, word games

My Son’s First Concert

Posted on September 9, 2011 | 74 comments

The Very Best of Steely Dan: Reelin' In the Years

Image via Wikipedia

When my husband suggested we take our 12-year old son to see Steely Dan, live, in concert, I tried to gently suggest it might be a bad idea.

“He’ll love it,” Hubby insisted, in that clueless way that husbands sometimes insist on things.

What Hubby really meant was: “I want to see Steely Dan in concert.”

We were not trying to punish our son, but to a child who has a strong preference for techno, I’m pretty sure three hours with Donald Fagen and Walter Becker felt like something akin to water-boarding.

Here is the way the night played out in numbers:

6. PM: the time we left our house so we would get “good” parking.

10. Dollars spent so we could park as close to the exit as humanly possible.

22. Minutes spent in the bathroom for Break #1. This is where Monkey first learned that women’s lines really are 3 times slower than men’s.

30. The difference in the number of years between Monkey’s age and the age of the average concert goer.

5. Dollars spent for a sleeve of kettle corn in an attempt to distract Monkey from noticing the balding men and folks in wheelchairs toting oxygen tanks.

8. PM: The time Steely Dan was supposed to start playing. Except they didn’t. The opening band was a whacked-out jazz ensemble featuring a bass guitar, a drummer and an organist.

2. Number of songs Monkey sat through before he decided he needed to go to the bathroom.

Again.

87. Degrees Fahrenheit outside as people filed in under the shell to take their seats.

9. PM. The time Steely Dan actually started their show. Monkey and I were in the bathroom, so we missed the beginning of the opening number. We returned to our seats where Hubby pointed to the four vacant seats in front of us. “Awesome!” he shouted, sticking his thumbs up.

Our "awesome view" of the man in front of us.

Suddenly, the incarnation of Andre the Giant arrived and sat right in front of us. He was 8 feet tall, and his head was bowling bowl big. His cranium completely eclipsed our view.

Oh, and Andre brought his wife Chatty McChatter and her friend Ima B. Talkintoo.

Monkey tolerated 3 more songs before he asked to go to the bathroom.

Again.

Once outside, my boy confessed he didn’t like the music. The lights were too bright. He couldn’t see anything. He was getting a headache from the people in front of us who wouldn’t stop talking. I suggested we go to the darkest, blackest, most deserted corner of the lawn and lie down on the grass. I rubbed my son’s hair, which had grown long. I looked at the clouds which appeared gray in the night sky.

“Sixty-three!” said Monkey.

“What?” I asked.

“I counted 63 people playing with their phones.” And he was right. Everywhere I looked, people’s phones flickered like little rectangular fireflies as folks plugged into their favorite apps. The sight actually made me a little sad. I mean, I remember going to concerts and really watching. Really listening.

Monkey sniffed the air a few times which smelled like freshly cut grass – if your lawn was a giant field of green, sticky-bud marijuana.

“What is that stink?” my boy asked.

So while Hubby enjoyed the music, I got to school our child about marijuana. And concerts. And how they sometimes go together. Monkey looked for the source of the smell and found we were surrounded. Monkey announced he did not like the smell. I told him he did not have to. That smoking pot was not a requirement for going to concerts.

As the show wound down, Steely Dan played “Dirty Work,” a personal favorite of mine.

When the song ended, Monkey didn’t clap.

“It would be fake clapping.”

On the way home, Hubby asked if there was one thing about the concert that Monkey had liked.

“Having it end,” our son said unapologetically and fell asleep in the backseat.

Monkey will probably not remember his first concert. He will more likely remember the 16 mosquito bites he acquired from lying on the lawn without a blanket.

It’s okay; he has a whole lifetime to see concerts by musicians he really likes; to laugh in the darkness with friends; to cuddle on a blanket with someone he cares about and smooch while a fabulous song plays in the background.

On an up-note, I’m thinking that the number of times Hubby will question my judgment about things like this in the future: 0.

What was your first concert? Do you remember who you saw? What else do you remember about the experience? Or what was the worst show you ever attended? How underwhelmed were you? Explain.

74 Comments

Posted in Parenting

Tagged "Asia", "Dirty Work", concerts, Donald Fagen, favorite concert, lawn seats, least favorite concert, marijuana at concerts, memories of first concert, Music, obstructed view, sitting under the shell, Steely Dan, summer, Walter Becker

Read The Books by Steve Hess #twits

Posted on September 7, 2011 | 58 comments

Steven Hess

My guest writer today is Steven Hess. Born in Amsterdam, Holland in 1938, Steven spent his childhood years under Nazi occupation. He and his family, including his parents and twin sister, lived in both the Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps during 1942-1945. The family immigrated to the United States on January 1, 1947.

A graduate of Columbia College, Steven majored in American History, served with the U.S. Navy for four years (1960-1964) and, after he completed his service, he worked at The New York Times. He eventually bought a small photographic equipment business and grew it into an internationally admired company with over 100 employees.

Steve is a bit of a rabble-rouser. He is a smarty-pants who speaks his mind. I rather love this about him. Let’s be clear; Steve is not a blogger. But over the last year, I learned that Steve writes really well, so I knew I had to get a piece of that action.

Here is his teacher memory.

• • •

It was more than half a century ago.

I was a junior classman at Columbia. How I ever got in with my modest credentials is another story, but I was indeed an Ivy League student. I was also lazy. Today I would be diagnosed as depressed or maybe ADHD, but in the fifties “lazy” pretty much covered it.

I entered Columbia as an engineering student from the prestigious Brooklyn Technical High School but an “F” in freshman calculus suggested a career change. I inventoried my few talents and it came down to a knack for writing. A switch to a history major seemed a reasonable and safe course of action.

One semester I signed up for Professor Fritz Stern’s European History class. I needed the class. I was clueless to the fact that Fritz Stern was a preeminent historian with a truly major reputation. There was no Google. How would one know such things?

I slogged along, attending class, listening to lectures but pretty much ignoring the required readings because; well, because I was lazy. And so the semester passed and it was finals time and the thin, stapled, dreaded “blue books” in which you scribbled the answers. As I said, I wrote well. If not restricted by the need for facts I could often b.s. my way through. It was a week or so later that papers had been graded. I accepted the marked blue with the usual trepidation of a deficient student and opened it. There, to my great relief was a “B” and under it the following comment, in red:

Logical exposition. Good conclusions, but you would have done so much better had you read the books.

Relief, tempered by acute embarrassment…but still, mostly relief.

Book by Fritz Stern

Years passed. Many years. I was in my fifties and quite successful in a field that required neither calculus nor an appreciation for historical nuances. But I had also become an avid reader and, as a survivor, a serious scholar of the Holocaust. And so I happened upon Fritz Stern’s magisterial Dreams and Delusions: The Drama of German History. I couldn’t put it down. I underlined and highlighted my way through endless revelations. And, “fuck!”, I thought. I had been in his class and wasted all of it.

But now there was email and the beginning of search engines and I tracked him down. Thank God, he was still alive and kicking. I got his address and wrote and told him how much I loved his works and especially Dreams and Delusions. Big fan!

I was too sheepish to mention the blue book, but merely wrote that I had taken his course.

Some days later I received a response:

Mr. Hess:

Delighted to hear you finally read the book.

Fritz

What class do you wish you could take again — now that you are an adult — because you know you’d appreciate it so much more?

Last week: “A Different Kind of Punishment”

• • •

If you have writing chops and are interested in submitting a piece of writing for #TWITS: Teachers Who I Think Scored or #TWITS Teachers Who I Think Sucked, write a specific memory about one teacher you had and explain how that person helped you (or really screwed things up for you), as well as the life lesson you took away from the interaction.

Essays should be around 700-800 words.

Interested but have questions? Email me!

My information is under the Contact Me tab.

58 Comments

Posted in Guest Writers

Tagged #TWIT, Brooklyn Technical High School, Columbia University, Fritz Stern, lazy students, Steven Hess, teachers who remember students decades later, when students don't read the books

The Day I Got It All Wrong

Posted on September 5, 2011 | 50 comments

When I teach, I come to class prepared. In fact, I sometimes come to class with a Plan A, Plan B and an Emergency Back-Up Plan. I think this stems from the days when I didn’t exactly know what I was doing. Case in point: Many years ago, when I was just starting out, students were completing their last day of oral presentations. One girl was standing up before the class doing her thing and a small group of boys were being – well, let’s just say, a little bit disruptive. Nothing major. They just weren’t really interested in the symbolism that she had found so riveting in Ordinary People.

I tried to get the attention of one of the boys. No luck. I tried to make eye contact with another. Nothin’. Finally, I took my pen – a Precise V5 extra fine tip pen in hand and attempted to throw it so that it would hit the main offender: Let’s call him Hugo. It should be noted here – and you can’t make this stuff up – that Hugo happened to have one good eye, having lost the other eye years earlier, although I never found out the circumstances surrounding how it had happened. Anyway, I tried to aim for Hugo’s leg – to get his attention without disrupting the entire class. I figured he’d feel the pen tap his leg, look at me, I’d give him “the death eye” and he’d stop screwing around. It seemed foolproof.

I don’t know how it happened because I usually have pretty good aim, but anyone who was in the class that day would vouch for the fact that the pen did not hit Hugo on the leg. That pen had a mind of its own and fueled by green ink, it launched itself upwards right into Hugo’s face just below (or maybe above?) his good eye.

Hugo stood up before the entire class holding his face, “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted (and with good reason). “You could have blinded me!” And with that, Hugo announced that he was going to the nurse, the principal and, then, he was going to call his mother.

I had done precisely what I had set out not to do. I had disrupted the class completely. At the time, I was pretty sure that I was going to be fired. After apologizing to the student presenter for creating such a commotion, class ended, and I hustled up to the Upper School principal to whom I confessed all my terrible, unforgivable sins. She clucked her tongue at me, told me to call Hugo’s mother, and explain what had happened. Thank goodness, Hugo’s mother was wonderful, supportive and understanding; she even joked that sometimes she wanted to poke out Hugo’s good eye. Later, I also apologized to Hugo who apologized to me for being disruptive and disrespectful.

I have often thought about my experience with Hugo. As a new teacher, I was trying to figure things out. After throwing a pen at my wonderful student, I learned many things: First and foremost, I learned to never throw anything at anyone in class ever again. But I learned a lot of other things, too. Over time, I discovered more creative methods to communicate with students about their behavior without making the class come to a grinding halt. I learned a great deal about respect that day and how quick actions can lead to terrible consequences. I learned that sometimes teachers need to apologize to their students because sometimes teachers are the biggest twits of all. We learn from experience.

Oh, and I didn’t get fired.

What’s a not-so-great thing you did on the job that turned into a huge learning moment?

50 Comments

Posted in Education, Memoir

Tagged best intentions gone wrong, education, handling disruption, Metairie Park Country Day School, on the jon training, self-discovery, the learning curve, why teachers should never throw things at students