LA Super-Not-Confidential

This is going to be one of those more personal update-y type posts, just because I have fallen woefully behind in my political news, and in keeping this little blog up to date in terms of my current work situation.


So here it is: I have a job.  Yay!  Without getting overly specific, I will just say that it is absolutely my dream job: I get to work with teachers, policy makers, non-profit type folk and do a lot of nerdy, wonky things all day.  Plus, I get to do all of this from an office in LA, where the sun shines in December and my family is only an hour away.  Perfect.


I also have a new apartment.  Yay again!  Haven't moved in yet, but I have a lease that's all signed and official and as of Friday, I will have keys.  Not so much on the furniture or anything, but one step at a time, right?


And last but not least, I have a new car!  Her name is Olive and I am already deeply in love with her.  I will try to update again soon with some thoughts I've been having about Obama's negative turn, my new obsession-turned-disappointment with the show Weeds and a couple other things.  But for now, this is Olive.

Get Out the Bloody Vote

I am totally in favour of mandatory voting/fines for those who do not comply, ala Australia.  I could go into the long list of reasons why - it encourages good citizenship, it provides greater incentives to better fund education, it creates investment in currently totally disaffected communities, it would force politicians to go center rather than to the extremes, etc.  But mostly, in the grand American tradition, I want to complain.  About ads like these.

That AARP ad that has lines like, "Washington may not like straight talk, but I do" and "Washington doesn't want you to know blah blah blah" (that's verbatim), encouraging seniors to speak out about changes to medicare and social security.  

My issues with this ad are two-fold:

1. Seniors need no encouragement to go vote.  AARP is spending money on these ads because seniors show up to vote regardless, and if an organization like the AARP tells them what to do while they're there, it'll get done.  These sorts of ads just won't work as well on young people because they weren't really on the fence about showing up to vote or not - they're not going to.  You know what totally would get young people to show up? Charging them money if they don't.

But also, you would think from voting patterns and the sentiments of this ad that seniors are both totally unrepresented in the debate on Medicare and Social Security and the only people affected by changes to the system.  This is so, so wrong on both counts.  Politicians don't want to touch these issues with a ten-foot pole in large part because seniors currently utilizing these services are so very, very vocal.  And young people are in some ways more affected by changes to the system than seniors - no serious policy maker is putting out a plan that would affect current beneficiaries.  All plans basically shift the cuts to later generations.  So if anything, seniors need to back off a bit and understand that it's not going to be them who are going to fall through the giant hole in the safety net - it's the rest of us.

2. This whole "Washington says x but the rest of us know y" bugs the bejeezus out of me.  This is a representative democracy.  You are Washington, and Washington is you.  And I don't just say that because I happen to live there.  If anything, I say that in spite of living in the one place in the country where we don't get representation.  The irony of that has too many layers for me to really understand.

Anyway, first of all, the crazy polarization and partisanship of Washington...it's just reflecting our own polarization.  I've written about this before, about how gerrymandering is actually just a reflection of our own desire to have nothing to do with people who aren't like us, which is depressing.  But in this other book we read for that same Alice Rivlin class, by Alan Abramovitz, he argues that it's us, not the politicians, who can no longer see the other point of view and want no part of compromise.  I don't 100% buy this.  But I also don't buy that Washington has just gone all crazy all on their own - it's our democracy and I think the first step to fixing it to take ownership of the problems.  Having worked with a couple local politicians, I can tell you that any involved voter is going to take precedent over any "special interest group".  If someone doesn't like what's happening, it is his or her right and responsibility to get in contact with the representative and fix it.  There is no great conspiracy to keep the American people out of government - more information than you could ever want or need is available online with a few clicks, and C-SPAN records every last minute of proceedings on the floor.  And PS, they apparently talk like 10th graders, so if you still feel like you can't possibly understand them, then we may have some other education problems happening.

As a side note, I will also throw something at my TV if I hear "Washington" being said with a phantom "r" one more time.  That is just incorrect.

Hope for the Future (kind of)

I am currently at home in California, hanging out with my family and thoroughly soaking up the lack of any work I have to do.  Every day, I watch obscene amounts of TV, go for walks, sit in the sun, bake and read books that have nothing to do with policy.  Ok, the last bit isn't 100% true.  I'm currently reading a biography of LBJ, or at least the first volume of one.  It's not strictly about policy, but hot damn that man made a lot of policy happen.  He was  such a bad ass.  I used to think if I could have an affair with one President it would be Woodrow Wilson (clearly a sexy man, a Democrat in a sea of Republicans and he created the Fed.  Hot.)  But as I read this biography...I just don't know.


Anyway, this is not the point of this post.  The point is that I am home and have little to nothing to do most days, except for today.  Today, I helped out at my mom's school by interviewing 8th graders at their "Portfolio Fair" - they showed me their best work and I asked them questions about it.  Well, let me clarify.  Some of them showed me their best work. Others showed me folders they had clearly put together earlier that morning.  But I absolutely loved it.  As much as I hated teaching and was not meant to do it, I do miss hanging out with middle schoolers.  They are hilarious and I adore their honesty.


Things I learned from them today:


1. My mom is "cool".  Their little faces just lit up when I told them who my mom was.  They all gushed about how great she is.  Obviously true.  This even goes for the little slackers who showed up with their half-done folders.  So I also learned from them that this is what a good teacher looks like - even the kids who are not-so-great know that she cares.
I liked all of my teachers.  But I was also a goody-goody.  Some of them, I know, were not so loved by kids who didn't get their stuff done.  That's a decent teacher.  A great  teacher is one who manages to reach even the kids who don't get their acts together.  I have rarely been so proud of my mother as I was today.


2. Math education needs a serious makeover.  To be honest, I sort of knew this before...it's sort of my dad's life's work.  But you know, this was their chance to show me their absolute best work and brag about all their most creative and interesting projects.  I kid you not, every single child showed me some flashcards and said it helped them study for tests.  I asked the first few kids if they didn't have a poster or a writing assignment or a bigger project of some kind to share.  The response: "No...this is for math class."  Right.  How dare I expect creativity.  And we wonder why kids graduate not wanting to pursue a STEM career.


3. Telling kids "Write 3 paragraphs reflecting on a character trait" is not, in fact, a good way to get kids to build character.  You're shocked, I know.  
Every kid had to have this little essay talking about their favourite "pillar of character" (part of some program that I'm sure cost the district some insane amount of money) and every single child openly told me "I don't know why we had to do this."
Me neither.  But this is something I just don't get about the whole world of education.  Both teachers and administrators seem to forget that while adults and children do learn differently in some ways...we're not different in every way.  Go to any professional development session, and you'll see a bunch of administrators leading a "learning experience" that they would flunk any teacher in that room for giving to their students.  6 hours of sitting, little to no modeling, certainly no ongoing support.  In the same way, who learns new skills or builds new capacity by writing 3 reflective paragraphs?  "Responsibility" and "kindness" are not things best learned via structured essays.


4. My shoes are "totes adorbs".  Who knew.

Debate Shift

Double post!  Making up for lost time!


This semester, in case you missed it when I wrote about it about 6,000 times, I have been in a class with Paul Begala on Politics and the Media.  And I think it worked.  


About 12 of my friends all posted this link from the NY Times.  In the past, the "B.B." era as I am now calling it (Before Begala, obviously), I think I would have sent this link on to my many, many Obama-hating family members with a message with the general sentiment of "See?!"


But now, in the A.B. era, I sent no such email.  Instead, I thought, "WTF have Republicans done to our national debate?"  Much healthier and smarter of me.


So if you hate links and didn't click, the graphs essentially show that the government share of GDP shrank dramatically in the first term of the Obama presidency, while it actually rose in both of the W terms, thanks mostly to that good ole military spending.  Thus showing that claims that Obama is some Big Government over-spender are wildly inaccurate.  I almost always support showing that anti-Obama claims are wildly inaccurate.  So why no share?


Because it makes me sad that we liberals have ceded so much ground in this debate that we are arguing for our own candidate that he is a conservative.  I'm not a socialist - I'm not looking for the government to run the economy.  But I am a liberal.  I believe that, especially during economic recessions, the government should play a larger role in the economy.  The fact that the candidate I campaigned for and voted for decreased government spending as a share of GDP is not exciting to me, nor should it be.


But this is how the Republican Noise Machine has warped our national conversation.  In the name of "balance", right wing ideals have gone unchallenged, because god forbid anyone in the media appear to have a liberal bias, and now we debate how little the government can possibly be involved in the economy, rather than addressing the full spectrum of solutions.


In other news, I am still watching Parenthood.  It's so terrible I have had to watch 10 episodes in 2 days.

Long Overdue

As I've been wrapping up the last month or so of school, I have fallen woefully behind on blog updating responsibilities.


BUT I am now in the final-editing-final-citation-writing phase of paper-writing, and so suddenly I have tons o' time.  And so my day today was made up of watching Parenthood on Netflix (terrible), cleaning my room (boring), actually writing those last papers (not really) and finally watching the movie Reality Bites (meh).


I think the problem with Reality Bites was that it was billed to me as (and this is an ever-so-subtle quote from the Wikipedia article) "encapsulating an era".  Like, that listening-to-Radiohead-before-they-were-cool, Clinton-campaigning era and generation I apparently missed.  "Encapsulating" is way too strong.  Things that should have been emphasized about this movie:


-It really captures the laziness of a large proportion of 20-somethings, and the resentment they tend to feel for the less-lazy among them.
-It captures some terrible haircuts.  Seriously Ethan Hawke, go see a barber.  You too, Stiller.
-Watching this movie in 2012 really shows how quickly fashion cycles - most of the outfits, between the lace-up boots and floral skirts and weird glasses, could definitely be sold at Urban Outfitters right now for way too much money.
-The grandpa guy from Frasier is in it, and is one of the most entertaining parts.
-It makes you wonder what it really takes to get 20-somethings motivated.  These people, apparently representative of a whole generation, are aimless and without ambition and unwilling to take unfulfilling jobs.  They were graduating into the labor market of the 90's, those bastards.  But, one could argue, perhaps this lack of struggle, the overabundance of jobs and opportunities, provided no impetus for them to settle into their life paths.  But...my generation is also facing a certain malaise, in large part because we have no jobs.  So is there some magic balance of jobs and unemployment that will suddenly inspire college grads to be productive, ambitious, happy members of society?  Most likely not.  Just today, one of my roommates and I were discussing the merits of some sort of post-high school community service/military service type requirement, kind of like they have in Israel.  I am scared of the military.  I am scared of giving 18-yr-olds guns.  But doing Teach for America, something totally draining and totally outside my comfort zone, was the single hardest thing I've ever done, but also did more to aid my maturity than 4 years in college.  PS I am super mature now.
-Winona Ryder was so freaking beautiful.  She should be allowed to steal everything.

Obsessions

Here are some things I am "obsessed"* with:
Slate.com
Mini foods
Old books
West Wing
Stories about Rick Santorum's wife
Maggie Gyllenhaal (why is she so beautiful?)
Adam Scott (why is he so beautiful?)
Food blogs
How I Met Your Mother
HBO shows
And now...Paleo recipes


So turns out my body is even more Jew-y than I had originally thought.  Rather than just not being able to drink a hearty milkshake because of the milky part, I actually can't drink that milkshake for a whole long list of reasons.  Reasons that are also going to stop me from getting to eat normal bread.  Or cupcakes.  Or pie.  If you know me at all, you know this is a huge.  Problem.


But it turns out lots of other people have this same problem, or choose to give those things up (no, I don't understand it either) and they post recipes about it!  Pies I could actually eat!  It's amazing!  So obviously my new free time activity is watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix while attempting to find every single pie recipe that has ever been written that I can eat.  Duh.


Here is the point of this post: how did people get obsessed with things before the internet?!  If someone in 1955 discovered that, in spite of their deep, abiding love of pies, they would not be able to eat them again, did they just have to find one random recipe and let it go?  Or (God forbid) give up pie?  But then after they found the one recipe...then what did they do?  Move on? Do other things? I don't understand.  I know we're supposed to be the generation of no attention span, but the idea of not being able to do one thing, or research one thing, for hours on end is really foreign to me.  I feel this in very small doses when I'm watching a show that's current.


Example: I'm a Mad Men fan.  I know some people wait until the whole thing is over because they can't stand the waiting, but I can't stand the waiting now.  I win for impatience.  But every time an episode ends, I cannot believe it.  I cannot believe that I am not going to be able to watch at least 4 more episodes immediately.


So in schools, maybe instead of complaining that kids have no attention span anymore (because I would argue that they do), we need to understand that the type of media they have attention span for has shifted, and adapt accordingly.  Can't textbooks be done Wikipedia-style?  History done in a way that shows the entertaining narrative, with better writing?  Science done with more experiments and less reading?  Novels read through a kind of digital treasure hunt rather than a lengthy readaloud?


All of this to say, I wish Matthew Weiner would teach my history class.  I would go every day.








*This is said as a psychology major with full knowledge that obsession is a real thing that is  very much over-used.  However, it is also said as an English major who tends to lean toward descriptive linguistics and thinks the word "obsession" now basically just means something you really, really, really like.  And also as a public policy major who loves caveats.  Ok, I feel better.

Quick Burst of Feminism

Maybe it's because I just listened to a great podcast about Adrienne Rich.


Or maybe it's because I spent way too much of yesterday in heels.


But I saw this on facebook today and almost posted one of those incredibly annoying facebook status rants.  Instead I saved it for here.  PS Language warning, all you kindergarteners who read this blog.

FUCK THIS.
1. Everyone does this sometimes.  In fact, I think I know way more annoying passive-aggressive males than females.  This may be because I come from a long, proud line of vocal women, so I'm not at all saying the opposite stereotype is true - the ability to say one thing when we mean another is just universal, not female.


2. Not everything a woman says is intended to be male-centric.  Personally, when I say "I'm cold", I mean...my body temperature is low.  I am cold.  You should probably turn up the heat, but most likely I would have already added that tidbit.  I may or may not want to cuddle, but I will be sure to let you know if I do.


3. While everyone does do this sometimes, the vast majority of the time, if a woman (or anyone) says, "Leave me alone", it means "Leave me alone.  I'm mad at you right now and will let you know when I no longer am."


This is the more serious point here: women are not children, in spite of what life boat rules may seem to suggest (super excited to see Titanic 3D...)
When women say x, the assumption should be that they mean x.  Because this kind of logic is exactly how we end up with women being pressured into things they didn't want, and men not understanding how that happened.  Yes means yes, no means no, and "Leave me alone" means "Leave me alone".
And in the reverse, giving these kinds of messages to girls does not encourage them to be strong, independent thinkers.  It encourages them to not know what they want, to think they need to be all coy with what they want, and to generally act like children.  
This is one of my favourite blogs, and in this entry, she discusses how we teach children from a young age that hitting means liking, and how screwed up that is.  I agree.  I, for one, do not want affection expressed that way.  If someone tells me "I love you", I want it to mean just that - not "tell me you love me right now" or any other message.


All of this to say, if I tell you I love you...I secretly hate you.  But I promise I'll be consistent about it.