Fort Worth Blogs

I’m going to California again, this time to take my 15 year old son to a boarding school interview. The younger three are coming along for the ride, seeing as there is nothing for them to do at home, and their dad is very busy polishing up his dissertation for submission next week.

With the help of a camera and my son, I’ve now, after 2 days, hundreds of digital photos of our trip.  Don’t worry, you will not be subjected to even a significant fraction of these — though I very much enjoyed Pia’s shots of Northern California last month.

We stopped overnight at the spring-fed swimming pool at Balmorhea State Park about 200 miles southeast of El Paso. This oasis in the desert was certainly worth stopping through, especially since the one-night stop over fit well with our driving plan, and the first thing in the morning swim got us refreshed and ready for a 700 mile day.

It is the only pool I’ve ever visited that was full of fish. Also, it’s 25 feet deep. Also, it was built by the civilian conservation corps during the Great Depression, which puts it in good company — that’s the same source as Fort Worth’s Botanic Garden’s rose terrace.

Driving across the west always puts thought of the pioneers in my mind, but of course I have to admit that taking a three day car trip to the coast is one thing; setting off into a wilderness with nothing but your immediate family, a wagon and a couple of draft animals is something very different.

Much of the day today involved me driving and trying to get through the time without loosing alertness, safety or my mind. The kids were good for most of the day. There was just one incident of concern, and that happened just after dark on the road from Tucson through to Phoenix when they got rather out of control, starting with some accusations about who was doing what to ruin the atmosphere inside the car.

But most of the day was more looking out the window at buttes and mountains, trucks and trains, and mediating on the fact that so few people live out here. The human population carrying capacity of the southwest seems minimal until you get to Phoenix, about 1000 miles from Fort Worth. As we rolled into Phoenix, where we stopped at a Red Roof Inn, my son reflected: “what a great city! Look at it, it’s beautiful!” Asked to elaborate why he said this, he could not, but I have to agree with him: Phoenix has the feel of a real metropolis, at least when you come out of the Great Southwestern Desert.

This is the last week of coursework for the teacher training program I’ve been in for the last 16 months or so. It’s been a demanding trip. As best as I can figure, I’ll have 24 college units accumulated by the end, four statewide tests I’ve had to pass, and about 40 separate observations of my work in the classroom. I think I can speak for everyone in this class of 2010 that we’re ready for school to let out at last!

Teachers live by a different work rhythm than most everybody else and the summers are an important time. We like to joke that it’s not the students that need a break, it’s the teachers. Summer is a time to think about how to do it better next year, to mentally and then on paper plan the improvements, to organize one’s thoughts, to do all the things that we couldn’t get to during the months of instruction. And, of course, to enjoy one’s own family, to have a barbecue, go to the pool, take a car trip — a great deal of things have been put off by the time June rolls around.

Teaching has changed who I am, a bit — I had an important meeting with my own children in the last couple of weeks, the gist of which was “if my class of second graders can pick up after themselves, why are you claiming you can’t?” We set up a new chore plan. The understanding of how important rules and procedures are to human well-being is reinforced in elementary school.

One our professors told us last week, “the job of the elementary teacher is to introduce the students to the wonder of the world, to make them see that our existence is full of mystery and excitement, and to begin to show them ways to explore it.” Yes! I thought. That is why I chose elementary — and when I think on my best moments from the past year, and my plans about next, that is what I want to focus on, opening doors to the world.

I was over at my mother’s for Easter and picked up a recent copy (okay, it was July 2009) edition of the Atlantic to find a new book review and personal essay piece by Sandra Lsing Loh called “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off!” What was this the author wanted to abandon? Marriage, it turns out. In a reflective essay considering four recently released books on marriage, the author suggests that we are now in a post-marriage society and the best thing would be to never get married at all, raising children in tribal family groups or giving them to the new breed of homemaker dads.

It took me aback — or perhaps, I should say, it took me back — right back to the 70′s. Only this time, men are not being castigated for being insensitive over-libidinized macho men, but instead, and I quote, “male kitchen bitches” who are too concerned with boulibaise (or however you spell it) and who, unbelievably, no longer want to have sex.

Maybe just not with the particular women they are married to, I would have to suggest to the author?

Okay, let’s get one thing straight here, Ms. Loh. You can bring forth these ideas of yours and act as if you’ve just hatch them onto the scene, but all this proves is that you did not read enough Doris Lessing in college. We are not brinking on a new age of marital enlightenment. These problems with marriage you have disclosed in your essay have been around a while, perhaps as long as three to five thousand years. People used to get around some parts of the problem with poligamy, but the problem was, this created large groups of men who had no spouse and a very acrimonious household without clear heirs; reference the story of King David in the Bible. It seems pretty clear that marriage is just plain hard. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t a lot of effort is put into trying to dampen the expected negative consequences, rarely with great success. A lot of people who get divorced wind up admitting ten years later it probably wasn’t the greatest idea; yet nevertheless new hordes of filing-for-divorcers show up daily.

Our own Tarrant county recently completed a huge new court building for “family court,” almost entirely to handle the legal fallout of divorces.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, although Loh’s essay is well written and well argued, I’m not buying her thesis for a second. And what’s more, I think the entire tone smacks of the kind of male-bashing I grew used to in college.

Just last night, perhaps ironically, I was teaching myself a new guitar song. I’m into folk and blues and country, and somehow, this song seemed to say a lot to me after reading that article. If this essay wasn’t good enough to elucidate the sentiments; perhaps Tammy Wynette can do a better job. And as she says, let’s please try to keep our expectations reasonable. “After all, he’s just a man.”

We went to San Francisco. First we got lost in the Twin Peaks area, then we went to Golden Gate Park, saw the Japanese Garden, the Fisherman’s Wharf, where we went on a tour of the U.S.S. Pampalino, a WWII submarine. Then we lost the car (or better to say, we forgot where we had parked it) and walked up Russian Hill twice looking for it. We stood with a map on a corner, looking perplexed, and friendly residents came up and asked if they could help, but it’s difficult to help someone remember where they parked their car. Finally, however, College Girl remembered that there was an elementary school a block up from where we parked, we told this to a boy about 15, who was doing skateboard tricks up and down a steep side street, and he pointed the way down Jones street. “I told you it wasn’t this high up,” she told me and I surrendered.

“You’re right, it’s a good thing I’ve got you along or I would have been hiring a cab to help me comb the streets to find my car.”

She smiled in triumph. She probably realized I’d been questioning her navigation skills this morning. The disagreement harks back to when we were traveling down Hayes toward Golden Gate Park, when for some reason she told me to go left on Divisadero, and that’s how we wound up first in the Castro district and then in Twin Peaks. We only skirted the Castro, so I did not see any young men with no shirts on, wearing chain harnesses, like I did last time I was in S.F. Or perhaps that style of dress is “out” now. What do I, the most casual of observers, know of any of this?

Anyway, after a tour of posh hill residents with Porsches in front, including those around Twin Peaks, the highest point in San Francisco (elevation 980) we found our way back — though I had to pull over three to four times for map conferences with College Girl. We saw the Japanese Tea Garden, the Academy of Sciences from the outside — it was $25 to get in per person so we skipped it. This was disappointing but there was so much else to see. I never did take them over the Golden Gate. We also ran out of time for the garment district. Maybe we should do that this morning.

College Girl reads this now and asserts, forcefully, “It was not my fault you got yourself lost. You got off the freeway and thought you could find it by yourself, I only started helping after you got lost.”

She reminds me of myself, somehow, of many years back, and I suddenly feel sympathetic for my husband, who probably had his navigation skills questioned in the same way . I am sorry, Dean, for being so smug. I promise to be more understanding in the future.

After watching College Girl pretty much take over the blog in the last two weeks, I have to try to assert my presence as someone who does more than takes fire for watching Shah Rukh Khan movies and being afraid of the plague. What I’d like to tell you is that the plague squirrel story wasn’t actually over this morning, because half of that animal was discovered in the middle of the yard, not far from the barbecue. Yes, it was the half that has the tail. The dogs, apparently unconcerned about the dangers of plague, rabies, or anything else (perhaps they know there’s antibiotics and that they’ve been vaccinated) apparently consumed the other half.

I carefully waited until College Girl came home from the store and then alerted her to the need for “clean up on aisle 7.” But when she got there, the squirrel wasn’t there. Apparently her 13 year old brother and his friend had tossed it over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. Or so she claimed. “Which neighbor?” I did not ask. I assume they meant the 90 year old lady with the forest in her huge back yard that runs all along our back fence. She never comes out, so there’s no danger of her getting the plague. Nevertheless, I did feel a little bit sheepish about the whole affair.

It’s all a sign of what I told an old friend the other day: when you live with other people, there’s bound to be some chaos.

Oh, and yeah, I saw that mug featured below the other day in Ross and had to buy it for College Girl as a gag gift. She accepted it graciously, as you see, which probably means she’s not really that bitter after all.

The Dallas Opera: February 12, 14, 18, 20, 26, & 28, 2010

Winspear Opera House

Review by Dean Cassella

This second production in the Dallas Opera’s first season in its new home was just what the doctor ordered, especially after the sumptuous and heavy fare served up with Verdi’s Otello at the season premiere.  Although one could certainly could not label Mozart’s last opera buffa collaboration with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte musically light, it does deliver laughs in some of the most sumptuous and delightful music that Mozart composed.

Originally set in eighteenth-century Naples, the plot centers around a case of deliberate mistaken identity between two pairs of lovers.  Two young men, Ferrando and Guglielmo are in the throes of young love with Fiordiligi and Dorabella.  A cynical old man, Don Alfonso, taunts them that it is impossible for women to remain faithful, should the men leave the scene for a while.  The resulting argument ends with a wager: Ferrando and Guglielmo will pretend to be called off for military duty, only to return in the guise of two Albanians and each actively try to court the other’s belle.

Jeffry Jones as Austrian Emperor Joseph II in the famous 1984 movie "Amadeus."

The opera was commissioned by none other than the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, best known in popular culture from the play/movie Amadeus.

This was Mozart’s third and last collaboration with Lorenzo da Ponte, a Venetian Jew who, as a child, converted to Christianity, took holy orders, and was eventually ran out of town for taking . . .liberties . . .with certain lady friends.  He then led a semi nomadic life, cutting a swath across Europe to London, and eventually settling in New York City as a greengrocer, and as the first professor of Italian at Columbia University (he also established the first Italian opera company in New York).  His collaborations with Mozart occurred early in his wanderings, when he was living in Vienna and trying to make his inroads in the Imperial court as a poet and librettist.  The story of Così was a allegedly based on a real incident that was making the rounds in Vienna at the time.

Last time around, the Winspear Opera House demonstrated marvelous acoustics with a full-sized late Romantic era orchestra.  The current production makes use of a comparatively tiny chamber orchestra, which poses a different set of resonance challenges.  I am delighted to report that the new opera house was able to handle these to remarkable effect.  Graeme Jenkin’s stately phrasing was carried with both a volume and a warmth that I have rarely heard in a full-size opera house.

Così is unusual in that there are only six roles which are very carefully balanced.  Soprano Elza van den Heever and mezzo-soprano Jennifer Holloway, as Fiordiligi and Dorabella respectively, have beautifully matched voices.  Miss van den Heever also displays considerable skills as an actress, and Miss Holloway, who graced the TDO stage last season with her interpretation of the love-sick Cherubino in La Nozze di Figaro, treated us to her wonderfully lilting vibrato.  Italian soprano Nuccia Focile sang a beautiful rendition of Despina, the cynical, deadpan maid who serves as a female counterpart to Don Alfonso, and who often reminds me of Alice Kramden on the Honeymooners.  Her petite stature helped to enrich the comic potential when she dresses up as a quack doctor and a notary during Act II.

The real star of this performance, though was the illustrious bass-baritone Sir Thomas Allen who, after almost 40 years on the boards of the worlds major opera houses, boasts a rich, powerful voice and a magisterial presence whenever he is on stage.  Tenor Brian Anderson as Ferrando, and baritone Michael Todd Simpson also did commendable jobs in their roles.

Robert Perdziola’s sets recast the time to around 1910.  The main set resembles an Egyptian-style casino, or hotel, lends itself to the time period it seeks to evoke.  I generally prefer sticking to the librettist’s original intentions, but the change in question does not seriously interfere with the work’s enjoyment in any way.

All in all, this is a fine production and one definitely worth seeing.

Next up: Donizetti’s Don Pasquale!

It’s been a long time since I’ve accepted that a lot of stuff happens to me that I don’t think should be happening. In writer’s group a couple of years back someone called me “the girl whose life was one long emergency,” but believe me, by then I was was slowing down and thinking things over before taking action. You’d have to go back when I was in my twenties to find me amidst a chaos that seemed to reign supreme. The phrase stuck with me, though for a while I couldn’t remember where it came from. I knew it was a song, just couldn’t remember which. But then just this morning I dragged it out again on YouTube, somehow, without even meaning to.

The original song is For You, by Bruce Springsteen. I don’t listen to Springsteen much nowadays — among other things, Dean hates him and always tells the most unflattering stories about The Boss’s personal life if he hears his music — but I have, always, had a soft spot the tunes nevertheless. I was listening to “For You” this morning before the boys left for school, and one of them asked

“What happened to his voice?”

“He’s from New Jersey.”

“Yeah but — that raspy sound. It’s horrible.”  And this wasn’t even the infamous rendition of “Santa Claus is coming to town.”

Well, you either like that voice or you don’t, you either accept his music style or you don’t. But what does the song mean? Looking at the words, they’re even less coherent than “How Does it Feel” by Bob Dylan but the overall sentiments are the same: there’s this girl, she’s messed up, she’s trouble, she doesn’t like the guy too much but he loves her anyway and he wrestles down his feelings of rejection by pointing out her vulnerabilities.  Some of the song is made of lyrics that Dean, the opera buff, would call “throwaway” such as “my electric surges free.” Now what does that mean? But other lines are pure genius. Even at the age of 15 I was struck by the image of the girl being carted off to Bellevue, which is the mental hospital, and the guy wanting to rescue her himself. It’s a repeated theme in literature, the story of the crazy girl.

I’m pretty sure I’m not as deranged as the original girl whose “life was one long emergency.” Nevertheless, I have felt that sense of continual emergency at times. I have overstated my own importance, too, I’m sorry to say. And overall, looking back, I feel a certain poignant sense of recognition when I hear this song.  There’s so much of youth and confusion and desperation in there, it makes it pretty nigh on to universal.

This appeared to be the tag on an email I received this afternoon. “Wow,” I thought, “after all this time, someone had finally found out God’s email address and is passing it around, perhaps with an admonition not to break the chain or you will be struck dead by lighting.” On closer inspection, the email turned out to be tagged “submit your questions for the Golden Globes” a much less interesting proposal, since I barely know what the Golden Globes are.

I was so disappointed. I do have a few questions to ask God about. Some of them, not surprisingly, I can’t publish. But I think I could come up with a few that aren’t too personal:

Dear God, why won’t you just let us reach our goals and have some peace?

Is it really fair that those we love are free not to care about us in the least?

Why are there so many bad people in the world, anyway?

I mean, couldn’t we have gotten by with only about half the current number?

Could you at least get rid of half the bad people in my life?

And finally, could you just put to bed the question about whether there are dogs in heaven or not?

How about you, readers? Do you believe God may have an email address somewhere? If he does, do you think he had it ten years ago, before everyone else, or do you think he was a late adopter? Do you have any questions you’d like to ask God? If you do, would you dare to put them in the comments below?

After a two-week break, it’s back to work this morning for teachers all over the country, including me.

For better or worse, I was not able to let go of thinking about the classroom while I was off. I spent much of my “vacation” doing planning activities, including doing careful lesson plans, diagramming a rearrangement of my classroom, reading books on teaching, upgrading filing and paper organization systems, and  making a stoplight out of construction paper (it’s to communicate noise level expectations in the classroom as they change from red: “silent — testing” to yellow “whispering only” to green: “normal voices and discussion.”)

Am I excited? Of course. And worried. The first year of teaching is a challenge, which, back in the summer, I was warned about by a lot of people.  I tend to assume that if one person tells you something, you can take it with a grain of salt, but if a dozen people give you the same caution, you probably need to listen carefully. It is hard to be a first year teacher, I will not deny that.

I now know a few things. I know that I love teaching. And that I can go to work without my household collapsing into itself. Those are good things. But there is always much more to learn. I have really only barely scratched the surface of what I want to learn about kids and teaching. The only way to find out the answers to many questions is to get out there are see. So this morning, I’ll go back to the school and start to discover more.