Hey, Diogenes! I got one right here!!

For the first time in a number of years I get to spend Father’s Day with my father, Ken Leistler. Now I know practically everyone else feels they might have a monopoly on “the best dad,” but I want to cast a vote for my father as an admirable and good man.

I mentioned to him that I was going to write a blog post about him, and he said with characteristic modesty and charm, "Now don't go on and on like you usually do."  'Nuff said. I will be brief!

I have extolled his salt-of-the-earth and straightforward virtues before, but I want to highlight just a few qualities I most admire about him in an otherwise short-but-sweet blog post.

Diogenes, the ancient Greek philosopher, spent a lifetime in search of honesty and concluded that an honest man could not be found.  Of all my father’s traits, I may be most in awe of his honesty and integrity. My father has said that “honesty is not the best policy—it is the only policy.” There are countless paintings of Diogenes with his lantern searching for that elusive honest man. Here he is, buddy.

The other night my dad and I were out to dinner with two of my cousins and their wives. As we talked about various things over the course of the evening, one cousin’s wife leaned in to me and remarked quietly, “You know Kathi and I have talked from time to time about how your father loved your mother. We could only wish to be loved in the same way,” she marveled. I know that those cousins are indeed loving husbands, but I treasured how their wives looked at my father and his capacity to love in a very special way.

Look up at the photo from around 1971—I am now 10 years older than my father was in that photo, but I don’t know if I could ever master many of the things he has in his lifetime.

Finally, if you were to look through my Bible, there is an old bulletin saved from a church service in New York from about a decade ago. The sermon title from that day reads “The Grip Of A Loving God,” and I saved it in large part because the sermon title reminded me of my father and his relationship with those for whom he has cared and protected. There has always been a strength about him, and always a tenderness in his love for his family. I have been in the grip of this loving man's arms for fifty years.

Brevity--nice to meet you!  Happy Father's Day...

 

 

Shadows

“What do you see?” is almost always the first question I ask when I show an art work to a class.

With this unusual art work from the year 2000 by a British husband-and-wife team, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, it’s hard to even know what you are seeing!

“What do you see?” So as I showed this work to my class on the second-to-last day of AP Art History I got several responses: “Is that a pile of animals?” and then, “Are those people on the wall?” and then, “Is that a naked woman?” Of course pragmatic Sara kept asking, “What kind of an art work is this??? Are they real animals?”

This is a work I never knew about until poking around on the internet for some new art works to teach at the completion of the 5,000 years of art history. This work intrigued me…I’m still not quite sure what to even call it, an installation??

But since pragmatic Sara looked suspicious, let’s look at what this work is and try and figure out something about it. Officially, we have a pile of 88 stuffed animals and a projector throwing a shadow on a wall of the pile of animals. Art???

The little-kid in all of us is eager to learn if the animals are real. Yes, they are real stuffed animals. The artist Tim’s father was a huntsman and he killed and stuffed the animals. When his father died, Tim and Sue created this piece, called British Wildlife as a tribute to him.

What more do you need to know to make sense of this art work???  That is the question I ask once we have kind-of established what we see. Sooooo….what more do you need to know?

Rami asked, “What is up with the people on the wall?” Tim and Sue assembled this pile of stuffed animals, turned on a projector, and the shadows on the wall are self-portraits of Tim and Sue, backs to one another but seemingly joined together.

Zein asked why they made a pile of stuffed animals. Sure, they could have displayed them in a traditional way, but you’d need lots of space for 88 stuffed animals, and actually Tim thought it was like a memory of his childhood, and he wanted something other than simple hunting trophies. Piled up like this they create a single image, a summary of the past.

Farouk, the young man who loved the theme of the reclining female nude throughout the history of art, reminded us that the woman is naked. Yes, Farouk, and this work is all about nature in its wild state, so I guess clothes seem unnecessary. Actually, both Tim and are naked, just like the animals.

Mohammad wondered about these “shadow puppets” and how they figured out how the shadows would work. He said several times, “Where are Tim and Sue?” Of course, Tim and Sue are not there at all. When we see their shadows, we think Tim and Sue must be there, but in fact it’s the pile of animals lit by a projector that throws their silhouette on to the wall. Natasha looked at this wonder and said, “Even when you know that’s the case it’s hard to believe there’s no apparent link between the two things. Normally our shadow follows us around, but here Tim’s and Sue’s have taken on a life of their own.”

In the other class Yasmine mentioned that this is a “three-dimensional take-off on the old theme of a still life painting.” She was quite proud of her pronouncement and she and her friend Gheya commented that this pile of animals is not about the scientific view of animals, and they decided that this work is about the element of surprise.

Then Sammy, after stroking his chin in a rather scholar-like gesture, wondered if the theme of the work is not about contemplating appearance and reality, the contradiction of what we accumulate and the effects they produce. Yanbo, still trying to decide if this is a sculpture or what, is caught between the decision that this is a pile of animals or a double-portrait, or both. Fawzi mediates and suggests that both points of view are right, reminding us “that no one has a monopoly on truth.”

Farah, one of our philosophers in the class, wonders if this a symbol of the eternal link between animals and people—then her eyes dance as she says, “Maybe it’s a reminder of the beast in all of us and the humanity in all of us.” Youssef wonders if the double-portrait is also an allusion to Adam and Eve—and being driven out of paradise.

Rami, looking forward to reading The Republic this summer on the suggestion of art history alum Talal, gets excited as he announces that this is a little like the cave allegory Plato writes about. We discuss that story, one of the most important allegories in the western canon, and how Plato explains that men are like prisoners chained up in a cave with their backs to the entrance. All they can see of the world is the shadows thrown on to the back wall of the cave. As humans, we are prisoners of our senses and our view of the world is not truth, but an illusion. The class debates how British Wildlife plays with the same theme by presenting an actual fact of the group of stuffed animals and the illusion of the couple we think we can see. And we wonder if we can ever not be deceived by appearances.

Let’s look back to the photographs taken by thousands of families of the last month. May and June are months full of graduations. You can’t scroll down very far in Facebook postings without coming across cap and gown photos, caps in the air, smiles blazoned across serene and exuberant faces, hugs from family members and wishes for a happy life. Two weeks ago I marched in yet another graduation...as a teacher I have marched in 26 graduation ceremonies, posed in photos with happy grads dozens of times, and bid farewell to yet another group of interesting, earnest, naïve, determined seniors. I have a great photo from the KA graduation as Queen Rania spoke to the senior class as they listened intently to her words of wisdom of never forsaking kindness. Then the photo op of photo ops came: hats aloft and frozen in time for all time.

Those graduation photos are summaries of our past. But one of the things I always remember to do is to look past the “borders” of the photos, look past the appearances of happiness and ease of graduation, and look at what shadows are thrown on the wall from these accomplishments. There is usually heartache and down days. There is usually frustration and failure.  In the shadows of these awesome graduations there is usually an admixture of terror and joy, unease and patience, impatience and delight. We need to be mindful of all of these as we enjoy the appearances of graduations.

What shadows will be reflected from today’s pile of stuff? What else do we see? What is the truth of this moment in time? As I look back on the 2013-14 school year, I see a pile of graded tests and essays, sweaty palms trying to make it through some tough moments, and I also have a wonderful “shadow,” a gift from my student Daniel.

In the last week of the course Daniel decided to write a journal sheet with many of his favorite moments of the year. He decided his favorite word of the year was a word he coined, a word he calls, ‘Leistlerism.’ Let me quote Daniel:

Vocabulary Word of the Year:

            Leistlerism, inspiration through the exploitation, in a good way, of curiosity. All art falls under the Leistlerism movement. All art devours our attention, digests us to wonder, and spits us back out, humbled. Without our curiosity the world would not be more than lines and piles of rocks. It is in honor of Mr. John, his beast of an Art History class, that I may summarize all art under one ism dedicated to him, to pay homage to the knowledge he has gifted me, the limits his class has aided me in abolishing, the new questions that have been implanted, and the new prospective and understanding of the World Mr. John has granted me. While it may not seem more than words, for me, and I too believe that for Mr. John, words are the greatest gift humanity has been granted, this ism which I dedicate to Mr. John is a thank you for the interest he took in me, when I was undecided about taking his class, throughout the course, and now at the overwhelming finale. Thank you Mr. John for the understanding you have given me and the opportunity to express myself, which I may sometimes have abused, through these Journal Sheets.

Look for the shadows that enrich and burnish these celebrations of life!

 

 

And now...turn around...

 

A week ago at this time I was on a plane wending my way back to the United States for summer vacation. That flight is the only flight of the entire school year when I can take the long view and see the entire school year for what it has been. Not until the very last moment of the school year has ended can I see what the year has actually been—the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful. I fly for thousands of miles and can take it all in.

 

This year was a calm and steady year, maybe the calmest and most stable in the seven years in the history of the school. However, in the last couple weeks, there were some incidences that showed that even in the calmest year, one can still be surprised at the end.

You must always expect the unexpected in a school. One can never just coast to the end. On Graduation Day, that wonderful and bittersweet day when you bid farewell to the seniors, a group (hopefully a small group) trashed the office of my friend the Dean of Students. Julianne works tirelessly for the students, and on that last day, some group deemed it important to leave a good-bye that was nasty and immature. No matter how long you ponder and anticipate the road of the year, I didn’t see that coming. That sounds like the work of the seniors of the first year of the school, not this last class. And then as final exams got underway, a student exposed a cheating scandal on the math exams that revealed that a large group of boys had stolen some math exams and disseminated them. The Office of Student Life spent hours unravelling this mess, and in spite of the warnings and the teachings for so long all year about academic honesty and academic dishonesty, as we turned the corner at the end of the year, a sizable group of boys found themselves in a mess and disabused the teachings and exhortations about integrity.

Of course, these little bubbles (what else should one call them??) do not diminish an otherwise productive, healthy, positive, fulfilling, progressive school year. But it does remind one to be ready to turn and see something unexpected.

All of this reminds me of an artwork I taught for the first time in the closing days of the AP Art History course. I discovered a recent statue by a Spanish artist that proved to be an exciting statue at the end of our course and the continuum of thousands of years of art images. Look at the photo above. Take a moment to process and guess and speculate what this art work is about. The museum in London that owns this piece showcases it in a very unique and interesting way. You walk into a long, narrow room, and there is this one art work, a statue, as I said, but having his back turned to us. Of course most of the time statues face their public. Hmmm…for some reason this person is not interested in anyone or he has his back to us on purpose. The title of Maurizio Cattelan’s statue is Him, so we get the idea it is a male.

I told the class how big the statue was—about four feet tall. When I asked my class what they saw, a student said it must be a little boy. Several of them tried to guess who or what he was. From the looks of seemingly real clothes and shoes my class thought it was meant to look like a real person. “What is he doing?” asked a student and another answered, “He’s on his knees with his hands linked and he is looking at the sky. Is he praying?” The position of the body gives us an idea but it doesn’t necessarily tell us what he’s thinking.

The class enjoyed guessing what was going on—several assumed that Cattelan wants us to think it’s a real person—“Í bet they want us to stumble upon this figure in the museum and assume he is real. The clothes look real.” My savvy students decided that Cattelan was sculpting like the Duane Hanson statues of the last 30-40 years that look like real people—not any of this marble or clay or bronze business of the old days of statues.

So after we had speculated about the statue, knowing the name of the statue, guessing about the size (since all slides show art works the same size, I told them that the size is the size of a normal 10 year-old boy) and what he might be doing, I showed a photograph of the statue from the front. Guess what? I got gasps in class! Gasps are always fun because they are caught off guard enough to really have that startling inhalation of air!  Okay, cyber-class: go to Google Images right now and look up Maurizio Cattelan's statue of Him. Do it now!!

The class loved thinking about why the museum would not have the face visible from the front from the get-go. They realized that the surprise element was a big part of the experience of seeing this statue for the first time. After his gasp, Mohammad exclaimed, “It’s Adolf Hitler!” The students went from trying to piece together enough information to make a credible guess about the identity to a ton of historical information about the subject.

I reviewed for the class—just in case they had not had a strong enough World History class—that Hitler had seized power (legally, I reminded them!) in Germany in 1933 and then propelled Germany into another world war while at the same time deporting, imprisoning, torturing and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. They took all this ready historical information and looked at what Cattelan hoped to communicate in his statue. Sara asked, “Why not have the face visible from the start? It is one of the most instantly recognized faces in history?” Zein, very bright Zein, answered: “But this way you have to actually go up to him, walk around him, and only then do you know who he is. It’s a shock when you recognize him because nothing about the figure prepared you for who it is.” As we looked at the statue, realizing it is a waxwork in real clothes, Farouk asked, “So why is he the size of a little boy?” Natasha smiled widely and said, “I think it is a little like Surrealism in that part of the work is the surprise. It is disconcerting to think it is a little boy praying, and then you realize it is Hitler, one of the most evil men in history.”

I asked the class, “So you give one whole room of the museum to this disconcerting statue. Does this glorify Hitler? Celebrate this hateful and cruel man?” We thought about the history of statuary—from ancient governors beseeching the gods for help, to the Greek statues of idealized young men, to Michelangelo’s David to the strong and stoic Burghers of Calais by Rodin. “This is an odd statue in the history of art, isn’t it? Artists usually make statues of people they admire. Why, in the new 21^st century might Cattelan have made this??”

The class mulled this over, reminding themselves that usually cities and towns and countries pull down statues of controversial and hated leaders. Then Bryan, another excellent historian, commented, “Maybe the statue is meant to remind us to be vigilant, to show us what we need to be wary of.” Rami thought it had a strange connection to images of Satan in Bosch paintings or other medieval works. Bryan continued, “When we look at this, and instantly know who it is, it reminds us of the atrocities of the Nazi era.”

In my other class Eun wondered, “Why is he the size of a child but with the adult Hitler’s face?” The class debated several interesting answers—knowing that there might be more than one right answer—the best art works allow for multiple interpretations. Halima said we never think of Hitler as a child, and then Farah added, “and when does one go from the innocence of childhood to the barbarity of Nazi atrocities?” Heidi wondered if this was meant to allude to the young children indoctrinated by the Hitler youth programs. Fawzi put his two cents in: “Don’t forget that to many Germans Hitler was a great man, avenging their honor after the devastation of World War I.”

More than one student wondered why Hitler’s name is not in the title. Sammy, one of the great ‘concluders’ of all time deemed that by calling it Him it sounds like an accusation, like someone is pointing at him, and being incapable of knowing how to sum up the totality of Hitler. Don’t you just love these guys??? I mean, all you have to do, it seems, is throw a slide on the wall, and my class just takes off!

Heidi brought us back to the position of Cattelan’s statue of Hitler. Heidi decides that the statue is Cattelan’s way of telling the end of the story of World War II: “Cattelan puts Hitler on his knees, where he will forever be praying in penitence.” 

The statue works because it inspired thought and conversation. You walk up to it in this long, narrow room, thinking you have figured it out, and then you turn around, and get a surprise, at first a seemingly offensive surprise, but then perhaps a deeper, profound reconciliation of childhood innocence and the consequences of our actions.

So I can turn around now and look at the school year with clear eyes. It was an excellent year. There were some bumps at the end of the journey. We will never know which seniors cruelly mocked and trashed a dedicated educator’s office. But the cheating scandal ended with some withdrawals from the school and suspensions. More than parent thought that was a harsh consequence to the innocence and naivete of youth. Or maybe they have learned a valuable lesson about the consequences for their actions.

But, just like with Him you come to a point when you walk the long journey and then you get to turn around and see what you have. There may be a surprise, there may be reconciliation, but part of the fun of the journey is imagining the next step, the unexpected step, in the journey. I have two more blog posts to write in the next couple days before I take my summer blog vacation.  

 

Death Be Not Proud

 

Way back at Westwood School in Mrs. Dorsey’s 6^th grade Language Arts class, we read John Gunther’s poignant book about his son Johnny’s illness and death at age 17. I still remember the effect that Death Be Not Proud had on me. It must have been a curious thing to teach about death to 12-year olds. But I remember that it was not a morbid or scary experience, rather, we talked in class about how suffering is a part of life, and all too often wonderful people are taken long before “their time.”

A week ago on Friday, via Facebook, I read the news that John David Charles Thornton had died in Indianapolis, after his long bout with cancer. Dave had been in that 6^th grade class with me. Tears filled my eyes as I thought of this childhood friend. Images from my childhood careened through my brain, and I remembered exploring Death Be Not Proud with Dave in my reading group. But it was more than just this 6^th grade class that came back to me—David and I had gone through every single grade together from Kindergarten to senior year of high school. From 1969 to 1982, Dave and I had shared every school day together!

As I thought of childhood birthday parties at his house, and Cub Scout outings, and high school performances with Studio Choir, and our meetings with our beloved Pickwick Club in our senior year,  I kept coming back to the messages of that book we read long ago in 6^th grade, Death Be Not Proud. In the book we learn that Johnny Gunther was only seventeen years old when he died of a brain tumor. During the months of his illness, everyone near him was unforgettably impressed by his level-headed courage, his wit and quiet friendliness, and, above all, his unfaltering patience through times of despair (wow—just like David). The book is about his illness, of course, but ultimately about embracing life and loving life.

Dave Thornton loved life. In the last few years—joined again because of the miracle of Facebook—we would meet for lunch or dinner and talk about our lives, our growing up years in Westwood, and most importantly how we loved teaching. When Facebook reunited us in 2009, we were in our mid-40s, not having seen each other in over 25 years. I loved learning about Dave at these quick lunches over Skyline Chili, hearing about his work at the same high school for 20 years, coaching, working with musical groups, and finally, how he found the love of his life and enjoyed his two little girls. Dave had carved out the kind of niche in life we all seek—happiness, fulfillment, challenges, and love.

So in these days since the announcement of Dave’s far-too-early death, I have thought about how our paths crossed in our lives. While Dave was always smart, he was not always compliant, and I remember several examples in our childhood of a teacher’s exasperation with him. In 1^st grade, with Mrs. Drummer, once in awhile she would say his whole name, slowly, her voice rising in frustration with each syllable: “John David Charles Thornton!!” In 4^th grade, in Mrs. Greer’s math class, Dave decided to throw a desk out of the second floor window to see what happened. Again, the halls of Westwood reverberated with his name! This, in retrospect, might have been one of the first public examples of his brawn as well.

David and I ended up in the same classes year after year. We moved through Gamble Junior High together, and his house was just a minute or so walk from school and we could go there and watch Batman. David began spending more time with the football team as I spent time on music, but we were never far from a class together. In high school, David joined Studio Choir, and then in our senior year, Mrs. Michaels chose us both to be in her exclusive Dickens class. We read The Pickwick Papers first and Mrs. Michaels asked us to choose a character with whom we identified. David chose “Nathaniel Winkle,” a young friend of Mr. Pickwick, someone who considers himself a sportsman, though he turns out to be dangerously inept when handling horses and guns. This was a perfect fit for Dave since in real life he was the best athlete in the school, excelling at every sport. Indeed, on Class Day, Dave would be chosen the Best All-Around Boy in the school (look up to the photo to see that selection for the Class of 1982!).

Our good friend Dawn invited us out to lunch last summer—we three had not been together in (gulp!) 30 years and it was a long overdue lunch to catch up with all of us together. When I announced plans for this spring break, Dawn quickly secured a night when all three of us could meet again and enjoy each other. By that time Dawn and I had realized that the cancer had returned for David, and while he did not dwell on it, we talked about his health issues and he assured us he was doing all right. We three each drove about 50 miles and met in a charming old inn in Batesville, Indiana. Again, we laughed as talked about old times, our teachers, and where life had taken us. We planned to meet again this June for another dinner. I had no idea that that sweet night in March would be the last time I saw my childhood friend.

Dave’s wife started a blog to relay the current situation about Dave’s sickness. She talked of the ups and downs, and how he had wanted to be there on the day his students took their AP exam. He was indeed there, cheering them on, and died soon after that milestone.

As I looked back over my childhood and youth with David, I kept coming back to that book we read in Mrs. Dorsey’s class. I have no idea if in the 6^th grade we looked at the John Donne poem upon which the Gunther book title is based, but I checked it out on-line to give it a ponder. Here are the 17^th century words that Englishman John Donne penned about the Goliath of Death:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and souls deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more, death thou shalt die!

 

From the get-go the speaker starts talking smack to Death. Death isn't so scary! Then he calls Death a "slave" and weak and defeat-able. Yeah, Death--take that! It is strange thinking how death comes, like a thief in the night, and spirited away this brave, intelligent and vibrant friend. As in Gunther's book, our confusion might lead to epiphanies about beliefs in larger purposes, and indeed, this poem asks us to look at the harrowing episode of death to make us perhaps finer, subtler, and more sensitive about life.

 

We know Death will win, but Death need not be proud. David fought a valiant fight; and, along the way, he gained even deeper respect from his family, friends, his students, his colleagues, and no doubt his doctors, and perhaps strangers.

David’s wife wrote in her blog that David was often able to function at a level that could almost be called “normal,” but no matter what new treatments they tried, they couldn't find a cure. The struggle against death is a fight against the void, against the loss of life—the spark. It is, as Gunther says in his memoir of Johnny:  “A primitive to-the-death struggle of reason against violence, reason against disruption, reason against brute unthinking force--this was what went on in Johnny's head. What he was fighting against was the ruthless assault of chaos. What he was fighting for, as it were, the life of the human mind.”

What I remember from our 6^th grade discussions is that we must love life more, be more aware of life, of one’s fellow human beings, of the earth.  Those are wonderful thoughts for 12 year-olds and anyone else traipsing around the planet. As I thought of these words from over 35 years ago, I thought back to David’s fulfilled life, and how my grief was not about metaphysical issues, universal laws, or deities, but that David would no longer be here on earth to enjoy the blessings on earth.

I went through school from Kindergarten through 12^th grade with two friends: David Thornton and Kathy Gardner. We were friends in Mrs. Gardner’s kindergarten class, and friends through senior year at Western Hills High School. I haven’t seen Kathy since graduation in 1982—this is a good summer to find her again, talk about our growing up, the wonder we enjoyed in Westwood School, the tumult of junior high, the coming-of-age in high school. We should toast our good buddy David, thank the stars that we had an idyllic childhood, and that we had friends to know us since our childhood. David’s courageous battle will not soon be forgotten, and I will curate our memories of boyhood. The Pickwick Club is missing its audacious and tender-hearted sportsman!

Mustard seeds anyone???

Yesterday was Mother’s Day in the United States (in Jordan, their Mother’s Day is actually the first day of spring—kinda nice, don’t you think?) and so while it was quite obvious it was American Mother’s Day when I made a visit to Facebook, otherwise, it was a regular Sunday—a regular school day here, and kinda easy to forget about the day and moms celebrated back home in the U.S. of A. This is now the 8^th Mother’s Day since my mother, the incomparable Mary Martha Griley Leistler, departed this earth. At one point during the day, I wondered exactly what one does on Mother’s Day without a mother. I don’t mean that at all as maudlin as that sounds, but, here in Jordan, thousands of miles from anyone who knew “MM” it vexed my mind what one should do…raise an imaginary glass and offer a toast?

So at the end of the day, looking at the beautiful Facebook tributes of friends to their mothers, enjoying a poignant memory of my mother, I looked back on how I had spent the day.

 

As I said, just a regular day, albeit, a gorgeous spring day, chilly even (MM would have thought it freezing!) and the start of my post-AP test Curatorial Art projects in AP Art History class.  One student offered a show about art works that allow us an opportunity to think and project into the future. One student asked us to put on masks, read the Dunbar poem about masks, and took us on a tour of art works that are mask-like, urging us to finally imagine the concealed features of our un-masked selves. Another student’s show, entitled, “They’d Rather Die!” juxtaposed art works of people/regions that despised each other, and how seeing the art works side-by-side reminded us of their original historical feuding context. A last student asked each of us to take off our school tie, blindfold ourselves…then asked us to put our hands in various bowls she passed around. One felt like flour, one smelled of cocoa, and ewww, one felt like brownie batter. She then asked us to eat a finished brownie and imagine all the ingredients working together. Her artworks begged us to look past the finished art work and ponder the ingredients and process that went into the creation of each work.

 

Later in the day a colleague passed by my office. We had had an argument the other day and she had stormed out. The colleague came by, asking to talk, to reconcile, and asked sincerely that we try and figure out and understand each other better.

 

Mid-day I sat and enjoyed the Fourth Annual Faculty Arabic Play—do you need to ask why I did not volunteer???  As a non-scholar in Arabic, I wanted to sit and enjoy colleague Lina’s ingenious writing, the funny scenes of a “My Big Fat Jordanian Wedding” takeoff, complete with a real month-old baby, the new daughter Jeeda of dear colleague Ruba. Author Lina topped herself from last year, and cleverly included filmed cameo appearances from about a dozen former faculty who now live back in the US, and wanted to be a part of this fun event speaking Arabic.

 

All week we get to have Advisor Lunch (usually just twice a week) as we march toward Commencement, the farewells to seniors, and the end of another year. We laughed and enjoyed our advisory group.

 

After school I made sure to call some of the women in my life from my other school eras who have acted as surrogate mothers to me. I called “Cookie”—perhaps the most articulate friend I have ever known, and a Southern Belle that has always been congenial and warm and wickedly smart and observant.  I called Grace, the receptionist at Charlotte Latin, who has blessed my life for nearly 25 years with friendship, strength, and a loving heart. I jotted notes to Anne and Judy, friends who transcend mere geography, and also called my sister, my sister and a mother to my favorite niece and nephew.

 

Soon after I went with Moamer and John Wolff on another of our “science experiments,” i.e. gathering data on where the best burger is in Amman. I chose the Double Onion for this experiment at my favorite “lab,” a.k.a. The Burger Shack.

When we came back I decided to spend some time checking in on students in various dorms, seeing how their progress continued for today’s AP exams, hoping they had had a good day.

 

As I looked at the sweet pronouncements of love for mothers on Facebook, I thought again about how I might have spent Mother’s Day honoring My Best Girl. Hey, wait a minute—let’s look at the day…this was a pretty good day. The day involved realizing how beautiful this Sunday morning was, how blessed how I felt all day to work in a school with colleagues who practice and embody civility, reconciliation, humor, and graciousness. I witnessed exciting creativity in my students. I laughed at an inventive and fun theater piece. I enjoyed a table-ful of laughing, kind advisees. I talked on the phone about memories and love. I went out to eat! I visited people, made and strengthened connections, and savored my day. 

Hmmmmm….without being really cognizant about it, maybe I honored Mary Martha Griley Leistler in the very best possible way! I lived a day that she would have treasured and loved! I felt blessed! I knowingly savored the exchanges and encounters of a regular day. MMGL never lived anywhere but ordinary Cincinnati, Ohio. However, what I learned from her from, wow, maybe infancy, was that one could take an ordinary day, in an ordinary place, and make it extraordinary. A bright smile started it off. Talking to people. Reveling in creative thought, gracious company, telling people you loved them…any day and any moment with her felt vibrant and worth living and cherishing. I had lived an MM day just because.

 

Of course remembering MM usually includes remembering the MS that challenged her body (but never her psyche!). By no means is that MS her identity, it simply was there, degenerating nerves, but never diminishing hope or the fun of being alive. MM loved the New Testament story about the mustard seed. Two times in the New Testament, Jesus discusses the power of the tiny, tiny, mustard seed. In one of my mother’s favorite biblical passages, Jesus says, “If you have the faith of the mustard seed…nothing is impossible for you.” She loved that imagery and told people often that it only took a mustard seed-size of faith to remove huge barriers such as mountains—nothing would be impossible for you.

 

Of course I occasionally wondered how and why she could maintain her sunny disposition and feelings of wonder about the beauty of life as she suffered with the MS. Cynics would probably demand to know why couldn’t her faith remove the barrier of MS???

But instead of self-pity (She never had time for that! She had parties to plan, connections to sodder, souls to reconcile, creativity to spin, and restaurants and loved ones to visit!!!) she went back to the mustard seed, knowing full well that it was not about the obvious mighty barriers that we might lose—she focused on the Mustard Plant! She was not exactly a botanist, but to hear her tell it, the mustard plant grows to a remarkable size in comparison to the original mustard seed. MM always loved contests, and especially loved winning them (my father would remind us that she was used to winning!). Maybe her lifelong desire was to grow the biggest Mustard Plant ever, the biggest Mustard Plant representing her faith in the beauty of life, the warmth of humanity, and her faith that a day held so many wondrous possibilities of transformation and joy.

 

It was a good Mother’s Day. Just thinking how she would have written, or spoken about, or waxed poetic about her day and her connections, it was a beautiful and appropriate honor to her life’s work. By the way, that old photo at the top of the blog entry? There we are, together, Mother's Day,exactly 50 years ago!

 

I know she is evaluating that statement in Matthew 13:31, “The kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed.”  Preach, MM!

 

 

 

For Seeing Out Loud

I gnash my teeth when I feel myself starting a blog entry with, “It was a crazy week…” because that just sounds like a big, silly, bourgeois excuse for not writing an entry earlier! In my head, I had started four different blog entries, and none came to pass. And not because it was a particularly crazy week. But I did go to the hospital. That part is actually among the more mild-mannered features of the week. I’ll get to it.

 

The big news this week is that it was the AP Test Day week. All year long, the countdown is on. From the first day of class, until the end of the 136^th class day, the sands in the proverbial watched hourglass move oh so quickly and quixotically . I usually sing the song from Mame, “It’s Today!” on the day of the test. I have learned from years and years that review should be done in the evenings and that learning, the building of momentum of something new and exciting, should continue up until about 48 hours before the test.

 

This year I wanted to try out a few new art works and see how they flew as we came up to the end of the course. I had more 21^st century art works than ever before, and they will get their own blog entries soon. But one piece that had more “bite” than I thought (pun intended, you’ll see why…) came from the above piece by Rene Magritte, the 20^th century Surrealist who is always a big hit. Later in his career, 50 years ago exactly, Magritte painted this piece he entitled, Son of Man. Take a look at it.

 

I had already taught a half dozen of Magritte’s works, oh, and they are always fun, and slick and a kick to try and figure out. As I taught this one for the first time this year, I asked the most obvious question one should ask about art: what do you see? Daniel, always a particularly observant young man, said, “I see this disquieting apple.” I asked why he thought it was disquieting, and he responded that that was what all the Surrealists wanted from their art. I asked the class about the title of the work, and Rami, ever quick to jump on symbols and names, said, “It should be about Jesus, since he is the Son of Man and the Son of God, or maybe Adam as the first Man. And there is the apple so I say Adam.”  I let them simmer and look at it a little longer, and finally, asked, “It isn’t as simple as the name suggests, right?” As they stared at this utterly simple and straightforward work, and yes, disquieting apple, I asked, “What do you want to do with the painting?”  Farouk, not my most vocal student, but reliable, and good, and hard-working, he said calmly, “I want to move the apple!” A couple people laughed, but more nodded, and Sara said, “Yes, I want to see who is there!” As they looked more at the same unchanging work, Ward finally said, “Even if we see the man, we can never know his true form.” The conversation continued from the classroom to their weekly journal sheets: “Surrealist art commonly encompasses the concept as seeing through the veil of illusion, and to be able to distinguish what is valid and what is a lie.  In, Magritte’s “Son of Man” a mystery man is concealed behind an apple which may lead many uneducated art historians to infer that man to be Adam or Jesus. Ward said “No!,” Magritte’s intent of the painting was to allow us to see beyond what we believe.”

In the next class, I began the same way. I wondered if anyone would have the same great Farouk-like visceral reaction. Sure enough, someone did. I asked, “What do you want to do with this painting?” The kind, sweet, and intellectually sharp Heidi, practically bared her claws as she answered, “You want to take the apple out of his face!”

Later in her journal sheet, Heidi wrote: “I look at it and I want to do everything in my power to get the apple away from the man's face. I saw it for the first time and was thinking, “Come on Magritte, you've got to be kidding.” Okay maybe not exactly that reaction, but after a couple seconds of staring at it I really wanted to see the man's face. I think that's what makes surrealism so interesting – it's kind of annoying and hits you right between the eyes in a way you really don't want it to. Even Meret Oppenheim's "Breakfast in Fur" is like this, very disquieting and weird and after awhile you want to keep looking at it and stop looking at it at the same time. But I really like how Magritte uses the disquieting nature of his art to make us think: did Adam only give us sin or did he give us curiosity too? Can there be good and bad in the same thing?

And there we have the comments that keep me in this business for years and years…instead of this just being a joke-y painting, Heidi wonders what the Son of Man bequeaths to us: is it the curiosity to want to move the apple??

Another student responded in writing in this way about the same work: “How could it be so simple? I thought that if an artwork could ever come to define humanity it would be grand, complex, and perhaps indecipherable, as Human Nature seems to be. We may not be so complex after all, or it may be our essential simplicity which makes us unique. I could not agree more with Rene Magritte, the essence of humanity is curiosity, as his Son of Man, 1964 implies. When I first saw the painting I was consigned to see the apple, I cannot move it, it’s a painting, the thought did not even cross my mind, maybe it did my unconscious mind. Ignorance, leading to conformity, could also be said to be part of what makes us human. After Farouk said his comment about wanting to move the apple, the realization flooded me. I did not desire to move the apple, for I may be afraid to see the reality of man….The fact that Mr. John told us that behind the apple is Magritte’s self-portrait, is an assumption I take to be true, yet question. It is almost as if learning in his class would be incomplete if he hadn’t, it is almost essential to have an assumption. I wonder if Magritte actually painted anything behind the apple and covered it, knowing he had unlocked humanity and had chosen to enclose its secret again while at the same time revealing its essence. I wonder if Magritte had to say that it was a self-portrait or some spectator would see the art work and be driven mad by the question.”

And yet another student writes about Heidi’s comment that “people want to take the apple away from his face.” An apple right in front of a face is more unnatural than on a hand, and the unusual makes the painting attractive and thought-provoking. As Adam is saddled with sin, what about this man in the suit? What is behind the apple, an ugly and evil face that is extremely non-human? People will get their own answers. When you first said that he could have simply painted the apple next to him, or even in his hand one name kept flashing in my mind like the lights of a car traveling down the highway in solitude at one am with no lights around it. The sirens rang in my mind like a huge fire truck announcing the emergency to the world. And as these two automobiles collided the small letters began to appear, and my mind focused on the letters lost in this scene of chaotic overturn. Have I build up the suspense? I think so, and so I will reveal the artist who has done just what we wanted, and what we willed Magritte to do, Gauguin. His face alike a Japanese painting looked lost in aukiyo-e a floating world. The red rages against his face, as a gold halo floats above him, crowning him with divinity. And yes, a lush apple he holds in his hand, whilst a snake lurks near by. The painting, as Magritte's screams Adam and Eve. I feel as though both paintings are trying to explore what sin is. After all Gauguin abandoned his family to live with several women in an unknown exotic part of Africa. What is sin? What is curiosity? Is it wrong to question authority? And although Milgrim surely thinks that in cases of violence authority must be questioned, according to the story of Adam and Eve authority should not be questioned, yet followed. I don't feel like Magritte is saying that we shouldn't follow authority and what rules they set, yet I believe he comments on the fact that we should question why they put those rules and to what extent get protect and help us. What I absolutely love about this piece is that it shows the continuity and transformation of perspective, all the way from Van Gogh and Cezanne who tried to paint all sides at once to Picasso and eventually to Magritte himself.

And I keep reading these intriguing journal sheets all coming out of this painting and class discussion. One student countered Heidi: “No, Heidi, we don't want to take the apple out! The apple is the essence of the painting. What we want to do is know what Magritte put the apple in there in the first place. In my belief we are all fruits, at first completely unripe and bitter with ignorance, and then we ripen we open ourselves to the light and gain the energy to truly live and be open to the world, and then somewhere in the middle of our lives we rot and are never quite the same again. What exactly makes us rot? Well society of course. As Mohammad Hawash once said in his declamation society is a hypocrite. It brings you up when it benefits from you and tosses you to the floor when it has finished using you. We conform to ideals that the majority believe in, we mirror other people's actions as to not feel or look out of place. As humans we adopt to the situations and change ourselves on the immediate assumption that we are he ones in the wrong when in reality everyone is in a dream stance too afraid to face reality, 'traum unt verchlichkeit' (if I spelt it right Freud's saying about dreams vs. reality). We shouldn't allow society to create faceless hollow people like Munch's painting of the street in Paris. Because we do not only become faceless, but we also begin to rot because as Michelangelo once said 'the brain rusts without use.” [Leonardo said that, but why quibble?!]

One student ended with, “What was Magritte’s aim here then? Is the world above us scared to see the reality below? Are they hiding away from reality also?”

Oh, yeah the crazy week and the hospital. Oh, that’s not a big deal—I had a stomach flu, kind of thing, colleagues were kind to me, I went to the hospital, had tests, and they sent me home. My diaphragm had expanded to twice its size. The really crazy thing of the week is that my students sat for a test this week that covered 5,000 years of art and history. And they loved it!

This morning I finished the long novel, The Goldfinch. SPOILER ALERT: THIS IS NOT A SPOILER ALERT.  Toward the end of the book there is this epiphany, and it tells you nothing about the plot, but it dovetails nicely with my students’ growing and yearning and my satisfaction as an educator:

A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.

Because—isn’t it drilled into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture—? From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it’s a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what’s right for us? Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: “Be yourself. Follow your heart.”

Only here’s what I really, really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can’t be trusted—?

and finally at the end:

Because if our secrets define us, as opposed to the face we show the world: then the painting was the secret that raised me above the surface of life and enabled me to know who I am.

Maybe this little Magritte can help us know who we are.

 

We’ll never tell them…

I will admit that very often I have a rather strange soundtrack in my head playing to my life. But then I have purposefully created strange sound tracks as well for lessons and plays. When I teach World War II, for example, and I have the occasion to show the landing on to Normandy Beach from Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan I have turned down the movie sound and played the 1940s Vera Lynn song, “We’ll Meet Again.” It is a chilling and jarring juxtaposition, to be sure. But, it makes some sense. Those soldiers, making the daring landing onto those French shores before dawn, perhaps just a few hours before, had been chilling out in an English pub and probably heard a recording of Vera Lynn’s iconic song (and by the way, just a quick tangent, Dame Vera Lynn is still alive! She still makes appearances and smiles and looks great for 97!) But that sound track also allows me to set up for the students the World War II song, “We’ll Meet Again,” so that when I play the ending of the Cold War-era film Dr. Strangelove, and as the world-ending bombs go off, the students have a better sense of the insanity of the bombs and Stanley Kubrick’s decision to pair those images with Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again.”

Oh, I digress from my sound track in my head observation of this week. In the last few days I have had the words and music of a World War I song playing through my mind:

And when they ask us, how dangerous it was,
Oh, we'll never tell them, no, we'll never tell them:
We spent our pay in some cafe,
And fought wild women night and day,
'Twas the cushiest job we ever had.

And when they ask us, and they're certainly going to ask us,
The reason why we didn't win the Croix de Guerre,
Oh, we'll never tell them, oh, we'll never tell them
There was a front, but damned if we knew where.

Now here might be why that particular song keeps reprising in my head: in class I am discussing a curatorial project that stellar student Alyssa Sclafani offered in AP Art History way back in 2005. Her presentation was entitled, Oh, What a Lovely War, a play that I had taught and would soon direct at Hackley, and this song does appear towards the end of the play. But I think the real reason the song has been on a loop inside my head has to do with the teaching profession itself. I love talking about education, studying it, trying to dissect it what makes it work or what makes it flounder, but in a way, like those soldiers singing about the front in “The Great War,” I don’t know if I can tell what really makes it great or what makes it excruciating.

The other day I spent about 10 hours grading mock exams for the upcoming AP Art History test. A mock exam is exactly what it sounds like—an exam the same length, breadth, scope and challenge of the real test. It allows students to tackle entire course for the first time. All year, either in monthly tests, or exams, the scope is never the entire course. Until the mock exam! So my students gathered last Saturday afternoon , and for three and a quarter hours, examined the history of the visual arts against the landscape of the world’s history.

As I graded the exams, some were great and some were lousy. I know, I know, it was just a mock exam! Who cares! It could be a great chance to simply see where you stand, get a grip about the whole course. I mean, it doesn’t count for anything!

Grading bad tests is so soul-wearying…and the way the grades went, really pretty bizarre. As you may know, the College Board grades the AP tests on a curve, and assigns numbers 5 down to 1, a 5 being the superior score. As in a typical bell curve, the middle, the 3, is where most of the scores fall. And I had scores in each category (in case you like to know: 7 were 5s, 4 were 4s, 11 were 3s, 2 earned a 2, and one poor chap earned a 1--the same grade you get for bubbling the circles in for your name.

No, I am not new to the game of grading. I have long been aware that there will be bad grades. There will be students who don’t study, gasp—even don’t care, and it has nothing to do with me. But as I grade bad exams, it is harder to explain why they wound the soul as much as they do. I don’t teach to assign bad grades. I teach so that students may be empowered to go out into the world armed with skills and attitudes and values that might transform and improve the world around them!! As I read through some of the answers, oh, the weakness of the prose, the illogic of their reasoning, the insipid word choice…a little chipping away of the soul happens! So that is where the World War I song started playing in my head—I mean how could you tell someone not in the teaching biz what grading bad exams feels like. “Oh, you’ve got it rough, do you? Yeah, tell me that while you are lazing around in July!” It is as if all the hopes and dreams you have for humanity pale and fade as you read an essay with no historical context or precise evidence.

Don’t tell me I’m just being dramatic! If you don’t teach, you just don’t know the pain of bad exams. So, the song loops through my head, and I decide again, “No, we’ll never tell them…”

So I went from the Art History class to a faculty meeting where we had the pleasant and arduous task of choosing a winner for the most prestigious award at graduation. There were many nominations and faculty members tripped over themselves trying to explain why each nominee was so worthy and outstanding. I knew almost all of the nominees, but chose not to speak that afternoon. In part, as I reach the end of a year, I can get emotional about some seniors, and you know, we never want to reveal how deep our affection and admiration might be. Not a single negative comment during the whole meeting was uttered. Never did someone interject and say, “Well, that sounds fine, but that’s not how I see him (or her).” For over an hour my colleagues articulated the leadership skills, the improvement in English and Arabic, the attachment to the school, the love of learning, the examples of respect and responsibility—each nominee reflected perfectly why this school exists.

I sat and smiled throughout the meeting, marveling at the wonderful examples we witness of change and transformation. And in a sneaky way, that World War I song crept back into my mind and my soundtrack. “We’ll never tell them…” This time it wasn’t about how a bad day, or  bad exam can shake the psyche—this time it was we couldn’t begin to tell non-teachers what those good days are like, what those moments of epiphany feel like as it dawns on someone about a painting, a movement, a moment in history, their own moment in history. That “A” essay isn’t just good—it’s enlightening, exciting, invigorating in a way that I couldn’t explain to a non-teacher.

I can’t decide or remember if there are more high and low moments here than in my previous three schools. I don’t think it matters. Each week has those moments, I guess, the highs and lows I couldn’t really explain. I’ll just have the music swell as the World War I ditty proclaims that no matter how hard we might try, we just couldn’t explain what it is like, so we’ll never tell.

About I had met with some of the jarred students about their mock exam grades, I walked past the plaza in front of our Dining Hall. On this sunny late afternoon was a little girl, the now 6-year old daughter of one of my colleagues. There she was, totally delighted and enraptured that the pinwheel she was holding was moving all by itself. Such wonder she enjoyed! Could we re-capture that same wonder? Could we explain it? Will we meet again with such joy and wonder?

What is interesting is that last year I left the same meeting, after the return of those mock exams, and spied the then-5-year old wonder child. So glad I get to bump into her and remember the child-like wonder of it all!