A Sondheim-ian Summer

The summer of 2014 is winding down…I have one last lazy summer afternoon, today, and then tomorrow I board the planes to Chicago and then Amman, back to school.

Don’t get me wrong—I love school, but there is something precious about summer, and I pack my summers full of visiting friends and family, long diner mornings with my dad, and happy reading on the front porch.

Last week someone asked what my summers were like, and I almost answered, “Well, schizophrenic, I guess.” Parts of the summer are jam-packed and busy every minute, with the hustle and bustle of travel, and some parts are those kind of summer lingers, shopping with coupons at Kroger’s, discovering new books at my public library where I have gone since birth, and leisurely watching old episodes of Monk or Columbo with my dad.

In honor of the upcoming film version of Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway show, Into The Woods, I have been humming some of the songs from this show, and I realized that a line from one of those Sondheim songs summed up my schizophrenic summers:

            “Must it all be either less or more

Either plain or grand?

Is it always or?

Is it never and?”

I kind of approach my life from a place of and! It is frenetic at times, and leisurely at times as it almost feels time stands still. My first day back in Cincinnati was a jam-packed day starting with visiting my dad’s diner, The Imperial, and then going shopping at Findlay Market with Sylvia, my Cincinnati wife, as she calls herself. I visited with my KA friend Sue who is in town grading AP tests. Then I end the day celebrating with Doris, a childhood friend turning 50. A good showing from our high school class was there to welcome another friend into the 50 Club…and of course, how many times that evening did someone say, Where has the time gone?

I endured 10 flights this summer as I flew to New York, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Disney World, and Dallas…sometimes to a professional conference, sometimes to a new place to enjoy, sometimes to an old place…and then ending with a relaxing and busy 16 days in Cincinnati.

One night in July, Sylvia and I went to the beautiful Music Hall in downtown Cincinnati to see the Cincinnati Opera’s production of Silent Night, a new opera about the true story of the Christmas truce of 1914, when World War I soldiers came out of their trenches on the Western Front to celebrate Christmas Eve together in no-man’s land. This terrific cast of singing actors worked with this glimmering, hauntingly beautiful score by Kevin Puts so well, and the staging was also beautiful as it allowed us to care deeper and deeper about these characters. Kevin Puts, a youngish man, came and spoke to a group before the performance to explain some of the compositional choices he made in creating this piece. In a world that still struggles with war—a full hundred years after the start of the “Great War,” Silent Night is a work that resonates as a reminder of war’s human toll.

While a good deal of my reading this summer was about the new AP Capstone course I will be teaching this year (I will talk about this in an upcoming blog entry) my favorite book of the summer turned out to be an unexpected delight. I had a tall stack for the summer to read, but my niece Emma added one more book to the towering pile. Emma’s Catholic Girl’s High School had assigned The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks to the entire school community. She asked me if I would read the book so we could talk about it. I read the book on the long flights to and from Hong Kong, and I loved the mix of themes in this book. If you have not read the book yet, run and get yourself a copy! Henrietta Lacks died of cancer at the age of 32, a seemingly unimportant African-American woman. Before she died, doctors harvested cells from Henrietta’s body that have proved to be the biggest Rock Star cells in the history of medicine. The book is about the author’s quest to learn more about this mundane mother who left children and a legacy of miracle cells that have helped the research community over the last half-century come closer to solving some of the most vexing problems in medical history. I loved the convergence of scientific research issues, medical ethics, and the sociology of race and poverty in 20^th century America. The author inspired you to care deeply about the woman behind the famous HeLa cells, and care and wonder about her family, and the legacy of Lacks’ early death. Great book!

I caught up with old friends over breakfasts and ice cream visits. I also saw 5 friends from childhood—none of whom have I seen in over 30 years! I met up with Laura, a church and high school friend, at Doris’ 50^th party; I drove 50 miles to meet Sharon, my senior prom date; in New York, I had coffee twice with Cate, a friend with whom I did plays with Sarah Jessica Parker on the Showboat Majestic in Cincinnati in the late 1970s; and the other day, I had Graeter’s ice cream with Kathy (a friend from Kindergarten through 12^th grade) and Molly (a friend from 4^th through 12^th grade). There were days of appointments and busy To Do Lists, and then there was the laziest day of the summer, a Sunday afternoon and evening picnic at cousin Tom and Kathi’s house. Perfect weather, no family dramas unravelling, and just sitting and enjoying a memorable, perfectly leisurely day.

In many ways, summer for teachers is more than just a break from the gerbil-wheel pace of a harried school year. These breaks are opportunities to recharge and restore one’s psyche. The calmer pace allows questions and wonderings, not just about dinner, but about what it is all about. It meaning Life. I spent time this summer with Anne and Judy, two friends who have kept me on track for years. Just as the Kevin Puts opera can turn on a dime from a battle scene, with its cacophony of dissonances, edgy intervals, and machine gun sounds, to moments of serene, lyrical beauty, a summer allows the quick change from running into museums  and then introspectional time for reflections about the passage of time, the joy of laughter, and the great tastes of pancakes and sausage.

Ever since Facebook allowed us to find people with greater ease, I have tried to find some people I had lost along the journey. I certainly had the appointments with my regulars, but I saw those old lost friends, and each time this summer those reunions held laughter and affection about the transactional moments of childhood friendship. While we are all 50, there was something so joyous and youthful about these tete-a-tetes.

Such reunions make some people nervous. After all, are these visits just sentimental clap-trap and nostalgia traps? Just last week, outside of Facebook, Jim McIntosh, a treasured colleague in my first year of teaching found me after a decade of being lost from each other. Thousands of miles separate us, but the warmth and wonder of this important youthful friendship brought back memories and keeps me grounded today.

So as summer fades away, and the excitement for the new school year mounts, I think about another Stephen Sondheim show, Follies. This is a strange show for me to reference after all these happy memories of summer reunions since this show, while about the past catching up with the present, it is bitter and cynical. 

But that is just the show at its surface—underneath it is a meditation about how we change, reconciling who we thought we were then, who we are now, what we hoped for then and what we’re stuck with now…not so simple, not so black and white. Follies is a sober look at those reality checks. My summer was light, happy, and wonderfully connected from my past to my present.

As I return to Jordan for Year #8, I am amazed and grateful for these friendships and moments to treasure. Plain and grand. A very and summer…

I Broke Up With My Barber

When I return to Jordan in a few days—for my 8^th year at KA—there is one ritual that I will not be repeating. I will not be going back to my barber Edris. Sigh. You see, this spring I broke up with my barber after 7 years.

 

Hey, don’t laugh! That’s a pretty big deal! Edris had been my only barber in Jordan, and while students and ex-pat teachers have come and gone at our campus, Edris had been a constant for my entire tenure in Jordan. I combed through the early blog entries from August, 2007, and found one about my introduction to Edris, lo those many years ago:

 

There is an electrician on campus named Fadi, and he and I have talked a bit in the last week, and he lives in nearby Madaba. Fadi said we should get together sometime. As I hope I have made clear, Jordanians are immeasurably friendly. I asked him he if he could take me to a barber, so I could have a good cut before the students arrive.

 

Going to a new barber is fraught with tension in the best of circumstances, like when you speak the language. So today when Fadi met me to take me to Madaba, he first wanted to go on a field trip to Mount Nebo and enjoy the view. I reminded him that I had a meeting at 6, and a fancy dinner at 7 to celebrate the beginning of student orientation tomorrow.

Fadi drives like a madman—heck, driving in Jordanian seems to be utterly rule-less. There are no lanes, as I can tell, and people just try to get where they are going expeditiously. As we enter Madaba I tell him about the grid system of the streets in New York City above 14^th street, and he thinks that is ridiculous. The roads in Madaba just go everywhere and anywhere and in my mind nowhere.

We end up at Fadi’s friend, the barber, and away we go. Every five minutes Fadi asks me if I like how the haircut is going. The guy does a great job, and washes the hair at the end. Now that does make more sense, doesn’t it? You don’t leave with all those hairs in your inner ear.

 

Before heading back to campus Fadi takes me to his house for tea. Fadi comes from a family of 12 children, and I meet a couple of them (or they are nephews or, I don’t know Bedouin cousins or something). One guy raises sheep and has between 300-600 sheep he tends. Just not at teatime I guess.

Anyway, my real point in telling the haircut story is that it was another “package” of sorts—spending time with generous Fadi, not quite knowing what this package would entail, and utterly reveling in a kind man’s friendship.

 

I kept returning to Edris for haircuts, even after Fadi and his friend Edris had a falling out, and Fadi told me, “You should not go there now. He is a bad man.” When I got a car I figured out how to maneuver the crazy streets of Madaba and knew how to get to that barber shop on the far side of town. While there are dozens and dozens of barbers in Madaba, I remained loyal to Edris.  Over the years I have said that going to see Edris was my most Jordanian thing I did—few of the guys speak English there, and they bicker and yell about politics, down cups of coffee, smoke, and hang out. One man even offered to sell me his sister. I swear it.  I learned a few months in that I should call in advance for an appointment since Edris came and went to his barber shop all day long. After I gave up my car, it took a little more effort either to borrow a car or take a taxi to see Edris. I would walk in his place, and he would beam and shout my name (and offer me tequila).

So why the break-up??? Well, this past spring Edris was more erratic about his appointments and keeping them and being at the shop, even after a pre-arranged time. It steamed me that he was a little too cavalier about my business and loyalty, and I walked out one time. He didn’t show up at all one day, and then once I was 10 minutes late, and he made me wait almost an hour. So I decided to break up with him. Of course he doesn’t know it.

 

But as I noted in August, 2007: Going to a new barber is fraught with tension in the best of circumstances, I didn’t look forward to starting all over with a new barber. A young teacher, Daniel, suggested I try Eyad, his barber. I didn’t know. But I needed a haircut and I knew I had to break it off with Edris cold turkey. I tried Eyad, and he did right by me. He was nice, a little tentative, pleasing, happy to see me at the next visit, knew what I wanted, remembered my name and seemed glad to see me…exactly what you want with a new barber.

 

You know, back in June, when I first thought I would do a blog entry about my new barber, I thought I would be cute and compare the old/new barber with Israeli-Palestinian history. But then as the summer unfolded, and the crisis in Gaza deepened, it seemed tacky and insensitive to make some light, clever comparisons between the two. I don’t know if a day has gone by this summer without someone asking me about my safety in the region, shaking their head about the endless, incomprehensible conflict we have seen played out on our TV screens this summer.

 

Of course, none of the coverage has been particularly deep, or enlightening. The news reports have played out as we have understood them to be for years and years. Hmmmm….and practically no “gray” at all in this affair.

 

Last week, David Brooks wrote a thoughtful analysis of the conflict entitled “No War Is An Island,” piercing our facile understanding and showing layers upon layers inside the vortex, emphasizing that this conflict should not be seen in a vacuum, it is not the same as it has been before, and we need to look more at Arab tensions to better understand it. One of his most prescient points was that Turkey and Qatar have backed Hamas in large part to give them the upper hand in their struggles with Saudi Arabia and Egypt (Brooks suggesting that they (T&Q)  might even hope Israel does okay in this so they can maintain that upper hand…) Oh, the more things change…yep.

 

As people have asked me my opinion—yes, some have asked, and I don’t just shove my opinion in the diners’ faces (oh, the rhetoric at the Imperial Diner every morning!!) I have explained there is a strange symmetry in the Israeli-Hamas Summer of ’14 disaster (now, this is looking at the conflict more in a vacuum, but just to isolate their respective needs). The symmetry is that both sides have things that they are right about. Israel is right that it should not be subjected to wanton bombings and kidnappings. Palestine, according to the UN, and many, many thoughtful people around the world, has a right to exist as a state, and even if you do not aver, they are right in that they should be able to exist and have businesses and not be treated as 2^nd class citizens.

 

There is a symmetry that both are right about some things. And there is a symmetry in that neither side seems to allow that the other side could ever possibly be right! This is a painful symmetry where each side says there is no symmetry at all. So there is a collision in this symmetry. Hamas is too violent, and Israel undermines peace. Another level of symmetry.

 

But of course, this conflict cannot be seen in a vacuum. Hamas has more than Israel in its sights: I think Hamas is aiming its discord at Cairo as well, and it becomes all muddled with issues of control and even Arab against Arab tensions.

 

Here is where, in a more perfect Seinfeld-ian blog entry, I would weave the story of my break-up with Edris and point out the similarities from my little mundane world with this Middle Eastern crisis. But it’s just not that easy. The more you unravel the crisis, the less manageable it seems. That is of course why diplomacy has failed. That is why, perhaps, non-violence is tossed aside as an option, and invasions and rockets are cheered on many sides. Does it explain our Attention Deficit Disorder with the Syrian civil war and the fact that 170,000 Syrians have died in the last couple years? The crisis in Gaza has been like Groundhog Day and we may not even be aware we are watching the same movie over and over. But wait, it’s not quite the same. Maybe it’s almost as confusing as the films Being John Malkovich or Memento?!

 

Would that this story could end a little more like my thoughts on Edris, a nice guy I visited a couple times a month for seven years, then found a new barber in Eyad and all is well again in the Land Of Receding Hairlines for Middle-Aged Teachers. But of course, Edris doesn’t even know I “broke up” with him. He may even wonder if I will pop in again and make things right.  Hmmm…sounds like peace brokers for the Middle East…

Where is the symmetry now? If we see the symmetry, what do we do next? Where and how can a breakthrough emerge?

 

Say what you might…

There are detractors out there…and you may be one of them. Well, to confess, this past month my family went back to Walt Disney World for the 7^th time in 10 years. Yes, we went again! And as I told various people of my summer plans, more than a few winced, and said, “you’re going again??” with a heavy emphasis on the ‘again.’ Yes, we went again, and for those who know our family well, my sister loves Disney World (did I  put enough emphasis on the verb in that sentence??) and our family enjoys going.

The detractors out there—and WDW does seem to be as polarizing as almost anything else (Obamacare anyone??) with legions of fans and legions of detractors. Some do not like the MMMM (I made that one up, for you detractors out there, and it stands for Mickey-Mouse-Money-Machine) and some think the park and its attractions are delusional, or vapid, or…do you detractors need any more help???

But I gotta say, while I may have chosen another destination for our family (we could walk through the Disney properties blind-folded and successfully reach the next stop on the itinerary), I am not unhappy that my family makes its Pilgrimage to Magic (another designation I just created!) so frequently. I love studying the success of the place.

First, for those wondering why my family frequents the Orlando park so often: besides the obvious reasons that it is family-friendly, a known quantity, and on and on, I have referred to WDW as “my sister’s fur coat.” My sister does not actually own a fur coat, but like anyone who enjoys luxury and comfort, WDW, and specifically where we always stay at the Polynesian resort right on the Disney property (no, she does not want any suggestions of where and how to stay cheaper in Orlando!) her vacation plans for her family at WDW are a source of enjoyable, indulgent luxury and comfort—much like a beautiful and treasured fur coat. Elizabeth arrives at the Polynesian, on the Magical Express (seriously, that is what WDW calls their easy airport pick-up service) and for her the luxury and comfort and enjoyment begins…

My family went to WDW once when I was little—when I was 9. I went again at the age of 39, and we have since been going more regularly than Audra Macdonald wins Tony Awards (for those non-Broadway fans, she has won 6, and we have gone to WDW 7 times in the “modern” era. For the serious Broadway fan, Audra has won those 6 awards over 19 years, and my family has gone, again, 7 times in the last 10!). But each time that I go, while I know what to expect, I come away with appreciation and awe for the imagination, design, and forward-thinking of the Disney experience.

Forward-thinking??? Oh, you detractors think you are so smug out there, sighing with ennui that Disney is the same in the 21^st century that it was in the 1970s. Au contraire, to quote one of the dishes from the Beauty and the Beast new restaurant experience called “Be My Guest.” I would argue, and even with those Broadway junkies who know everything au courant (I can’t seem to get the Candlesticks out of my head!!) and who could not possibly concede that WDW is forward-thinking. On one of the days of our trip I specifically looked at the parks and the attractions for what is theatrically forward-thinking (and not just focus on thrill-seeking, as my excited 12-year old nephew does on the Hollywood Studios Tower of Terror) and makes the experience even more enjoyable. Here are my findings:

·     

      Disney is a leader in piquing the olfactory sense. When you attend Disney’s Philharmagic 3-D experience, or Epcot’s Soarin’, one of the important elements of satisfaction is the olfactory design and all the pleasant smells on the journey. If you attend Animal Kingdom’s “Bug’s Life” you even have the purposefully unpleasant odor of squished bugs. This spring, Audra Macdonal (you knew there must be a link, didn’t you??) uses a purposefully powerful perfume on stage in her portrayal of Billie Holliday. All those theatergoers sitting up close and personal in the simulated bar area get to smell and enjoy the reverie and enhance the performance. Where might we go next?

      Walt Disney pioneered those human-animatronic-robots, starting with his Hall of Presidents (I have actually heard people say. “That couldn’t possibly be Andrew Jackson, could it???” Um. No.) and extending through to the great Hollywood Studios “Great Movie Ride” that mixes real people with those simulated robots and they get more and more sophisticated all the time.

     Seriously, more people should go to the live shows at WDW. I went to Finding Nemo and in 40 minutes they told the story, had great songs and dances, creative costumes, and these performers are doing 7-8 performances  a day!! Here you have the whole Disney shebang, the powerful narrative with emotional connections, songs and dances, production design, and yes, an opportunity to buy gifts in the shop on the way out. No one puts a gun to your head to buy! But back to forward-thinking…WDW has pioneered an audience interaction that is exciting. You can have a conversation with Crush, a cartoon character, up on the screen as a cartoon. I don’t want to think too hard to how they do this, but this cartoon can engage the audience, speak to people and respond, and each performance will be unique, organic, and up-to-the-minute funny and touching. Disney magic…

Nephew Jack rode the “Tower of Terror” three times (thank you concept of “reward-the-planner” FastPass!) and while earlier I said he was a thrill-seeker only, in the time Jack and I rode it together, he and I took our time in the build-up and set-up of the attraction. The “Tower of Terror” is set in an old abandoned Hollywood hotel, circa 1939. As we made our way through the hotel (a creative and expensive way to keep patrons “in line”) Jack joined me in noticing the details that they chose to create the image of a 1939 hotel. He looked at the old book ledgers, all the knick knacks and we happily discussed how these details created the experience and enriched the narrative. Yeah, he totally enjoyed the “ride” part of it, but he didn’t mind indulging me in enjoying those theatrical details.

Is WDW perfect? Well, one of the new rides, the Snow White roller-coaster with the dwarves’ diamond mines, is a hot ticket but ultimately did not satisfy us enough. Somehow they neglected to emphasize all the strong narrative as wekk successfully as they usually do. It was more just a ride than an enhancement of a beloved story. It was an interesting exercise to critique the attraction as a family.

Ultimately, I do not mind going back to WDW, and while some of you detractors might yawn and say, “same old, same old” about our frequent treks to the humid, former swamps of Orlando, these trips act as a marker of time as well. Think back to when you were children and on birthdays you eagerly stood by the family room wall where the markings of height, and the passage of time chronicled your growth and siblings’ growth. These trips to WDW do the same for my family. A decade ago, Emma was in full-princess mode as she crept closer to age 6, and Jack was just past 2, and the WDW experience captivated them both. Here they are, a decade later, still captivated, but of course, in different ways. Each trip I take a movie of the family, interviewing them, trying to capture those wonderful big and small moments as they get wrapped up in the Disney theatrical machine. If we edited all those films together, it would resemble the current film, Boyhood a little as that film peruses through a real child’s real coming of age. The magic still lures and delights.

This year we stopped by the WDW HR department, called of course, the Chamber of Commerce, and wrote compliments about the five employees who most exceeded our expectations and charmed us. WDW is known for great service, and while not every employee is perfect, the very best employees struck me as similar to great teachers. A great teacher’s exuberance is palpable, even contagious, transcends the multiple times one has perhaps taught the same lesson, and personally thrilled when the transaction and experience is joyful. It is not easy to deal with frustrated students/park-goers, but the wonder, the magic is still possible.

You know it must be time to start thinking about school again if it all becomes an analogy of the teaching process!

Say what you might—the expense, the song of “It’s A Small World,” the familiar surroundings of the Polynesian, the why don’t you guys try some place else???? questions—but the family came home happy, planning the next trip to Disney, and…speaking to each other still after 24/7. Wow.

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.