Listening to capitalistic rock music beneath the image of Lenin (1987)

If that wasn’t enough, I also found a children’s book in which baby Lenin faith-healed an injured lumberjack, not to mention baby Lenin pins. You could even (and probably still can) visit his corpse, kind of like venerating the bones of of dead saints.

More recently, I’ve been morbidly fascinated with North Korea, where this sort of this is even more overt, like a perverse cross between Confucianism, monarchy, and Christianity, with Kim Il-Sung and his descendants as the the divine, and the U.S. as the designated Satan. People are so mentally conditioned to his religion that they openly give thanks to Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il for anything and everything, and bow to their ubiquitous statues and pictures.

I forget who said it first, but when people don’t have a religion, they make one, even if they don’t call it that. Which brings me to the subject of a state religion. Typically, we expect state (public) schools’ purpose is to teach civics and give citizens the education they need to function and contribute to society. Fair enough: the schools we know teach children to read, and write, and do mathematics, all of which are vital skills. But as I found out between my first summer homeschooling Neil, and his last year of public school, the history being taught is fairly anemic. By fifth grade, the children could recite with confidence why Rosa Parks; Martin Luther King, Jr.; and Cesar Chavez were American heroes, but they had far less class time being taught all the rest of American history. Even worse, when Neil’s fourth grade teacher posted a provably false “fact” on her door in honor of the upcoming Earth Day, she dismissed my objections on the grounds that she believed it was true, and even if it wasn’t, it didn’t matter, because telling elementary school students that their nation is the more garbage-y in the world is more important than any actual facts. Excuse me if I started getting the impression that a particular line of social justice was usurping bourgeoisie priorities in education, like history and factual investigation.

As educators indubitably discovered,religion is an effective way to keep people in line, especially when you have a diverse range of people of different backgrounds. But as the school system is increasingly devoted to a separation of church and state which is more firmly enforced that I think the founding fathers had in mind,there had to be some form of groupthink. As a result, I think we’re seeing a conflation of social justice ideals, multiculturalism, and Christian groundings. For instance, in the State religion there are clear sins, like racism, or homophobia, against which you must not transgress, lest you get socially ostracized. There are penances you pay, like recycling, and taking public transportation, and praise you must pay to teachers and other public servants. A problem (beyond the heretics who don’t agree fully with the religion) is that since this won’t admit it’s a religion, the rules aren’t clearly defined. You  may be a homophobe merely for being good friends with a Mormon; you may need to buy carbon offsets for the non-hybrid SUV you use and love, but people will always question whether that was truly enough.

It’s a lot easier dealing with the Christians, who are down with their principles, which are widely-known, even as they vary from sect to sect. For instance, I now send Kelly to a Lutheran school. One day one of the children in Kelly’s class stole an item from her backpack. The teacher found out, the class discussed it, the student repented, and they all agreed to forgive him (or her). The teacher warned me this had happened, so it wasn’t something Kelly should complain about. She never breathed a word, and there hasn’t been a theft since. That’s a Christian principle that’s pretty cool. I’m not sure I’m even cool enough to do something like that, but I’ll consider it now.

There is a fair amount of what they teach which they expect to have the children take on faith, such as Christ’s resurrection and death. (As it happens, the grown-ups may discuss the nuances, context, and archeological/historical record with the professional and amateur theologians at the church, but it is still considered fact). On the other hand, the Christians respect my bourgeoisie notions about secular education, and more than anything, Kelly’s first grade classroom seemed a lot like Charlie Brown’s in the Peanuts specials. And even though I don’t expect or desire prayer to come back to public school classrooms, I wish public schools could be more wholesome and truly tolerant than they are under the umbrella of the nebulous though recognizable State religion.

“Too much,” I told him. “Or more specifically, I think it’s $50,000 a year.”

“Oh,” he said, somewhat disappointed.

“If you really want to go here, you might be able to with a scholarship.” I told him, and he vowed to work on his-already impressive resume of work.

Then today, I saw his competitors for the math tournament, all of whom, I’m sure, are also eager and jonesing for a chance to get into Stanford. A group of 24 even flew in from Beijing, China just to take part.

But what happens to these bright and eager students once they get in to Stanford? While I’m impressed with the homeschoolers and adults Neil hangs with, I don’t get the same sense of mission and excitement in the Stanford students I’ve encountered myself.

Specifically, a few years ago, I noticed that Stanford’s Slavic House had a weekly Russian dinner to which the public was invited. My own college had (and likely still has) a weekly dinner at which Russian speakers, professors and students gathered for a few hours of speaking in Russian, and I’d been a regular attendee advancing from my first meal where I learned how to say “please pass the salt” to discussing Russian poetry with Joseph Brodsky (a Russian poet who taught at Mount Holyoke each Spring) my senior year. In short, it was just the vibrant intellectual experience Neil thrives on himself at college math festivals and lectures.

I checked in with the housemother to make sure I could come, and she confirmed I could, and that she planned to be there herself. But, my, was Stanford’s Slavic House a step down from my expectations. For one thing, no one who lived in the house seemed to speak Russian, nor have any desire to do so. In contrast, I have some friends who lived at Berkeley’s Slavic House, where no-one spoke English (not even to Peter, my then-boyfriend, when I brought him there for a party), and the most ringing dispute was Polish- and Ukrainian-speakers insulted that everyone lapsed into Russian, without ever giving thought to, say, a few juicy Polish phrases once in a while.

Here I had to confirm in English with several disaffected Stanford students that there was indeed a table set aside for those who wished to converse in Russian that night, though no one was exactly sure where that was. Eventually a few students showed up, though not a single one of them was living at the Slavic House. Our little table consisted of a young Mormon couple living in the student housing who were learning Ukrainian, which they planned to use on a mission the next year; two first-year Russian students; and a Ghanaian student whose mother was Russian. No professors, teachers, nor even the housemother bothered to show up. The first year students couldn’t say much and ended up chatting carefully between themselves about their class; the Mormons carefully and politely spoke to me about their mission; and mostly I spoke to Anoso, the Ghanaian, who was the only fluent native speaker among us, and feeling awkward in this role. He’d come to Stanford to study engineering, he’d visited his mother’s family in Russia quite a few times, and he missed speaking Russian. Sadly, he wasn’t getting much good Russian from anyone here. Then I asked how long he’d been at Stanford, and he told me “six months.” As a freshman.

I looked around the table and realized there was not a single person there of drinking age. Beyond us, the Slavic Hall residents who could no longer be bothered to even try to speak Russian shuffled around lethargically.

I can’t imagine Neil ever being that indifferent to his line of study at any college, and if he was, there’s no way I’d spend a fortune keeping him there. Peter assures me that the mathematics department shouldn’t be judged by the language departments, but I still expect the Stanford acceptance standards are equally high for either mathematics or language. And if the strength of Stanford is the caliber of the speakers and events it can put on (which are excellent, and almost always free or inexpensive and open to the public), what do you get going there as a student?

My son was in second grade, and one day, I received an announcement that on the suggestion of one of the parents, the teacher had assigned all the parents into small groups. Each group was to confer amongst itself for an appropriate Christmas gift (or set of gifts) for a member of a mystery family. None of us, save the parent who’d brought this project up with the teacher, knew this family, but the story was it was the family of the pastor of her church. They’d hit on hard times, and without our generous contributions, they would have no gifts for Christmas. So we would bring the spirit of Christmas to them, and be filled with the Christmas spirit ourselves as a result.

It was impolitic to ask: why was it this mysterious family couldn’t afford presents? Were they spendthrifts? Were they spending all their money buying Christmas gifts for other families? Why did a supposedly Christian family need presents, so much they had to become a commercial charity for strangers? Why were we recruited to buy stuff for them, when they probably entire church congregation who knew these people and capable of getting together a collection amongst themselves? And given that this family was in such desperate straights, wouldn’t they be just as happy if the parent who wanted us all to go shopping for that family just bought $5 of trinkets for them at the dollar store?  But I couldn’t opt out–the best Peter and I could do was find a $9 alternative to the $35 easel one of the other parents in my group wanted to get, so we wouldn’t have to pitch in quite so much. And even then, I was nervous, since it was important to look generous amongst my peers; the other parents would be judging the amount of my contribution, and for all I knew this supposedly-Christian family would be posting a report on the quality of their community-provided gifts so everyone could gasp in shock that some parents had bought an IKEA easel instead of the professional $500 easel the artistic son really wanted.

Note again, this was an activity I was corralled into, without being asked whether I wanted to take part in it or not, at a public school. And I knew that if I opted out, the other parents would talk about the fact that I’d done so, while they’d all blissfully opened their wallets. It continues to surprise me, now that I have my daughter at a private religious school, which has far less in resources, and a community undoubtedly with some needy members, how far less frequently I receive requests for money, and complaints about the lack of it, either for the institution or its members. And for that matter, how discreet the school and church are about how much each family is contributing financially. There’s opportunities to give, such as a weekly chapel, and required church services, but there’s no “minimum suggested” donation, no listing of how much each person gave, no differentiation between students with a scholarship and those without, and certainly, no showcasing of a family who wants us to give ‘em stuff they don’t really need and can’t afford.

I think, if a pastor at my daughter’s church school opted out of having his family receive gifts one Christmas, it would be to place emphasis on the religious aspects of the holiday, rather than an announcement of poverty and an expectation that strangers in one of the classrooms would take care of getting Christmas present. And I would hope (and I do think) they wouldn’t turn to a public school classroom to save themselves the embarrassment and get gifts anyway.

Anyway, I’m digging it because I haven’t had any religious education on that level. Peter’s gone though Catholic catechism, so he’s less into it. For him, it’s like watching the a remake of a long movie you’re seen before, except this time with the gory Goth parts edited out.

So, we got to the class on Holy Communion, and the pastor is telling us there are pre-requisites to being allowed to take communion in his church. Not having met those requirements, I’m comfortable with staying seated during communion. I told Peter I’m sure everyone else is cool with it, too, but he told me they’re just being polite and feeling sorry for me. That said, he stays seated with me.

The pastor went on to explain that his church has closed communion, that is, exclusive to the church membership and to invited guests who meet the qualifications for communion. Then, he surprised us by confiding that sometimes he’s had to exclude someone from communion, such as an unmarried couple which is openly living together.

Really? Who does that? Well, a Lutheran pastor, I guess! That got some discussion going between Peter and me, and in the end, we thought he was rather cool for willing to be so uncool.

Face it, these days, even in polite society, marriage is considered optional. Who’s pushing it, anyway? If a guy wants to marry the girl of his dreams, his buddies have to mock him for wanting to take up the proverbial ball and chain. A girl may want to marry her boyfriend, but does she really want to be the harpy who rails on about it, when it’s love, not a ring, that will presumably hold you together? It’s so much easier to just drift along, and let the children appear as they may; and when you get bored, drift off in different directions. Your friends are probably doing the same. If your parents are socially conservative, they may tsk, and make you sleep in separate beds when you come over; if they’re not, they’ll probably expect you to move in together, in their house. But, really, it’s not like living together is a big deal to anyone any more.

So, all there is left is a Lutheran pastor, pretty much telling you that unless you’re going to get serious with one another, you’ll have to stay seated during communion. (Next to Pete and Carolyn, whom by the way, whom we all pity for not being able to take communion, not that we would point that out them–however, at least they‘re married.)

So, bravo, for taking a principled stand, especially if it’s not the popular one.

Understandably, I was nervous about volunteering. Going into the local neighborhood classroom to volunteer last year prompted me to pull Kelly out of public school altogether. Homeschooling her instead had challenges, mostly social, so when I got a full-time contract late last summer, I know I couldn’t put her back to the neighborhood school, but when I could afford a local religious school for her, it was a good choice. Still, my fellow homeschoolers (and my tour of other schools) had told me private schools are little better than their public counterparts. Notably, one of Neil’s dearest friends from last Spring was a new, and delightfully bright, homeschooler who had been bullied at his $15K/year private school.

But my biggest surprise in seeing Kelly’s class was how very functional all her fellow classmates were. Kelly, maybe because she has such a straight-laced brother, is drawn to the rowdy, and such is the case this year. But, honestly, the rowdies are just the youngest in the classroom, who like to joke around. Kelly’s still a bit unfocused, as she was before, but she’s in a class of 13, which is less than half the class size of a public school, so it’s harder for her to drift away. Furthermore, I felt like my time to volunteer was something the teacher incorporated, rather than something she needed.

For example, today I came in with a story to read (of my own choice), and a small craft, similar to that I would have brought to a homeschooling group. I brought “The Garden” from Frog and Toad Together, which just happened to tie in nicely with the fact that the children had recently planted seeds and some of them had sprouted and others had not. All the children listened attentively, and then had little trouble putting together a craft I’d set up for them. Then, to my delight, the teacher improvisingly turned the fact that all the children had created flower masks into another lesson, pulled out a poem scheduled for May, and had them all review colors and a new song. In the meantime, during my 1-1/2 hours there, the teacher taught the children a moral lesson, had them review a song, and taught them phonics. While she was teaching the children phonics (in two separate groups), I read each alternate group  three picture books, all of which were attentively appreciated. Oh, and they cleaned up after themselves, and the teacher was surprised when I cleaned up an artspace the children had been working in, even though adult volunteer clean up after children was de rigeuer in both Neil’s and Kelly’s public schools.

In the public schools, it was rare to be able to do more than one picture book a day, given all disciplinary control than had to be put into place to even get through it. And even then, I’m not sure 1/3 of the students could have told you what the story was about, whereas in Kelly’s new school, I think all of them could have.

Having seen snack time twice now, it’s clearto me that at least one parent cares enough to package something personal for their child; where at public schools it was all too often either dependent on what the school gave or some grocery school package like Lunchables or dry Top Ramen. So this school looks even less than a rich person/two working parents family conceit; and even then, that you might be able to think two working parents are indifferent to their children’s needs. It did come across that this was a school where the families cared about their children. It was sad that such families, like ours, could not send their children to the local schools–and that this obviously made public schools much poorer. When I combine our local property tax (which ostensibly pays for the schools), I’m paying $15K for Kelly’s education this year, too, and we’ll be paying about &17K for her next year. Peter points out that in many other areas, the schools may be acceptable for only the cost of the mandatory property tax. But in the public school, the teachers cannot kick out the unready, the disruptive, and destructive; and unlike Kelly’s private school, as a result, they need parent volunteers to provide the parent than can’t be provided legally.

I went to a private college, while Peter went to a state one. We both got an excellent education, but his required more effort (more in the way of getting into the right classes) than mine did. So private education is still surprisingly effective to me, altough I’m still intimidated at the cost of it.

The year started out with me working part-time on a contract, writing for developers on mobile internet technology. The work was nice, since I learned a lot, and earned money to ride us through the rocky ride the credit crash caused.

Early on, we got a new president, whose cult of personality made me nervous. Happily, that cult seems to have faded from the American populace, but he still has solid Congressional support, which has led to some unprecedented and extraordinary acts of government, like a stimulus bill passed seemingly in seconds; the nationalization of two American car companies; and nationalized health care which, as far as I can tell, still doesn’t give me free health care.

I completed my contract work in March, but in the meantime, I scored a columnist gig at Santa Cruz Magazine. It was surreal, to say the least, to have work fall in my lap while others weren’t able to find jobs, no matter how hard they looked.

Neil went to his first math competition, Math Counts, in February, and seems to have been discouraged out of any competition as a result. It was all I could do to get him to come to the Julia Robinson Math Festival at Stanford in June, and only then with the promise that if he didn’t like it we would go. It turned out to be far better than that: he met mathematician Bill Gosper, who became his friend, mentor, and guide to the math community in the South Bay and the Bay area. When Neil took a computer class at Stanford in June, Bill Gosper would meet us after class, and show off complex mathematical equations in graphic form, to which he added riddles, puzzles, and personal anecdotes. Neil absorbed it; I felt like Alice in Wonderland at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.

In July, everything seemed to fall apart. Someone, somewhere, hacked my eBay and Paypal accounts, which ended up with some innocent computer vendor in England sending me an expensive laptop I had never ordered. A few weeks later, it was time to exchange library books for Tamara, the elderly Ukrainian woman I’d been helping since before Kelly was born, but she wasn’t answering her phone. Eventually, I called one of the Russians who lived in her community, and he told me she’d gone to a nursing home, and gave me her number there. But when I spoke to her, she couldn’t remember me. And I haven’t heard from her since.

Then, Comic-Con rolled around, and Kelly and I came down with a flu so bad we could barely move for two days. We quarantined ourselves from Peter and Neil, but nonetheless, it rolled over to them too—exactly as Peter needed to be packing up the van and driving down to the show. So Peter assigned the packing duties to Joe and Mark, which ended up having some consequences. In the end, Peter recovered just in time for the great drive south, albeit with a Neil who mustered himself to the verge of recovery, only due to his desire to keep his record of having attended Comic-Con every year of his life.

At this point, I’d run out of my hard-earned money from earlier in the year. So just about then, the consultancy who’d booked me to do the earlier contract, called out of the blue, and told me they had a full-time contract gig for me, which I could work from home. Regrettably, I had to tell them I could only work part-time, since I was homeschooling my children, and that I would have to take a break in September, because we’d scored cheap tickets to Australia in May for those dates. I still got the gig, though it started out with the Ghastly Powerpoint, at which point I figured my far more unconventional Powerpoints ended it just as suddenly.

And so, we packed up the family to go to Albuquerque, where we got to take part in four days of movie production, thanks to our big Atomic Avenue balloon, playing part of a setting. Yup, on top of everything else this year, we were in a movie. Having lost 10 pounds from the sheer stress and horror of PowerPoint, I put most of my energy into eating food off the craft table, and walking around downtown Albuquerque. Albuquerque is a funky little town, exactly the place where you can imagine a character from a Stan Ridgway song settling in after the car he (or she) was driving breaks down for the last, irreparable time.

When I came back, I was told my job would now be full-time, which left me with a different crisis. I might be able to keep the academics going, but there was no way I could serve Kelly’s social needs, work 40 hours a week, and remain sane. It was a real crisis for Peter and me, but at the last minute (after public school had already started and the Friday before this school began), we discovered there was a place we could affordably (given my job) send her. And so, we sent Kelly to private school, yet unexpected twist in the year.

In September, we went to Australia, which turned out to be both more and less exotic than we expected. Due to a horrendous dust storm, and our fear of a recurrence, we stuck close to the beaches between Brisbane and Sydney. More than anything, Australia struck us as alt.California: a beach- and mall-loving culture, albeit populated by friendly, docile British commonwealth folks. The beaches were stunning. The sky and most animals were weird (i.e. we saw a cassowary, but it still seems like an escapee from a childrens’ movie.) And most surprisingly, there are too few Australians: most of the country is extremely rural, and even Sydney seemed closer in size to a city like San Francisco, than to a big one, like London.

When I returned, I found it I was scheduled to travel out to Maryland for my job. It was several long days of business meetings, which included a fancy dinner at Zaytinya in DC, and seeing the beauty of autumn on the East Coast. My job became a bit more surreal after that though: it was like I’d been switched into a higher gear, and the wheel popped off, but I had to keep driving.

Just as the gig began to veer badly, I received some shocking news: my former neighbor, Dave, had unexpectedly died. It put me in a philosophical mood: was all this worth it, when life is so short? When my job finally sputtered to a halt a few weeks later, I collapsed in sheer exhaustion for 2 days, during which the consultancy had to prod me to do just a few more hours towards future assignments.

So I end the year knowing very little of what I can expect in 2010. This last year has been odd; I can only hope the next one is a little less so, but I don’t know that I can count on that.

Yesterday, he had a language arts lesson in which he had to do a compare and contrast essay on the music he likes, and that which is parents like. He found it difficult, since we all pretty much like the same thing. However, for the next day’s lesson, he has to review and deconstruct someone else’s essay on the same subject, so I had to write one too. In the end, I realized I’m turning into my parents. Well, ok, my father (he was the one who loved classical music; I didn’t want to get into Heino). And I never thought I’d be digging classical music, and that when I would, I would discover both my father and I were into emo classical. Here’s the essay:

I like listening to indie rock bands like Everclear, Oasis, and Brand New. My parents liked to listen to classical music, especially the Romantic composers like Schumann and Strauss.

At first, I thought our musical tastes had nothing in common. Rock music is faster and more energetic. It also has lyrics I can relate to: it’s like musical poetry.  It takes a long time to listen to a symphony, while you can listen through a rock song in about 3 minutes. If you really like the song, you just listen to it again, while you can’t really repeat a one-hour symphony.

But now that I’m older, I see the similarities. Indie rock bands express emotion; so do the Romantic composers. They just do it in a different way. For instance, Gustav Mahler, a romantic composer, put syncopation into his 9^th Symphony to make it sound like a broken heart. Some people call this a “symphonic poem” and it’s like an all-music version of the poetic lyrics I like in rock music. Also, romantic classical music almost always has a motif running through the symphony, so you essentially have a song that repeats itself within the a bigger musical story.

So it turns out my musical preferences really may not be that different from my parents’ after all.

A variety of factors (such as flat bike tires) delayed our lesson, but it was fun to be able to do it again (even though we couldn’t make it all the way to the end.) It was also interesting to see how things had changed since last year.

There were fewer casual walkers, but far more groups of people who were enjoying the big park for its recreational features. In particular, I was intrigued by some Chinese people who seemed to be doing tai chi with swords:

Last year, the geese were nearly obese and waddled in front of our bikes, probably expecting us to throw them food. This year, the geese were noticeably thinner, and not quite as eager to get in our way. Nonetheless, Neil got off his bike and shooed them back to the lake, just like he used to do last year.

While Neil was navigating his way through a phalanx of strollers who didn’t understand English, I spoke to one a fisherman by the lake. There were also noticeably more people fishing that last year, though they still don’t keep and eat the fish they eat. They can only fish for sport, and toss the fish back after they’ve caught them, because they’re tainted with mercury.

In any case, I was happy to have PE back because we’ve both missed it. The week after next, we’ll be checking out the homeschoolers’ trampoline hour at Sky High Sports in Santa Clara, a PE activity Neil particularly loves.

For one thing, Neil’s friend Bill Gosper lives near Stanford, and he stopped by each evening with some treats from his favorite restaurants (or once, we went out to eat together.) Then he and Neil would have fun talking about number theory together for a while. For me, it was sort of like being Alice in Wonderland at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, as catered by Dravidian and Mandarin Cheshire cats.

It didn’t get any better when I put out the idea of staying even later on Tuesday to check out the Stanford Math Circle. I got hopelessly disoriented trying to find the math building (so Alice in Wonderland, isn’t it?), but we got there in time. We found Bill Gosper (who naturally knew where the math building was), and shortly thereafter young math and science geeks started showing up and descending upon the puzzles Gosper had brought along just for fun. The regular math circle room was occupied, so the group disassembled and reassembled itself somewhere else in the building, which I also got disoriented in trying to find.

The official math puzzler for the group that day was called Quad, the strategy for which solving it is (and you know I’m quoting here) isomorphic to Lagrange’s algorithm for the reduction of binary quadratic forms with integral coefficients.  Hordes of children grabbed multi-colored rectangular shapes to solve the problems in many different ways, and the place took on the air of a chaotic, happy, nerdy party. I decided I’d be better off socializing with the other parents.

The next day, after dropping off Neil, I took Kelly to Oakland to the very charming Fairyland, which has its own blog entry here. It has its own set of Alice in Wonderland themed attractions, like an Alice in Wonderland carousel and an Alice in Wonderland maze.

Neil was excited about his Maya project, and we all popped up to Stanford together to see it at the camp’s official commencement, which included a celebration of the students coming out for a family accolade for their project premieres:

Neil did really well in the course, and his instructor complimented him on his hard work. His animation is too big for my blog, but here he is showing off the spaceship model which was part of his project:

After Neil gave us a full demo, all of us (including Bill Gosper) went over to the student union to have some celebratory ice cream. Kelly, wanting to be part of the fun, brought along a paper star from the dorm in which Neil had had his classes, and showed it to Bill Gosper: “Look it’s a star!”

“Do you know what else it is?” he told her. “It’s a pentagram.”

“No, it’s not!” she declared. “It’s a star, Bill Gosper, and I mean it!” (She’s never going to live that story down.)

I’d say that was the end of my Alice in Wonderland week, but the next day, on Saturday, we were splashing in the pool after lunch time. I had gone in to the kitchen to get something for Peter when the doorbell rang. I had been expecting Shiaw-Ling who said she’d come by around that time, so I simply opened the door in my bathing suit. It was a completely different Asian friend, Junko, whom I haven’t seen in 5 years, and who’d just decided to drop by while she was in the area. She hadn’t brought a bathing suit, so we had to promise to get together later, and Shiaw-Ling didn’t show up until many hours later.

I’m looking forward to a week I can understand.