Mary in Brazil

Gift

 

Tomorrow I will give this bracelet to my goddaughter, E..  It was a birthday present to me when I was seven.  E. had her first birthday a few weeks ago.  It'll be a while before she can wear it, and who knows where I'll be then?  Most of the charms are from my childhood, except for the hummingbird on the far right and the tag that's under mine, which has my goddaughter's name and date of birth.  The jeweler cleaned the bracelet a few weeks ago and attached the new charms, changed the clasp and engraved a new tag.  I had him put the tab on the same link as my old one, so that the newer tag would cover the old one.

When the bracelet was given to me, the charms were things that already made sense in my life:  Mistress Mary Quite Contrary, the swimmer, the cat, thimble and scissors (even then I was making things out of fabric and thread), and the rollerskates.  The people in the jewelry store were very excited to clean and repair the bracelet and to add the hummingbird and the tag.  

It will be several years before I know if E. likes the bracelet, but her mom, S., is very excited.  Last week S. took E. to visit her birth mother and sent some photos.  The pictures show a very pretty woman holding E., with the two of them looking into each other's eyes.  S. says the birth mother is at peace with her decision to let S. and her husband adopt E.  I wonder how it will all feel to E. when she is older, how E. will define family, how all the links in the chain will fit together.

Carrying Stuff Around...Again

I left the planning board early (10:00 p.m.) last night, as I knew today would be a long day.  The upshot of the meeting was that we'll have to make modifications to our design, but the project will still happen.  It was recommended that we seek outside facilitation.  I've recommended the Public Conversations Project as a resource, but we'll see what happens.  It seems to me that we all have a chance to get out of a very destructive process.

As for my job, this academic year has brought interesting work - a lot of it.  It's tough on everyone.  I work with four courses, one of which is a product development class in the mechanical engineering department.  It's very intensive.  The second most demanding course is microfluidics, which is all new material for me.  The mech e course is complex, but I get what it's about.  Microfluidics is way over my head, but it's important that I do well because it was a course that has been held up as an exemplary combination of subject instruction and communication practice.  I have several students who are in both classes at the same time, so we are all staggering through this intensity together.  Today the microfluidics students had a big paper due, and tomorrow night the mech e class has a big presentation.  As I was sitting in lab waiting for students to consult with me about their presentations, I started to check on the microfluidics course site for the papers that were due.  There was a commotion in the lab and it became evident that one of the students had collapsed.  I realized it was the same student whose paper I was reading on line.

More Stuff I Carry Around

This past Christmas my sister asked what I wanted and I said, A new backpack.  She asked whether I wouldn't prefer a computer case or a briefcase or something more sophisticated.  So I told her that I needed something that would hold my wallet, laptop, papers for grading (some professors still insist on hardcopy, and I need to print out a 30-page design document for a ship's hull in order to be sure I'm actually reading it), my lunch, the occasional quart of milk and half-dozen apples I pick up on the way home, swim clothes and shampoo,shoes (for when I'm trying to look like an actual adult), and storytelling stuff.  

The final category, the storytelling stuff, is the one that sometimes crosses worlds.  During the week, I mostly carry around objects that wouldn't get me into much trouble going through airport security.  (Except perhaps for the killer shampoo.)  But on Sundays I usually carry little figures or model silhouettes of ancient cities, or my best approximation of the Ark of the Covenant (matchbox painted gold mounted on popsicle sticks) - and usually an X-Acto knife, scissors, clay and assorted Sharpies for those last-minute repairs and tweaks.  Most of the time I manage to keep all the payloads separate and get the sharp objects out before I have to fly anywhere - though it has been a close call sometimes.

Yesterday morning I found a lump of modeling clay in one of the little pockets.  Modeling clay comes in very handy on Sunday mornings.  It helped me to hold up the fenceposts when I told the story of the Israelites' Tent of Meeting, and I also used it to great effect when I illustrated passing along the light - with a birthday candle for each child in a pyrex roasting pan.  In a crisis, a lump of clay can quiet an upset kid.  Yesterday, as I was sitting in my office contemplating my own general crankiness and mortality, I started playing with the lump of clay and made this little cat.  (I have told my officemates that she is our Scaremouse, as our building has its share of critters.)  Every time I try to make something that actually resembles something from the world around me, I get a disproportionate amount of satisfaction from the results, even if they're not really successful.

Tonight a hearing took place at City Hall regarding our church's plans to tear down our old parish hall (which is a huge firetrap) and, partnering with a developer, build a mixed-use building that would house classrooms and church offices on the ground floor and condos on the upper three floors.  It's a scary project, but I don't think it's possible for the parish to do nothing.  Right now our old buildings are firetraps, not handicap accessible, and very wasteful to heat.  The developer who would build the condos would help finance repairs to the historic sanctuary (which would remain on the site.)  I've been dreading the meeting.  Last week I talked to a friend who lives on the residential street that abuts our property, and she said that she mostly objects to the attitude of the developer and of our rector.  She has felt patronized and dismissed.  I held back from saying, "Hey, me too."  That conversation actually stopped me from writing to the planning board in support of the project.  During this past week I have been turning over in my mind what I wanted to see happen and what was the ethical choice.

As it turned out, the meeting was not as acrimonious as I had feared.  We had a good presentation, and the neighbors made valid points.  I think the planning board is going to make the developers modify their design before they grant us the variance - which I think would be the equitable solution.  For the first time in several weeks I may actually get a good night's sleep.

If it's Sunday, this might be Samsara

I don't like our church's new rector.  There, I've said it.  Even though she's a woman.  Even though what she preaches from the pulpit isn't anything I disagree with, I don't like her.  Perhaps part of the reason why I haven't posted in so long is that until I admit this fact, nothing else I write rings quite true.  As I write this, I realize that my likes and dislikes and passions and irritations are just an illusion.  On a purely pragmatic, unenlightened level, it's really kind of a bore disliking people.  It keeps getting in the way, limiting one's options.  Yet I'm still carrying this thing around, and what a wonderful set of fantasies and dramas I'm spinning as a result.

In other news, the work tunnel continues tomorrow.  I took today off and slept some and made some phone calls and wrote a long email to a good friend who has Stage 3 cancer.  The work tunnel is quite handy, actually.  I had forgot how many excuses it provides.

Within all that, some things are still endlessly fascinating.  I wish I had taken pictures of The Tent of Meeting I made out of linen and felt scraps, with an Ark of the Covenant made from two matchboxes painted gold and a pair of popsicle sticks.  At the 'Tvte I am working with a product development class where the students have to design and prototype a marketable invention.  They do elevator speeches and sketch model presentations, and a series of increasingly high-stakes talks throughout the semester.  On Wednesdays I work with two sets of students back to back, from 2 in the afternoon until 10 at night, with a two-hour break in the middle.  It's exhausting (this particular assignment is only 35% of my job), but exciting to see the results of my work when the students present.  Not that it's perfect.  But it does make a difference.

Church, on the other hand, is the ultimate dysfunctional family.  Friends on the outside ask why I don't leave.  But I'm weighing one year of bad against the previous 16 years of good.  And then there are the people I would leave behind.  A friend who knows me well suggested that shedding all of that would make room for a major transformation in my life.  I'm not sure.  But Sunday afternoon I watched the Honkfest parade as it passed our church, then went out to lunch with friends and did not talk about church politics and then went for a bike ride and ended up at the SSJE monastery for Evensong.  The harmonies that the monks sing are so tight and perfect that the daily office book has a tactful little note asking (basically) that we not sing along unless we know what we are doing.  And it's enough to sit still and be transported.  At Evensong on Sunday there were three of us women sitting silently in the choir stalls listening to the monks, and at the end I felt purified, as if the incense had gone through me and cleaned out the annoyance.  I rode my bicycle along Memorial Drive and a boy about eight years old politely called out, "On your left," and passed me riding with all his might.  For a moment, riding with the blue sky and the river and the slanting sun, I could see every leaf on the tree and feel my heart beating and sense my friend with cancer who lives on the Cape and whom I can't get away to visit.  But for a moment it was all complete.

Good to Bee Back

No, I wasn't in Brazil.  I spent last week in the Work Tunnel. It's been a long time since I've been in a serious work tunnel, not in about 10 years.  It was a week of long teaching days and grading homework at night.  And then a weekend of church stuff.  I'm feeling as if I've eaten half a pound of penny candy - sort of buzzed and yet lethargic.

Two friends of mine have recently been diagnosed with cancer.  My most recent mammogram was irregular and I'm going for an ultrasound tomorrow.  I haven't told anyone.  It's not the sort of thing I discuss with colleagues.  I don't want to worry my mom.  And there's a kind of institutional concern that I'd get from church folks that I'm not quite ready for.

It's probably nothing, right?

 

Stuff I Learn from Kids

In my years as a technical writer and lecturer, I have amassed lots of anecdotal information about how people learn.  Some of it I've gleaned through reading, or in courses or workshop, or from on-the-job experiences such as seeing usability testing done on what I've written.  I've also been videotaped while teaching and presenting, and on Sunday mornings when I do storytelling other adults often drop in, observe, and offer questions and suggestions.  Until lately, I've assumed that I'm being effective when all of the "customers" leave the appearing satisfied and happy.

But learning is often troublesome.  Now, I don't mean that learning should be the kind of humiliationfest that many of us remember from school.  Kids are curious.  They want to learn - at least, until that desire gets knocked out of them.  And I'm in love with anything really interesting that helps people to learn, whether it be exercises, physical materials, or techniques.  When techniques and materials work, the atmosphere can be magic.  Something takes over, and the group is awestruck at having traveled somewhere it never could have predicted.  Unfortunately, the technique that is magical in one setting can fail miserably in another.

Next week I will make my final two visits to the Paraclete Academy.  I've been working with three groups of kids on their writing.  The Universe couldn't have offered me a more interesting scenario.  The first group of kids, Mr. K's group, loves to write.  They have an intrinsic sensitivity to character and symbol.  On my first morning I read their assignments and wrote each one a little note prompting them to think further, and they did.  They free wrote in class, they shared with each other, they wanted to keep working on the questions I had asked them.  Since then we've talked about round and flat characters and I have taught them how to do a formal, multilevel outline.  They've eaten everything up.

The second group, Mr. B's class, and the third group, Ms. I's class, are more mixed.  The writers of the strongest essays often hate to respond in class.  What I mean to be gentle, conversational prompting comes across as grilling.  Some things bomb.  Some things work.  Last week I wanted to get Ms. I's to generate more ideas.  I prompted them to generate lists of rhyming words, riff on some of their ideas, then revise key sentences and expand on their ideas. One girl resisted starting a fresh page in her notebook because she didn't want to waste paper.  Some kids wrote lists as long as your arm.  Others suffered, almost physically.  At the end of class, one girl shyly approached me with her paper:  she had expanded and deepened her ideas using the technique I'd recommended.  It could have been an illustration for a teaching manual.

Today I brought in "found language."  I went on Amazon and took a positive (five-star) review of the book they are reading and a negative (one-star) review, cut apart the sentences, and mixed the two reviews together.  The kids had to work to piece together the paragraphs and figure out which sentences were part of which review.  For the most part, the kids had fun.  A boy who would not freewrite in previous workshops was suggesting rules for discerning with sentences went with which reviews.  But the kid who had loved to rhyme was silent, wouldn't even read aloud from the original paragraphs.

Last week is my final week.  I'm feeling as if the kids who are good writers would probably have written for anyone, no matter what.  They were just hungry for the invitation.  The kids who struggle in class are interesting, though.  None of them is rebellious.  They all like me and talk to me outside of class.  But some things light them up and others do not.

Cross-Town Bicycling

I suppose that geeks who are geekier than I have figured out how to affix a camera to a bicycle and shoot photos while riding.  On the other hand, given the amount of traffic and the fact that this is Greater Boston, it's probably for the best that there's no other choice than to focus on navigating the traffic.

My crosstown trip is only a temporary routine.  I have been volunteering three mornings a week with the Paraclete Academy, located in what used to be the Order of the Holy Paraclete in South Boston.  (Longtime readers may remember that I spent the Martin Luther King day of service there a few months ago.)  Working with the kids is fun and challenging (more details in a future post), but the commute has been an interesting step outside my comfort zone.  Although I've had a bicycle in the city for the past 25 years, I usually ride it away from the center of town to the suburbs, or else I commute along routes that I know very well.  The ride from Cambridge to Southie takes me over the Longfellow Bridge, along Charles Street, across the Back Bay, the tip of Chinatown, through the South End, and then into South Boston.  The only tense part of it is crossing under the Route 93 overpass, which still fences off Southie from the rest of town.

As a long-time urban pedestrian and citizen of public transportation, I've been fascinated with the way in which the arteries and expressways for cars make locations that are actually close together seem far apart.  According to Google Maps, my house is less than six miles from the Paraclete.  The hill on which my condo building stands was once the location of a Revolutionary fortress, so it's likely that a couple of hundred years ago someone with good eyesight could have climbed a tree and seen the point on which the Paraclete would one day stand, on the other side of fields and swampland.  Without knowing exactly where the land was solid before the Back Bay and parts of East Cambridge were filled in, it's hard to know whether someone could have walked from one point to the other, however.

Broadway in Cambridge is wide, predictable, and fairly free of broken glass.  There is enough room to ride clear of swinging car doors, though double-parked cars and "vultures" hovering in wait for a parking spot can be a problem.  The biggest hazards are the faster cyclists who pass with no warning.  In the world of city riders there are those who, like basketball or football players, look for undefended territory and zoom into the empty spots as fast as they can.  Then there are those of us with heavier bikes, who aren't speed training, and who like our teeth, who slow down when there are guys working in the street, extra cars, and pedestrians - with the naive idea that a little extra lead time might help us make better decisions.  We are mere obstacles to the zoomers, who pass us without warning and represent the most significant danger in the commute.

Surprisingly enough, the cars and trucks are not that big a deal in the Back Bay and South End, as those of us who are flowing with the signals are all going at about the same rate.  And changing lanes within the downtown area is not the nightmare I had feared either, though it certainly keeps me focused.  The biggest problem on my first couple of days was figuring out exactly how to get into South Boston from the South End neighborhood.  Despite the proximity of the two neighborhoods (and the similarity of their names), they are still cut off from one another by Route 93.  Also, it is no fun to hit South Boston at the lower, more industrial end, on the border of Dorchester.   When the speed limits are higher and the roads no longer form a grid, it's a less even playing field for trucks and bicycles.  The shortest route is to cross Albany Street with the traffic, ride under the overpass, then ride along the sidewalk over the bridge onto the "other Broadway," the one in South Boston.

In all my years of living in the Boston area, walking great distances within the city, taking buses and subways, sometimes driving and often taking the wrong turn or the wrong exit, I have never had such a sense of the interconnectedness of neighborhoods as I've gained through these rides.  When I was first out of college, I spent a year as an office temp and was sent all over the city.  I recall working for a month at a print shop in South Boston, though after all these years I can't remember the address.  The hours were 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and I had no time off for lunch, so I'd get a big greasy breakfast at a place where the truckdrivers and factory workers ate.  As I pass through the neighborhood I try to remember where the print shop and the restaurant were.  The print shop is surely long gone, as hot type was on its way out even 30 years ago.  The restaurant could be one of any number of little corner places, or it could be gone as well. 

Points along my route bring back memories of other temp jobs, some amateur theater gigs, places where I caught ferries to Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, professional theater productions I attended, and old warehouses where I used to buy end pieces of wool fabric when I sewed my own clothes.

The route home is a bit easier to navigate, as East Berkeley Street takes me easily to Clarendon, and I follow that into the Back Bay to Marlboro.  There is nothing in the world like riding through the Back Bay on a warm day in the summer.  You're at just the right height to appreciate the various carved doorways and flights of front steps.  The gardens with their roses and lilies seem to frame the road.  In a car you might be driving too fast to see them, and on foot you miss the effect of having them all pour past you in the great here and now.

Last Full Day

Today I worked a three-hour shift and then a five-hour shift on the legislative floor, which meant that because we have to report to the volunteer center half an hour early, my day started at 8:00 and ended around 6:30.  At General Convention all manner of legislation gets discussed, amended, and voted on by the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies.  I was assigned to the House of Deputies, who are the elected representative from the various Episcopal Dioceses.  Each diocese elects one member of the clergy and one lay person, and these are known as Deputies, not delegates.  The name "delegate" would imply voting on behalf of a constituency, and deputies are instead free to vote their consciences on the various issues.  The atmosphere at times is similar to what I've seen on C-Span, and other times there are breaks of various sorts.

Province 9 of the Episcopal Church includes Central Ecuador, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Columbia.  My job was to assist people who wished to speak at the podium closest to the Province 9 delegation; they placed me there because I can communicate in Spanish.  ("Speaking Spanish" might be overstating things a bit.)  Forget what you've heard about "the gay issue."  The most painful and complex debate I heard was about the recent election of a new bishop to Central Ecuador.  The question gets at all of those awkward issues that crop up in the aftermath of a leadership crisis.  Several years back the bishop of Ecuador had to step down because of fiscal mismanagement.  Since then the diocese has had outside assistance by other bishops and this recent election was meant to be a fresh start.  Unfortunately, two members of the delegation protested the manner in which the bishop had been elected.  Others from the delegation, as well as outside observers, testified that the election had functioned according to canon law.  There were also questions about the manner in which documents had been translated and whether the correct translations had been available.  In the end, the bishop's election was ratified.  Those who supported the election and those who had contested it were seated at the same tables.

Tonight is my last night in Anaheim.  I fly home on the red-eye tomorrow.  It's been a heck of a week.  

I've run into friends from various church activities, including good friends from the Episcopal church in Brazil.  Last week I got together with a college friend I hadn't seen in 30 years, and last night I had a (much too brief) get-together with another friend who's been living out of the country for five years.  I've collected a lot of literature, received some invitations, and over-internalized some criticism.  I've been living on too-rich meals, supplemented with shredded wheat, skim milk, and nectarines from the fridge in my room.  It's been a lot of fun, but I'm ready to go home.

Anaheim on Sunday

Eucharist in the Anaheim Convention Center is conducted on an industrial scale.  The choir is big.  The presiders, readers, and preachers sit on a raised platform above the crowd.  Twenty eight of us volunteered to be ushers.  There was a whole flotilla of servers deputized to distribute bread and wine at Communion at various stations throughout the hall.  Rather than the normal line of people waiting (which I often find is a good time to meditate, watch people, or daydream) everyone moves through the administration of Body and Blood pretty rapidly.  It's impressive to watch the streams of people.

In the photo above, members of the National Altar Guild are preparing the bread and wine before the service.  Normally, one of those loaves would be plenty for a medium-to-large sized congregation.

Everything feels a little larger than life, or perhaps it's just more concentrated.  I didn't get a shot of the picketers who are protesting the Convention, calling Bishop Robinson nasty names, calling us Pharisees, asking why we hate God.  I also didn't take a photo of the volunteers' area, where we sit at the beginning of our work shift in our yellow aprons waiting to be called; the atmosphere is a strange mix of bus station and summer camp.

The consolation and desolation data points are more pronounced as well.  Yesterday another Gringa missionary and I had breakfast with the presiding bishop of Brazil, his wife, and the secretary general.  We ate our $15 pancakes and spinach omlettes and reminisced about good times, traded stories, and

 gave out the latest bulletins on friends and family.  The bishop thanked us and made a point of inviting me back next year, and it was an opportunity to mention some projects on behalf of Brazilian friends who don't get to spend a week's pay on eggs at the Anaheim Hilton.  I was feelin' pretty good about myself until the wheel turned.

Later that evening, after a day of exchanging business cards and talking about Relief and Development, Mission Funding, Lifelong Education, and Women's Issues, I was feeling myself to be quite the missionary entrepreneur.  After a conference on Peace and Justice I happened to share some of my elation with a friend who questioned me in detail about my plans and motives.  At the end of twenty minutes, I felt like a wimpy, directionless 16-year-old.  My friend told me that I was stuck in a vortex of good intentions and shouldn't pay attention to any praise I had received.  It did occur to me to breathe and remember that praise and blame are both illusions, so I breathed that in for awhile.  But at the end of the evening I felt beaten up and kind of peeved.  And yet, these are the times we are closest to reality:  at the edge of Disneyland, after eating frozen yogurt, as we try to make our way home through the dark.

General Convention

For many Episcopalians, this phrase says it all.  It means the big event that happens once every three years, where controversies get aired, legislation gets drafted, alliances get formed - and also where people meet and hang out.  I'm here to meet up with some people from the church in Brazil, as well as some friends from the Education for Ministry online course.  Although I have no "official" status in the workings of the convention, I'm here as a volunteer.  It takes an army of us to register attendees, hand out leaflets, set up chairs, run around with messages, and do the million little jobs that help these events happen.  As our church is very hierarchical, the management structure of even the simplest task tends to be broken down into supervisory units that are at times unintentionally hilarious.  More on that later.  This is a short post, but I promise to say more soon.