The Cranberry Scare of 1959 and Other Family Stories

It's been a long time since all five John siblings have gathered around a holiday table. But wherever they are this time of year, you can be sure that someone will share the story of the Cranberry Scare of 1959. 

This cautionary tale, which made headlines in November and December 1959, is retold year after year by the eldest John, my brother-in-law Steven. As the oldest, he has the clearest memories of the Cranberry Scare.  Each Thanksgiving that we spend together, he shares the story with a combination of horror and glee--the way that many of the best stories are told, if not at Thanksgiving then at least at Halloween.   Steve's timing, another important storytelling skill, is impeccable. Steven begins the tale just after the turkey is carved and slices are distributed, and  just before we pass the gravy and cranberry sauce. We pause and laugh nervously, but those who want cranberry sauce with their turkey then proceed (at their own risk) to spoon it out.

Maybe you and your family have not heard about the Cranberry Scare of 1959. 

So, let me tell you what happened as reported by the New Yorker magazine:

On November 9th 1959, Arthur S. Flemming, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, told America that a small portion of the cranberry crop from the Pacific Northwest had tested positive for aminotriazole--a powerful herbicide used in the cranberry bogs. What's more, aminotriazole had been linked to abnormal growths in lab rats. Ocean Spray, the nation's leading cranberry grower, argued that a person would “have to consume carloads” of cranberries to trigger ill effects. Still, Flemming warned America's housewives, that if they could not determine the origin of their berries, "be safe...  and don't buy.”

This Thanksgiving 1959 ad from the Saturday Evening Post showed cranberries on the holiday table, even though ,after the scare, the Coca Cola company wanted the possible danger removed. Unfortunately, in those days there was no digital remastering, and it was too late to delete the offending fruit.

There were no cranberries served at the John family Thanksgiving in 1959.  My husband George was just a year old at the time, and does not recall the omission, but apparently others do.

Here is the national significance:
The Cranberry Scare of 1959 was the first food scare in the United States involving food additives. Well before gluten, MSG, and genetic modification, the cranberry scare had Americans wondering what was being added to their foods. It started a trend known by some today as "conscious consumerism" and that others call "fear of food."
As for the national cranberry market, a fifty-million-dollar-a-year business collapsed overnight, said the New Yorker.  And in December, 1959, the industry trade paper, Cranberries, reported that mid-November sales of fresh cranberries had dropped sixty-three per cent from the year before; canned sales were down seventy-nine per cent. Ocean Spray’s market researchers found that almost half the abstaining shoppers intended never to buy cranberries again. It took three years for the cranberry industry to recover, aided by a government subsidy program. 

In his 2010 dissertation on the cranberry scare written at Texas A&M University, researcher Mark Ryan Janzen reports that short term effects of the panic extended until 1962, when price per barrel returned to pre-1959 levels. Janzen also describes the media's role in creating the panic, as well as (then) Massachusetts Senator John F Kennedy's attempts to revive the industry in his home state--even going so far as to be photographed consuming large amounts of cranberries.



Here is the significance to the John family:

None of us who entered the John family either by blood or by marriage, can look a cranberry in the eye--especially at Thanksgiving time. Many of us feel compelled to share the tale of the cranberry scare with the friends and families we now share Thanksgiving with. If we are hosting Thanksgiving and are thus compelled to make cranberry sauce, some of us eschew Ocean Spray and get into discussions with the Whole Foods produce people about the origin and quality of the cranberries they sell. What bogs did they come from and were they grown in cages?

And here's what it all means for you and your family:

Maybe you won't discuss the cranberry scare with your friends and family around the Thanksgiving table. But one of your elders might relate a cautionary tale, and it might be one that you have heard before, in fact, many, many times before. If your family has been in this country for a while, it might be the story of how your relative John Howland fell off of the Mayflower during a storm and had to be rescued with a boat hook. If your family had a lot of stoners, it might be a story about how the cat inhaled your smoke fumes, got stoned,  and fell (not jumped, but fell--this is how the story is told) off the top shelf of a bookcase. The cat lived. 
I guess that if the cat had died, the tale would be more cautionary.

So why do we really share these stories? 
Research shows that there is an evolutionary advantage.
We know that other mammals like whales and dolphins make sounds to communicate danger.
And that's what our stories can do.
Consider the life lessons that we have already covered, such as:
Think before you eat!
Don't lean to far over a ship railing in a storm!
Keep an eye on what the FDA is doing before you buy stock in a pharmaceutical startup--or cranberries.

Listen up and you will have a better life.
And if you pay close enough attention....you will not be doomed to repeat the mistakes of your ancestors.

My brother-in-law Steven would have been around twelve at the time of the scare--certainly an impressionable age at which to be told that along with ducking and covering to protect yourself from at Russian nuclear attack, a cranberry could kill you.

Vigilance was required!

"Storytelling could be an evolutionary mechanism that helped keep our ancestors alive."

The fastest way to get to San Francisco on a Friday Night is to take 280. You want to avoid the 101 at all costs.

It is kismet that just this morning  I learned about "survival through storytelling" from a student who came into the  Menlo College Writing Center. She arrived with a writing prompt for an essay on narrative nonfiction prepared by her professor, Caroline Caspar. The prompt began with several quotes, like the one above, from the 2014 Atlantic Magazine article, The Psychological Comforts of Storytelling.

In this article, Paris-based writer and historian Cody C. Delistraty, says,

"If I tell you a story about how to survive, you’ll be more likely to actually survive than if I just give you facts. For instance, if I were to say, “There’s an animal near that tree, so don’t go over there,” it would not be as effective as if I were to tell you, “My cousin was eaten by a malicious, scary creature that lurks around that tree, so don’t go over there.” 

This, of course, reminds me of the time I was visiting a well known San Francisco art collector in her Russian Hill home. She pointed to a stone sculpture and said, "this was created by the tribe that ate Michael Rockefeller!"

Granted this has nothing to do with Thanksgiving, although I imagine she might have mentioned it to visiting friends and family at holiday time. I, for one, have never forgotten it--although I am not sure that I will ever find myself art collecting in New Guinea.

Getting back to the Atlantic article, Delistraty observes, "a narrative works off of both data and emotions, which is significantly more effective in engaging a listener than data alone."

 In fact, Jennifer Aaker, a professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that people remember information when it is weaved into narratives “up to 22 times more than facts alone.”

The Pueblo Indians have preserved their culture and traditions through oral storytelling. Here is a storyteller figurine of a woman surrounded by children.

Do you have a story to share this Thanksgiving? 
Does it involve survival? 
Maybe your story will teach us how to live a better life. 
Maybe there's no point to your story at all, but sharing it will be good for your  individual evolution. 
If you are so inclined, write to me and share your story here on my blog, ensuring that all of us receive an evolutionary advantage.

Happy Thanksgiving!

From Generation to Generation: A Conversation With Lillian John

Lillian John at a family wedding earlier this year.

Lillian John, 20, is the youngest of my seven nieces and nephews. Her dad, Nick John, is my husband's brother. Her mom, Grace John, was born in Taiwan. Lillian is now a sophomore at the University of San Francisco--a Jesuit college. She is majoring in finance, but was required to take a theology course. She chose a class called Jews, Judaism and Jewish Identity taught by Dr. Oren Kroll-Zeldin.             
Lillian told me that she chose the course based on three things: 
1)the fine reputation of the teacher, 2)a good friend was taking the class with her and 3)if she got stuck, Aunt Lauren could help her out. As part of her class, she attended services at  San Franciso's Congregation Emanu-El, established in 1850 and Congregation Sherith Israel established in 1851. Another assignment was to interview a Jewish person about how the Holocaust and knowledge of the Holocaust affected their view of the world. We spoke at length by phone on Sunday night.  


When our phone call ended, I put down my i-phone and whispered "L’dor vador". It’s a phrase that's often recited in Jewish prayer which means from generation to generation and refers to continuity, and the responsibility of passing on faith, prayer and cultural traditions from generation to generation.


Thank you Lillian for blessing me with that opportunity.
And thank you to my grandparents and great grandparents who had the foresight to come to America in the early 20th century--literally enabling my life to be possible.

Here is Lillian's report:

I interviewed my aunt, Lauren. My aunt is sixty years old and she is an Ashkenazi Jew.  She was born in Queens and now lives in Menlo Park. Lauren is in an interfaith marriage with my Uncle George who is Catholic. Lauren calls herself an observant Jew because she attends Shabbat and keeps the holidays. However, she does not practice Halakah nor is she Kosher. In June, she is going to have her Bat Mitzvah at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills. She is working very hard learning and practicing her Hebrew.

Congregation Beth Am 

When did you first learn or hear about the Holocaust? How did it make you feel?

The first time Lauren heard about the Holocaust was when she was ten years old. She saw a numbers tattooed on one of her neighbors’ arms. There were a lot of Jews who survived the Holocaust in her neighborhood and many of them had tattoos. She asked her mother what the tattoos meant and, her mother told her that the neighbors were in a prison camp in Europe. Her mother did not tell her the horrors of the Holocaust or what happened in the camps. Lauren had to read “The Diary of Anne Frank” for school but, she still did not know what happened in camps because the diary ends when the family is captured. When she was 11 or 12 she went to Amsterdam with her family. They visited the Anne Frank house and, she saw graphic pictures of what happened during the Holocaust. She finally realized what actually happened and, she felt very sick from looking at the pictures. When she got older, movies and documentaries about the Holocaust were released and she had more knowledge of what had happened. She felt very disgusted watching the films.  

Did your family go through the Holocaust?

No one in Lauren’s immediate family went through the Holocaust. She told me if they did, she would not be here talking to me. Her father's family came to American before World War I from Russia and Poland. Her mother's family came to America in 1920 because they wanted religious freedom and the Jews were being persecuted in Eastern Europe. They wanted to leave because they believed things would get worse. Rose Goldstein (grandmother) wanted her sister Breina (Great Aunt) to come with her to America. Breina did not want to leave Russia because her husband did not want to go and she did not want to leave him. Twenty-one years later, the Nazis invaded Russia. Breina and her husband’s family did not go to camps. Instead, the Nazis lined them up on and shot them into a ravine. The family did not hear anything from her and they wanted to find out if she was okay. Years later, after the war, they found out what happened to Breina and the family.

This is a photograph of the synagogue in Shepetovka, Ukraine, where my maternal grandparents worshipped. It was a stone building that was built in the late 1800s. It no longer exists, but
Shepetovka now has a two room synagogue that was first rebuilt by the Soviets after WW II and used as a basketball court. More recently, the synagogue was rebuilt by the tiny Jewish community. There are now approximately 175 Jews in Shepetovka, compared to the estimated 3700 Jews who lived there when my grandparents left in 1919 .(source: http://jewua.org/about-us/)

How did the Holocaust affect your family?
Did it affect you as well?

The Holocaust affected her mother greatly. Her mother talked about the Holocaust all the time. Lauren’s parents believed it could happen again. Even though her parents were born in the U.S., they never felt completely safe. If something political happened, they would wonder if it was good or bad for the Jews. Lauren does not have the exact same feelings as her parents. She does not feel the same danger but, she is aware of genocides and sees it more as a global issue. She did have a panic attack when the white supremacists had the protest in Charlottesville. The supremacists shouted “Jews will not replace us” and they chanted the same things as the Nazis. Seeing this on T.V. made her very scared and shocked. It did remind her of the Holocaust because there were Nazis doing the exact same thing during the War.

Do you feel resentment towards Germans or Germany?

Lauren said it took her a long time to get over hating the Germans. She thought they were horrible. She had this idea that all Germans were evil and, she would never go to Germany. In her twenties, she started to work with people who were from Germany. She was surprised how nice they were and all of them felt bad about the Holocaust. Now, she has no issues with Germans or Germany because she has met and worked with people who were from Germany.

Do you think the Holocaust re-shaped you as a person?

She thinks it did re-shape her as a person. Lauren is aware of what evil people are capable of. She thinks that this awareness changes how she feels about the world. She said she wants to be brave enough to save someone in trouble. She asks herself does she have the courage to do so? Also, Lauren is grateful that her relatives left Europe and came to America. She believes she could not leave everything behind. Lauren wishes she could be as courageous as her relatives.  

I was surprised that she had a direct relative that was involved in the Holocaust. I was not expecting her Great Aunt to be shot instead of going to the camps. When she told me this I felt very sad because it was cruel. Also, I thought she would still have hard feelings for the Germans because they did horrible things to the Jews. If I was her I probably would still feel resentment. I agree with her about having courage. I don’t think I would be willing to sacrifice my life for someone in trouble. It would be a tough decision for me to leave everything and go to another country. It was great talking to my aunt because I got to know a lot more about her and her family.

This is a memorial to the Jews that were shot in the forest outside of Shepetovka into mass graves in 1941 and 1942. My great aunt Breina was one of them.

White Teacher/Black History

“I feared not just the violence of this world, but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort your body to... be taken seriously by colleagues, and ...so as not to give the police a reason. All my life I’d heard people tell their black boys and black girls to “be twice as good,” which is to say “accept half as much.” These words would be spoken... as though they evidenced some unspoken quality, some undetected courage, when in fact all they evidenced was the gun to our head and the hand in our pocket. ” ― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me  (2015)

“It was the Lord who knew of the impossibility every parent in that room faced: how to prepare the child for the day when the child would be despised and how to create in the child - by what means? - a stronger antidote to this poison than one had found for oneself.” ― James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (1955)

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This semester a class of Menlo College literature students are reading both James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son and  Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me.  After the readings and class discussions they must write a paper identifying one or more shared central themes. The next step, on the path to a final essay, is to compare and contrast the works in terms of  style and substance. 

On the surface, the assignment seems straightforward enough--at least to me.  Both works were created some sixty years apart by African American writers/activists. Both works are structured as conversations with and reflections upon the difficulties faced by generations of  black men in America.  Coates structures his book as a letter to son, and Baldwin's essay is an attempt to understand his father's anger and bitterness--the senior Baldwin having died in 1943, when his son was just nineteen.  In each book, the themes of  white supremacy, police brutality, rage, violence and despair are maddeningly the same. It's dangerous to be a black man in America.

Here's Baldwin, again, in Notes of A Native Son, reflecting upon his own father's death: 

"I had discovered the weight of white people in the world. I saw that this had been for my ancestors and now would be for me an awful thing to live with and that the bitterness which had helped to kill my father could also kill me."

And here's Coates addressing the Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, D.C. earlier this year: 

"If you are attempting to study American history and you don't understand the force of white supremacy, you fundamentally misunderstand America."

Over the past few weeks, many students from many different  backgrounds have come into the Writing Center asking for help with this assignment. And they are not there to process the passion of Coates and Baldwin. First and foremost, they are challenged by the compare and contrast elements of the assignment--in essence, two assignments in one. Which quotes should the students select to illustrate their thesis and how should they introduce and place the quotes? 

But wait--first they need a thesis!

 
Most started with a statement like:
"Its dangerous to live in a black body in America."




When I reminded them that the works were written six decades apart, some modified the thesis to:

"It's still dangerous to live in a black body in America."

Some began with: The Obama era is clearly over. 

Others stated Lincoln's words "all men are created equal" were and are meaningless to black people in America. 

As for writing style, most of the students of all backgrounds thought that Coates was the better writer because his direct reporting style was easier for them to understand. Coates writes of "guns to the head, and hands in pockets," while Baldwin has a more poetic language of "antidotes" and "impossiblities"--frequently calling upon the Lord for salvation.


I prefer Baldwin, but I kept out of it. 

Still, judging from the quality of their first drafts, there were a lot of students who read the works carefully, and I wanted to ask each of them how reading these words affected them personally. But that's not my role at the Writing Center. Instead I acted as a (hopefully) competent surgeon, inserting commas, rearranging paragraphs, and parsing quotes, even with Coates' and Baldwin's blood running all over the pages.

Would the students even answer my more personal questions?  I mean, how comfortable would African American young adults be discussing white supremacy with a white professor with graying hair. And there was every possibility that if we got into it at the Writing Center, somebody was going to say something that hurt somebody, and the Writing Center is, by its very mission, a safe place.

The student that  I most wanted to talk to turned out to be  an eighteen-year-old African American woman who came into the writing center exhausted after pulling an all-nighter. At first, I did not think that any conversation would be possible, let alone editing. She was leaning on the table, her head resting on clasped hands.

"Do you want to come back another time," I asked.
"No", she sighed dramatically. "Let's just do this."
She had nothing written on paper, but quotes were underlined in both works.

San Francisco Rally/December 2015

"So what do you think the theme is?" I asked, somewhat weary myself. Hers was the fifth Coates/Baldwin assignment I had worked on that day.

"The theme is WAITING."
"Waiting for what?" I asked.
She picked her head up and looked me in the eye.
"Waiting......... to explode!"
"Okay...put that idea into a thesis"

I don't remember enough to record her word-for-word thesis. But the sentences looked something like this:
African Americans get so frustrated and angry but for a lot of reasons they can't react right away.  Eventually those who feel most vulnerable and powerless will explode in violence. But when they explode white people will kill them.

So here's what I was thinking.
Someday, was this exhausted young woman going to wake up and explode?
Was it going to happen anytime soon?
Had she seen anyone die because they exploded?
What kinds of injustices would make me explode?
I thought of how I felt watching white supremacists march in Charlottesville chanting "Jews will not replace us."
I didn't share that feeling with her.
She had not asked me to share.
I  didn't say to the student, "I know how Baldwin and Coates' rage must feel, because when I was watching the Nazis march in Charlottesville....." 
Because I really, truly, don't know her experience.
I'm not even sure I know mine. 

What I said was:

"You know, in the first sentence you need to put a comma after the word angry and before the word, "BUT", because the word BUT separates two independent clauses. You also need a comma between the clauses "when they explode" and "white people will kill them."

I  hesitantly suggested changing the word "will"--as in "white people will kill them" to a softer "might"--as in "white people might kill them."

I'm not sure if she made that change.

My student left the Writing Center with a well constructed essay. As she was packing up her laptop, I could not resist asking just one question--just one.  

"Do you think that Americans will be reading essays like Coates' and Baldwin's sixty years from now?"

"Yes", she answered, without a bit of doubt.
"But maybe next time the writer will be a woman."

 

Sunday Essays

It was a crisp and sunny autumn Sunday in Menlo Park, with nothing much planned. There was a trip to the Farmer's Market, laundry to do, and a Trader Joe's basil plant to be repotted.

This kind of leisure makes me restless and leads to dangerous introspection about all of the useful or exciting things I could or should be doing. But then the world rushed in and rescued me.
I heard two chimes on my desktop computer and saw that two e-mails had arrived--both with attachments.

"Take a look at what I wrote," each sender asked earnestly. "See what you think."

THE COLLEGE APPLICATION ESSAY

The first request to "take a look" came from a seventeen year old young woman, I'll call "T", who was writing an essay for a college application. I tutor "T" occasionally at her Palo Alto home. She is a very good student, but had asked for some extra help in the wake of her devastating  family loss--her beloved Dad died suddenly at the start of the year of a heart attack. He was getting out of his car and the family found his body in the garage. Their home had become a house of mourning for many weeks. But now, everyone was literally getting up off the couch and tentatively making plans.

T and I had been working on ideas for  her college essay which, as college essays often are, was about how she overcame a challenge. We both knew what the challenge would be, but how could T write about it clearly without letting emotions overcome her--and the writing. She chose to intertwine two challenges--writing about how both some injuries and her Dad's death had impacted her potentially professional ballet career. She said that her Dad was the one who took her to dance class and watched and analyzed her moves, with the  fervor of a sports coach. She described her attorney Dad as a tall, lanky man dressed in jeans and a down vest, crumpled into a tiny folding chair next to the "dance moms" at the studio, intently watching his daughter both in person and up on the video monitor. 
She smiled through tears as she remembered him as "Dance Dad."

 I listened to her ideas and recollections, both of us struggling for composure as we shed a few tears. Now, a month since I had seen her, the essay was done, and she wanted to share it with me.

There were no edits needed here. For one thing, T, had not asked for any. For another, the words had to be hers.  Last but not least, it was a great essay--a standout--that at least in my opinion, would impress the college admission officers.  At the end of my ordinary Sunday, just before Sixty Minutes was about to start, I typed back and told her so. I did ask a question, though. In one part of the essay she mentioned wanting to recover from tendonitis soon enough to dance her favorite role in The Nutcracker. "What was the roles," I asked. "It may not seem important, but little details like that can make an essay "pop" and offer the reader a chance to know you better.

T wrote back, politely, that she had reached her word limit on the essay and would not be adding anything, but thanks for the opinion. She then told me that one of her favorite roles had been the Snow Queen.  I knew that the Nutcracker had been the last ballet that her father had seen her perform in, just a month before he died.  I imagined him either enthralled with her performance or taking notes, perhaps on an i-phone hidden in his lap. Maybe he even sneaked in some photos.Those images were mine, not T's, but the power of her storytelling had led me to create them. 

"Dance Dad" will remain with me for a very long time.

THE PERSUASIVE ESSAY

I had expected the second request that I received on Sunday because I asked a very conscientious Chinese student in her first year at Menlo College to check in with me.  Her American name is Leah.  Her English is excellent and she was able to matriculate immediately into college English classes, without any prerequisite language courses. 

But Leah does not just want to be good; she wants to be great. And all week she had been struggling with a persuasive essay on housing discrimination faced by African Americans. Her essay was inspired by a class reading-- an Atlantic Magazine article by Ta-Nehisi Coates called "The Case For Reparations".  Which meant that Ashely first had to understand what reparations are and were and why African Americans might ask for them.She also had to learn how to do scholarly research and statistical research to describe policies such as "redlining" in which mortgage lending officers(MLOs) separate blacks and whites into neighborhoods in which white buyers and sellers receive more favorable treatment. This meant that she had to learn acronyms like MLO. And she had to learn the three pillars of the persuasive essay--logos(logic), ethos(trust and authority) and pathos(emotion). 

Still with me? We had worked on all of these skills and concepts at the Writing Center, and now Leah was taking the weekend to do her final draft. 
Before she left for the weekend she exclaimed, "I think that racism is RIDICULOUS!"

Then she paused and asked, "What I just said...is that pathos?"

I nodded.

Now, on this Sunday night, the final draft was ready. I opened the e-mail attachment, as if unwrapping a gift or unveiling a painting.

The title of the essay read: Discrimination Still Exists for African Americans In the Housing Market.
The "still" in the title would get to the heart of the matter.
There was the thesis--right in the title.
I hope that her professor agrees.

I corrected some tenses, added some plurals and inserted some commas. I checked her sources for MLA style.
The paper was good to go!

CONCLUSION

Here is a photo of the basil plant that I transplanted on Sunday morning before the e-mails arrived. It is my most tangible accomplishment. When George grinds it into pesto,  it will be my most edible accomplishment. As for the less tangible edits and reactions, they were an honor and a privilege to do--"taking a look" being one of the most wonderful things that a writing teacher or a friend can be trusted to do.

Maybe the edits will be accepted, maybe they won't. But important observations and conversations were held--at least online. I still favor old school personal conversations. But the e-mails provided immediate feedback. I am listening. I am here. And what you say is important. Tell me more. It was also reassuring to know that the writing that all of us did--in forms longer than a tweet or text--still matters.

September Song---Teaching in the Second Half of Life

Back when I was the library director of St Patrick's Seminary, I supervised a cataloger, in his late sixties, who consistently dozed on the job. One minute he would be looking at subject headings on his computer screen and the next moment, his head would drop forward, his eyes would close, and he would nap peacefully, leaning slightly forward in his chair.

He was an intelligent, soft spoken man and a fine cataloger, and the staff and I were willing to overlook it. After all, he did wake up on his own ,eventually, and the cataloging area was in a back office of the library, not visible to the public. I did mention his napping to him, and rather than being apologetic, he was  very defensive. He had heart disease and was on a new medication. How could I discriminate against someone who combatting illness?
He claimed that he had a long commute and it tired him out.
I, on the other hand, could walk to work.
He accused me of ageism.

I  folded...and let it go.
The roof was leaking over the library constructed in the 1890s.
There was fundraising to do.
The Internet was down.....again.
And the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe was approaching and I had to make a display.

All was sort of fine until one day........the West Coast Vocations Directors arrived. These are the men who determine whether they will send students to St Patrick's Seminary, or somewhere else.   We all gathered in a central meeting room to show ourselves at our best, and the cataloger, seated in a front row, promptly and conspicuously fell asleep.
One might think that this would reflect poorly upon HIM.
But no. It reflected poorly upon ME.
Soon after the napping incident, I was called on the carpet for poor supervision.
How could I continue to keep this napper on my staff?
And why hadn't I addressed the problem before he napped at a vocations meeting?
At the very least, I should have known to seat him in the back. Or keep him off the mailing list for the vocations meeting.

I spoke with the cataloger again.
He continued to nap.
And when I left the job, he became the new library director's problem.

That was five years ago.
And guess what?
The cataloger finally retired.
That's the good news.
The bad news?
I am now five years older.
I am working at Menlo College in the Writing Center, where occasionally, just occasionally, early in the morning and late in the evening, I have the urge to nap.

I don't, I tell you, I don't.
I get a cup of coffee.
I stretch.
I listen to Aretha Franklin sing "Respect" on my i-phone.
But the urge is there.
I will be sixty in December and there are times I run on empty.
There are times when I have less than that.

And then I have to PRETEND to run on empty.
Remember when Hillary Clinton pretended not to have pneumonia?
I feel her pain and understand the motivation.
I know there may come a time that I have to retire because I have got a negative fuel tank--and hopefully I will be self aware enough to do it--but not yet, Lord, not yet.

The other morning, a colleague a decade younger then me walked into the Writing Center claiming fatigue.
I told him how relieved I was that he was willing to OUT  himself as tired.
I confessed that I felt like taking a nap myself--but that until my colleague came out to me, I was scared to admit that to anyone much less than to  actually go to my car or an empty office at lunchtime and take a nap.
Heck, I could even go home, I said. I live close enough to the college.

"So here's what you do," said my younger, wiser, mentor.
"Take a blanket and pass out in the bushes outside."
"What?"
"Yes, if you pass out in the bushes, the students will think that you are drunk or stoned, and that will make you seem young and edgy rather than old and tired."




Thankfully, there are still times when my work is incredibly energizing.
I try to capture those moments, literally, to show everyone how energized I am.
This is me on a late shift--I was feeling really good, so I interrupted a group brainstorming session and made the students take this photo at
nine p.m. this past Thursday. They are smiling here because they think I am crazy.
Crazy is better than exhausted.

I felt like Father William, the energetic elder in the Lewis Carroll poem written in 1852.
The poem is included in the Adventures of Alice in Wonderland. If you get a chance, read it in full. It is an inspiration..... along with Aretha Franklin. Even if, like me, you have to enlarge the type.

The Teacher as Tesla: I Used to Have a Personal Brand; Now I Need A Metaphor

Long ago teachers could simply describe their teaching style by saying that they taught high school history or early childhood education or English as a second language. But now, teachers are being encouraged to develop metaphors to describe what they do and how they do it. 

I made this discovery when I joined a  local tutoring company that takes a holistic approach to learning--looking, for example, at issues such as whether an individual student learns better visually or by hearing instructions or by doing a "hands-on" project. By extension, the tutors are also encouraged to take a good look at themselves. 

Here's the ice breaker for next weekend's "teach the teacher" workshop:

What is your teaching metaphor?  

Be prepared to share it with others. 

Rest assured, there is no ONE correct answer.

The founders of this company are kind and reassuring. I am not under any particular metaphor pressure. But competitive person that I am, I want a boffo metaphor.  I want a metaphor that will become the gold standard for future classes--even if there is no one correct answer. I want a metaphor that will make the other tutors take a deep breath and go: WHOAH! Now there's a teacher!

In preparation, I decide take suggestions from people who have seen me teach. My husband George has attended many of my public presentations and has watched me rehearse over the years.

"What's my teaching metaphor?" I ask him suddenly in the car, as he drives me to my job at the Menlo College Writing Center.

"You mean style?" he asks.

"Well....... more like a symbol or visual"

"You're a middle aged Jewish woman." 

(See below--guess which one is me!)

"Yes. That is actually what I am. But I need an image, like a gardener who sows the seeds of knowledge, or an octopus, with eight hands, who multitasks. Or even a Tesla--energy efficient, self driving, and found mostly in California!

George drops me off at school and says he'll get back to me with a metaphor by the end of the day.

When I get to the Writing Center, I decide to ask my boss. I know he'll give a great answer because in addition to running the center,  he is an artist who teaches drawing.

I burst in with "Good morning! What is my teaching metaphor?" 

He's ready for me. 

"Hurricane Harvey!"

"You mean I am a natural disaster?"

He pauses thoughtfully. This is a Writing Center. We are precise with words.
"No....just a whirlwind full of energy!"

"Destructive energy?" 
I am more curious than defensive. In the art world, destructive energy is a good thing.

But then, my first student walks in and we have to quit the discussion.

Later at lunch, I ask a group of colleagues.

"What is my teaching metaphor?"

Now, mind you, ALL of the colleagues know what this means and what I am asking. And ALL are ready with answers.

The beloved economics professor in his early seventies groans and says,

"God I hate English majors!"

The English professor and the librarian at the table are more helpful.

"Chameleon," says the librarian.

"You mean I am what Holden Caulfield would call a phony?"

"No," she answers, "I just mean that you are very flexible and adaptable and change your style to meet the audience."

I can live with that.

"Midwife," says the English professor, going with Socrates. "You help students to give birth to great ideas."

I can live with that, too.

Someone at the table, I forget who, calls me a mother hen, which I am less pleased with. But I don't have time to ponder because we are soon into a digression about free range students and free range parenting and helicopter parenting and the conversation is no longer about me. I consider calling my mother, now ninety years old and living in Queens, New York, and asking what her parenting metaphor was. Or better yet how it has evolved over the decades.

 

I get home and tell George about all the metaphors people suggested. 
My brilliant husband thinks about this and says, "Aha!  I have the answer!"

YOU........are........... a weaver!

"What?"

George explains.

"You ask lots of questions, and take all the different answers that you get, and put them together into something that makes sense for you. Hopefully something useful. And then you share what you have discovered with your students. And then you teach them how to weave."

"What if what I create is NOT useful. What if what I weave is just beautiful, like a tapestry or wall hanging? You know...like teaching as an art!"

George pauses.

"Well.....your storytelling is beautiful. I love your stories. You weave them together from different ideas into something beautiful."

Ladies and gentleman--we have a metaphor!
And...a 25 year marriage!