Livingston, I Presume

Where everybody knows your name

Montana is a small place. I mean, it's huge--like, the size of Germany huge--but it is tiny in terms of people living here. To continue the German analogy, Germany has about 80 million people within its borders; Montana, as of the last figures available, has 967,400. Ponder that kind of open space for a moment. There's a reason that Ted Kaczynski chose Montana.

But I mention this not to evoke memories of one of the more famous Montana residents of the past couple of decades (which is not the same as his being a Montanan, because we all know he came from Harvard, and maybe Chicago). It's more to explain how things work here.

When I started to have questions about school standards for gifted kids and accommodations, I did first talk to local school officials. That just makes sense. But when I couldn't get the information I needed, I didn't have to take some intermediary step. I just called the Montana Office of Public Instruction and spoke to the head of their Gifted and Talented Education office. And that's normal. I expect to be able to talk to people in my government at all levels in Montana, because that's the way it works here. The Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee? We all call him Max--and a few other things these days, as it happens.

The other thing is that the longer you live here, the more chance there is that you will end up knowing someone in the Big Important Office you're calling. I called the State Elections Office about an absentee ballot question while we were living in Prague and was routed to a guy who had been my cousin's roommate in college. The very nice and helpful woman at OPI happened to be the daughter of my godparents' neighbors, in whose yard I had camped when I was a kid. And so on. I kind of love it.

So, for old time's sake and a demonstration of Montananess, I offer up the following picture, featuring my daughter and Max, a.k.a. Montana's senior senator, enjoying a barbecue in Livingston last summer. He has clearly just told her about his healthcare plan, which is why she is smacking her forehead.

 

Close-up:

Prescient, that one.

Veterans' Day

On Veterans' Day, here's to the brave men and women who serve all over the world. Far too many of them are away from their families, friends, and other loved ones, and few of us stop to think about the effect that deployments and other separations have on the families involved. Below is an unbelievably touching newscast featuring soldiers returning home and surprising their kids at school. You'll want to have a Kleenex nearby.

I came across that after watching an amazing compilation of videos of service members being greeted by their dogs after long deployments, posted on Mental Floss. It's definitely worth checking out the dog ones--just try to watch without being amazed at how well these dogs know who it is coming in the door, sometimes after more than a year away. It's a poignant reminder of how much military servicepeople and their families sacrifice.Here's one great example:

To all U.S. military personnel--past and present--thank you for your service and your sacrifice. We remember.

Thanks to LookyDaddy for alerting the Twitterverse to Mental Floss' great post.

Roll over! Fetch! Play dead!

I was, as Dieter used to say, as happy as a little girl yesterday when I discovered that a post I wrote a couple of weeks ago had been named the BlogHer of the Week. The post was on healthcare and our elected representatives and how the two don't work well together unless you're actually an elected representative yourself. I even got to use the word vagina (twice!).

I stand by what I wrote and in my focus on primarily Republican opponents of the public option, even as I am sick with shame about how my party--the only party I've ever called home in my entire political life--has rolled over at every step of the healthcare reform process. The Stupak amendment was really just the last, worst step. Kate Harding on Salon:

"...This is not our party. We've known that for too long, and yet the Democrats have known too well that they could bank on our money and our votes as long as the GOP remained even more not our party. But something's changed. 64 Democrats voted to block women's access to legal medical services. That may not be quite as repulsive as some Republican shenanigans, but the difference is only one of degree. If the point of women voting for "moderate" Democrats is to avoid a majority that's actively hostile to women, then those who voted for the Stupak-Pitts amendment just proved that there's no point at all. And progressive women have finally had enough. We are ready to go there. Are Democrats ready to try getting elected without us?"

Yup.

I don't know where that leaves me. I've been holding my nose throughout this entire healthcare reform process--the process largely put together by the senior senator from MY OWN STATE--and I'm starting to think that the other side has won. Because what's emerged improves things, marginally and perhaps, but when I think about what needs to be in the bills under consideration and isn't, well, I just lose hope. 

People are dying. Not because of imaginary government death panels but because of real-life insurance company profit-mongering. People are suffering. People are going bankrupt. And an appalling percentage of our elected officials think that's just fine, so long as we don't in any possible way allow anything even vaguely resembling socialism--or compassion--to creep into our system. Oh, and so long as they get to say that they TOTALLY PWNED our president. Too bad we can't pay for a new healthcare system with a tax on hot air and broken promises.

1989

It's impossible to overstate the importance of the events of 1989 on my life. I was 16 years old when the "dominoes" fell, and I was captivated. As an extemper (any speech and debate nerds out there besides my brother?), I spent pretty much every weekend for six months giving speeches about the Poles, the Czechs, the Romanians, the Hungarians, the East Germans...and I was in heaven. I can't tell you much else about what happened at the end of 1989, but I can tell you all about that (and I can pronounce all the names, from Jaruzelski to Ceausecsu). It's not at all a coincidence that 1989-90 was the only year in which I qualified for speech nationals.

When I started that school year, I wanted to be a psychiatrist when I grew up. By the end of the year, I was planning to study Russian and go live and work in the post-communist region, and that's pretty much what I did. I first visited Berlin and Prague in 1991 (and figured out that I'd better study German as well) and went back to the region, broadly defined, as often as I could until moving to Prague in 2000. Eleven years after the Velvet Revolution, Prague was certainly not the same place it was in 1989. Now, 20 years on (and five years after my departure), I'm sure it's even further removed.

I know that things have not been smooth for the countries of the region, but it has been amazing to watch--not just then but now. For anyone interested in the events of 1989 (and what has happened since then) I hope you will visit my old workplace, Transitions Online. No Western outlet is going to be able to match their offerings during this commemorative period. I am still as proud of the work I did there as I am of anything else I've done in my life, and I'm grateful that they remain on the front lines.

Happy Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall!

Edited to add: For another perspective from a post-communist crazy like me (go figure, we met in graduate school for Russian and East European Studies) on 1989, go read this post from a friend, who showed up in the comments yesterday. She and her Russian-born husband are now living in Thailand with their two kids, en route to an eventual stay in China.

Silly Sunday

Since our digital camera doesn't offer sound video, you're going to have to take my word for the fact that the soundtrack for the following is a cheesy techno rendition of Axel F. To refresh your memory about how that might sound, I recommend a visit to here before viewing the video. It should start automatically and then you can start the video and it should be like you are RIGHT HERE listening to the music with my dancing children:

Random (with teeth and SUPERCOLON!)

Is there anything quieter than an early Saturday morning? Not much that I can think of. Although I hate getting up this early with a white-hot passion, once I'm up, I love it. If I could find a way to get from prone to just out of the shower without having to make the actual step of leaving the bed, I might become a morning person.

Emerson's biting issue--wherein she shows her frustration with a situation by having a tiny, mini-tantrum and biting whatever inanimate object is closest to her, resulting in unfortunate hilarity as we watch her bite the floor, the refrigerator, the baby gate, etc.--took a turn for the worse yesterday when she eschewed an inanimate object and went straight for her big brother. It's laugh-behind-your-hand funny when she chomps down on her high chair, much less so when she bites your firstborn.

I remember the biting phase with Connery, but I remember it coming much later--and only after one of his daycare mates had been using him as a teething ring. Perhaps it's good that Em is not in childcare at the moment. Instead of getting to be Righteous Indignation Mommy when my child is the victim, I would have to be Contrite Mommy and try to smooth things over.

The girl does have a fearsome set of teeth. All four of her first molars have erupted, and the teeth in between her canines and molars are coming in daily. She has more teeth now than Connery did at age three. The correlary of that (I guess) is that Connery is six and still hasn't lost his first tooth. Get 'em late, lose 'em late?

I'm off this morning to the Livingston Fall Health Fair. It's the third year in a row I've had a booth there for my other job, and, like getting up early, it's pretty much fine once you're actually there and watching people. It would be hard to top last year, though, because last year they brought in the SUPERCOLON!, a 6-foot-tall inflatable colon that you could walk through and see polyps and other internal nastiness. I think they signed up a lot of colonoscopies that day. I just don't know how you improve upon the SUPERCOLON! Lord knows I can't compete.

Happy Saturday and happy weekend, everyone!

Getting schooled

We had Connery's first public school parent-teacher conference last night, and the three of us--Chip, Connery's teacher, and I--ended up talking a lot more about systemic failings than we did about Connery's actual performance. For a variety of reasons--excellent preschool preparation, natural curiosity, accidents of birthdate--Connery is not your typical Kindergartener, as I know I've mentioned on these pages before.

What we didn't realize until all the tests came back was how far ahead he is from a skills standpoint. He is reading at an upper second grade level and his math skills are already far above every Kindergarten benchmark. He is remarkably interested in higher level concepts (like algebra) and reasoning (like chess). I realize that this probably sounds like I'm bragging--and I guess I am--but that's not my point. My point is that he is not being served in his current environment. His teacher is concerned because she knows what his skills are and knows that her classroom is not the best place for him, but she is unsure how to help him when the system at large is set up against kids on the extremes.

In our attempts to get him some accommodation, we have been heard some amazing things: that the problem is not the system but that he shouldn't have been taught to read so early and so well, that if we advance him now, we will have no way to help him in the future, that there is just no money for "luxuries" like gifted education, even though having a gifted program is a state requirement for accreditation. I have spoken to the Office of Public Instruction. I have spoken to educational professionals in other districts. And I have now promised to pursue some grant funding opportunities to initiate a gifted program at Connery's school. But I know how the wheels turn. Even if I were to help secure funding, nothing would be likely to change until long after Connery needs it. That's frustrating.

I confess that I have always thought that parents in Montana who choose to put their kids in private schools or to homeschool were a little deluded. Montana's public schools are known to be some of the best in the country, and there are few questions of safety like those you would find in an urban setting. (A friend of mine from a large California city had to put his son in private school after researching the public school to which his son had been assigned and finding that there had been 15 murders within a three-block radius of the school in the past year. Not really a question there.) And I still believe that Montana public schools are good. But they have changed since I was a student in Great Falls many years ago. Money is tighter. Teachers have much less flexibility. Instruction is, by necessity, based on helping kids pass standardized tests, which severly downgrades instruction in critical thinking and other skills incapable of being measured by a Scantron sheet.

Given the requirements that private schools and homeschools must meet in Montana--very few--I'm not at all saying that they are a better option. But I guess I understand how in some cases they might meet individual needs better. Connery's preschool and Kindergarten years at Montessori Island School were marked by rapid development and joy in learning, as well as some remarkable instruction. I'm not at all sure that we shouldn't have kept him there--if money were no object, which it obviously is for us as it is for most families. It's disheartening to feel as if he is not working to his potential. I guess only time will tell whether it makes a difference or if we can fill the gaps at home.