Campbell's Travels

Big Ups to Baltimore

2008-07-15T07:55:00.000-07:00

Baltimore City has posted gigantic gains on the MSA tests for 2008. The Sun is right: this is nothing short of historic. I can't believe none of the blogs are writing about this.

For those who haven't seen the scores, they're jaw-dropping. Averaging all grades, the passing rate for reading is up 11 points. For math it's up 8 points. In every grade, both reading and math scores are up an average of 5 to 10 points. An increase in scores in every category just hasn't happened for us.

But the standouts are even bigger: 7th-grade reading is up 18 points, middle schools improved kids' performance faster than elementary schools, and over 3000 children who failed in math last year didn't fail this year. That's a third of all our kids. Imagine you're one of them - how do feel about school now?

Why is this such a big deal? The MSA is a decent assessment, so passing or failing says a lot about how we as a city are supporting our children. Nationally, even the highly successful districts have trouble improving scores in middle school - we beat those odds. We also beat the national performance in reducing the achievement gap (credit to Neufeld and The Sun for those numbers), despite our share of troubles this year. We're winning anyway. Look at the long-term effect of improvement like this - and here comes some admittedly faulty math - and you see a city that can have every single child reading by 2015.*

This all begs the question of what we do about it. First, we shout about our success from the rooftops. Our kids need to know they can succeed and be hopeful, our teachers need to know their hard work is finally paying off, and our city in general needs to lend a hand. Write a letter to The Sun, contact City Hall, volunteer with the school system, or find your own way to help us keep this momentum.

Learn More:

The Sun article 7.15.08
Sara Neufeld's blog Inside Ed

*Here's the math: about 5 points a year increase in reading scores x 7 years = a 35-point increase. Right now, 68% are passing in reading.

Oh Say Can You See...

2008-07-05T00:02:00.000-07:00

I climbed up Federal Hill in Baltimore tonight to watch my first 4th in our new life back in the US. As long as I'm piling on the deeper meaning, I should point out that the spot where I stood looks out on where Francis Scott Key wrote the Star-Spangled Banner (and is also where troops used to fire cannons at protesting mobs downtown; hence: Mobtown).

More Photos

2008-05-25T22:54:00.000-07:00

The Righteous Path

2008-05-25T22:04:00.000-07:00

You may have already heard, but John McCain's campaign has separated from his two scary pastors. John Hagee runs a 19,000-member church in Texas, and Rod Parsley broadcasts a weekly show from his church in Ohio, and the presumptive Republican nominee's campaign rejected the support of both this week.

This is great news for everyone, not just liberals, but first a little background. Three months back, McCain accepted the support of both leaders. Hagee has always said questionable things about Hurricane Katirna being punishment for homosexuality, and the Catholic church being responsible for Jewish deaths in the Holocaust, but the last straw was an old sermon that surfaced this week in which Hagee preaches that God allowed the Holocaust to happen to get Jews to move to Israel. Not exactly a politically expedient thing to say. I've heard a lot of his controversial sermons by now, and I personally believe he's anything but anti-semitic. Nonetheless, he goes. Parsley, I believe, is worse. He frequently preaches that Mohammad's prophecy was from the Devil, that Islam is an "anti-Christ" religion, and that Muslims are scripture-bound to wage war on Christianity. His support was rejected Friday morning.

I'm ecstatic they're gone, as everyone should be, but not because I don't support McCain. Both pastors preached that Islamic-Christian conflict, and war with Iran specifically, are prerequisites for the coming armageddon. No one need be told why these men should not have priveleged access to the White House. But the rejection is also good news because it stops McCain from selling out to awful people. He has long been an honorable politician, and he was right to call Jerry Falwell and his ilk "agents of intolerance." It's not ok to court hatemongers, least of all to suck up votes.

Good for McCain. Good for Mother Jones and Brave New Films for reporting on it, and good for ABC News for repeating it. In fact, good for me for talking it up, too.

Now let's continue with the kind of campaign the country needs.

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Pixies in Pana

2008-05-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

There’s nothing like a Pixies cover band in a town that speaks mostly Tzutuhil. We found one of these, and ever since we’ve gone back to chase the dragon and hear more.

Lake Atitlan

Our favorite spot here, if we have to pick one, is Lake Atitlan. The town of Panajachel is the nearest to us of several great ones on the lake, and it’s kind of a gateway to the rest. We love it – so much so that we drag almost every friend that visits straight there.

It operates like a beach town: a main drag of mom-and-pop restaurants and market stalls, and everyone there carries themselves like they’re on vacation. It makes for a nice mood. Anyway, on one of our first trips there we stumbled upon Chinita’s, a great restaurant (shockingly, they serve Chinese) of overstuffed seat cushions and a canopy of hanging plants. The band at Chinita’s was fine at first, but when they started playing “Where Is My Mind,” it was another level. We were in the middle of nowhere on a volcanic lake. The next town over got electric lights for the first time in 1999. And we still got to hear good covers of punk songs. Ah, globalization.

We have 26 days left here in Guatemala and then it’s back to Baltimore. There’s a lot we’re psyched to get back to the US for, but some things here will be irreplaceable.

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Peer Pressure

2008-03-02T11:01:00.000-08:00

John McCain recently accepted the endorsement of Rev. John Hagee. Hagee runs a church with 19,000 members. I know McCain has to appeal to evangelicals if he wants to win, and I'll bet Hagee's church does some wonderful things. The problem is, Hagee expresses some terrible, bigoted ideas.

Glenn Greenwald's column in Slate has a pretty disheartening selection of them. First, there's the Fresh Air interview where he blames New Orleans, and gay people in particular, for Hurricane Katrina:

"I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.
The newspaper carried the story in our local area, that was not carried nationally, that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came."

Now, those of you out there who think homosexuality is wrong or sinful - is this the team you want to be on? But that rant is for another day.

Then there's the stuff Hagee says about war with Iran being a prerequisite for the second coming, and his belief that "those who live by the Koran have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews."

For the most part, John McCain has remained an honorable conservative. Only now, needing votes, is he submitting to his party's pressure to embrace hateful people. We just might have one of the most hate-free elections in US history, and it needs to be clear that people with views like these are not welcome at the table.

Click here for a link to email McCain's office with your views.

And here's the phone number: 202.224.2235

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The Six-Word Biography

2008-03-02T09:42:00.000-08:00

I'm about to rip off NPR for this entry. But I'm unrepentant about it.

A magazine recently invited readers to send in their life story told in six words. Apparently the tradition behind this started when the first invitation, sent decades ago, asked Ernest Hemingway to write an original story in six words. He wrote:

For sale: Baby shoes. Never used.

(Wow. And why shouldn't he? Steinbeck used to bother the Defense Dept. about how they should try his idea of a napalm hand grenade, which he called the Steinbeck Super Ball.)

Anyway, tons of NPR listeners wrote in tons of very NPR life stories, all in six words. They were brilliant. I want to try them with my students. In the meantime, here's my gauntlet: click the "Comment" link below, and write your six word story.

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A Cultural Experience

2008-02-28T14:15:00.000-08:00

The following is my conversation with a cab driver in San Jose, Costa Rica. The ride from the restaurant to the bar cost $2, but he asked for $10. When we got out, he stopped us on the sidewalk and tried plying us with "You have to pay!" and "If I go back and I don't have money for them I will get hit," and even some nonsense about organized cab drivers who all "work together" when people don't pay. I foolishly thought I could talk some warmth and altruism
into him at the end:

Me: Next time, just say the fare first and you can avoid all this trouble.

Him: No! You have to know OUR system. You owe more money.

Me: But you can't bring up violence and threats. When you talk about violence, it makes everything worse. Wouldn't it be better to have a world without all that?
[I realize how ridiculous this sounds. I might as well have offered him a daisy and invited him to a drum circle]

Him: Look! You tourists come to this country and think you know everything! You - the Americans - always try to tell US what to do. Yes, you. Yes! You, and the Chinese, too.

I left.
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It's Family Slideshow Time!

2008-02-27T17:50:00.001-08:00

Some recent pics:

Cristo Redentor, Rio, Brazil

After seeing this giant scultpure in every movie that can manage to squeeze it in to the filming, I had to go. It sits on a steep hill off the west side, offering a city of 2 million a big hug.

Holy Week Procession, Antigua, Guatemala

This was Palm Sunday last year. The city and every town around it gets involved in the procession, makes sawdust rugs in the street to be destroyed by the marchers (elaborate, sand-mandala like things), and it's an honor to dress up and parade. Men dress in purple robes and centurion costumes (seriously). Women aren't in costume, but they follow the men's procession with the above giant sculpture. It's very solemn, and the only way to move this monstrously heavy thing is to sway it back and forth as you walk.

Fuego, a volcano we hiked last year. You could hear and feel this through the ground during the night. Incidentally, the moss at our feet in this picture has never, in the collective memory of our guide company, had enough warmth at this altitude to grow. Don't tell Al Gore.

Fire-dancing people at Monterrico, our favorite beach.

We took this last year in Havana after his 80th birthday. I guess they didn't get their wish.

By the Truckload

2008-02-18T18:37:00.000-08:00

Sarah and I got to go to Rio for a week over winter break. As we sat on the beach, this drove by. Which brings me to what I like about Rio. Need music? A truck will drive by and provide some. This thing just drove up and down the beach, letting an MC and a real DJ (when's the last time you saw turntables at a hip-hop show?) do their thing and letting us enjoy it for free. Sure, it's a promotion, but everybody wins.

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Maximon

2008-02-15T21:24:00.000-08:00

Damning with Faint Praise

2008-02-15T06:42:00.000-08:00

I came across a great quote by Winston Churchill (his mom was Merkin - we can't get mad):

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.

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Electronic Muck

2008-02-11T18:31:00.000-08:00

Hi friends. I got an email last week, and it was entertaining enough to share with you, my adoring public. I love it. It's ugly-funny, so let's all laugh to keep from crying as we read it.

It's about Barack Obama, who I should admit, I'm for. I have almost never supported a presidential candidate publicly, but this feels truly important to me. We can argue about policy all day, but what I think our country needs more than anything right now is the belief that things could be different. This guy can get people off the couch, and the one thing I am certain of is that our country's biggest problems thrive on apathy. So I hope you vote in your primary and the general in November, and I hope it's for Obama. There, I said it.

Now, the email I got isn't as bad as vote-caging, but it's not much better. It has the restraint of David Duke and the open-mindedness of Bill O'Reilly. It's been sent around who knows how many times, and I shudder to think how much difference emails like these can make. For fairness' sake, I should say that these kind of emails make us all worse off, regardless of who they attack.

I'll tell you what: If you find 5 patently false statements in it, I'll get you a special prize. I'll put up my favorite ones next week.

The email in full:

Who is Barack Obama?

Very interesting and something that should be considered in your choice. If you do not ever forward anything else, please forward this to all your contacts...this is very scary to think of what lies ahead of us here in our own United States...better heed this and pray about it and share it.

We checked this out on "snopes.com". It is factual. Check for yourself.

Who is Barack Obama?

Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black MUSLIM from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white ATHEIST from Wichita, Kansas.

Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii . When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced. His father returned to Kenya . His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a RADICAL Muslim from Indonesia.?

When Obama was 6 years old, the family relocate to Indonesia . Obama attended a MUSLIM school in Jakarta . He also spent two years in a Catholic school.

Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, "He was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school." Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that that he is not a radical. Obama's introduction to Islam came via his father, and that this influence was temporary at best.

In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over his son's education. Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta . Wahabism is the RADICAL teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world. Since it is politically expedient to be a CHRISTIAN when seeking major pubic office in the United States , Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background.

ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran. Barack Hussein Obama will NOT recite the Pledge of Allegiance nor will he show any reverence for our flag.

While others place their hands over their hearts, Obama turns his back to the flag and slouches. Let us all remain alert concerning Obama's expected presidential candidacy.

The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States , one of their own!!!!

Please forward to everyone you know Would you want this man leading our country?...... NOT ME!!!

The Life Acquatic

2008-01-28T16:23:00.000-08:00

You know what the worst thing is? I'm not even going to use that movie reference in the title. I haven’t even seen it. Even my humble blog can’t save you from pretense. But I will talk about scuba diving.

Sarah bought me an open-water scuba course for my birthday, and I’ve been going to classes across town all winter (‘across town’ is a relative term in a city of 5 million people, ‘across Delaware’ is comparable, and ‘winter’ is a relative one too – the coldest it ever gets here is 50 or 60 degrees.) The classes are with a family that centers completely around diving. They bought a compound here, two houses and a pool. One house is the office. Father and son teach the classes and host the monthly trips.

I’ve taken the theory classes and all the pool classes, which have all hinged on which teacher I get. You see, the son, Marlon, speaks English well, so if I have problems or questions everything is fine. Dad, however, speaks little, and my Spanish sucks, so I have been put to the past in the last few classes. I can mime my way through a lot of it to learn what I need, but there’s a serious linguistic gap between the words for “How do I set my wrist compass?” and “How do I keep my lungs from exploding?” I’ve gotten by so far.

Manisha and I at the dive site.

Now that the classes have ended, I have to do four open-water dives to get certified with PADI. I got two out of the way last weekend at a nearby lagoon named Ayarza. It’s close, it’s convenient, and it’s pitch black. You can’t see a damn thing. Maybe two meters in front of your face, which leaves you about a enough time to think “Hey, I think that a shar—” after it appears. Fortunately, there was absolutely nothing living in the lagoon when we dove. Manisha, a friend who teaches with us, came with me to finish her course. Neither of us was terribly impressed with the sights, but we were psyched to have this be our base of comparison.

I'd rather not see this.

In two weeks, we’re off to Honduras, a popular dive spot called Roatan. It’s in a set of Caribbean islands off the east coast, and it will be amazing.

And I want nothing to do with this.

Lava Without Guardrails

2008-01-14T18:00:00.000-08:00

Guardrails are nowhere to be seen here. I like that (handicap insensitivity aside), and I first noticed it on Pacaya, one of the volcanoes that surrounds the city. Yes, they surround us – 4 big ones; none are extinct. Like they say: location, location, location. Anyway, Pacaya is a 3-hour hike to the top, and it’s the smallest of the four. We first hiked it last fall and then again at night a few months ago.

The first trip was with a huge group of all of us first-year teachers, sweating and cursing our way to the top. The challenging parts are when the ground crumbles into piles of volcanic gravel. I think they call it scree or something. Anyway, each step forward slides back to where it started, so instead of climbing you do more of a Vanilla-Ice Running-Man move up the slope. Of course, just when we thought we were hardcore for all this work, we’d round a corner and find a grandma running a drink stand that she had carried up the volcano on her head. I’ll do the hike, but not with sixty pounds of Fanta and Gallo on my back.

We broke out of the forest to the most recent lava river, a snaking trail of hardened, porous rock that had crept a few miles down the mountainside. This was my first illustration that whatever happens, happens here. The old path used to go straight up from that point, but had been interrupted by several thousand degrees of molten rock. So now we go around.

The last hour of the hike was all scree. Steep, spilling piles of pebbles. No grass or trees, because as soon as anything can grow there it gets burned off. When your foot dislodged a rock, it just rolled down the barren slope uninterrupted. By now we could clearly see the top, pouring smoke into the sky. Our guide had as much English as we had Spanish, none, so we just kept following.

As we got within a hundred yards of the top, we realized that between us and it were jets of sulfur smoke that had burned up through the ground and were clouding the whole summit. To keep going, you had to hold your breath and charge through them. This convinced most of the group that the hike was over, and the remaining 10 of us kept going. Approaching one of these plumes of sulfur, you couldn’t see what was on the other side or even if there was another side. We had nothing to assure us a fresh hole wouldn’t open up under our feet. Melting into a volcano was never how I pictured making it into the alumni magazine, but I went on anyway. We wrapped our t-shirts around our faces and mostly shut our eyes, trying to aim forward and keep going. Breathing the sulfur felt like drowning in sand, and opening your eyes in it felt almost as good. So we tried not to do either of those things until we passed into a clear spot.

Now, it occurs to me that most attractions like this in the US would be a lot more regulated. Handrails would be a nice start. Nice solid ones. And some clearly lettered signs. And no going near the sulfur. We’d have some brochures, and we’d even print a picture of you on your volcano trip on a coffee mug for you. But you’d never get to walk up to the top like this. I won’t bother with some back-to-basics sermon decrying the development of nature, but it’s awfully nice to walk anywhere you want just because it’s there.

The guide stopped us just below what he kept calling “the heart,” and we just waited. He took two at a time into a cloud of smoke we couldn’t see through, and when each pair disappeared in we had no idea how they were doing on the other side. They just told us on coming out that it was incredible and we had to see it. My turn came, and we climbed up the last ten rocky feet from the other side of the smoke. I could barely breathe, and my eyes were squinted so tight I could tell only whether or not a boulder was in front of my face. The guide slid very carefully along the rocky edge of a hole the size of a car, and held his arm out to guide me along it. This hole was what we were after, the “heart” of the volcano that opened into the molten center and from which the solidified lava flows had all come. From there, we actually stared directly down into a bubbling, swirling pit of liquid rock.

It was a clear message that I would see things here that many people never get to see. And I like it better with no guardrails.

All Saints’ Day, Pt. 1

2007-11-08T20:37:00.000-08:00

We had a four-day weekend for All Saints’ Day here, which piles up Halloween and Day of the Dead, pagan traditions and Mayan ones, for one big break. Awesome.

Ten of us rented a big van and drove to Huehuetenango, thus far the winner in coolest-place-name contests, and then to Todos Santos (or ‘All Saints,’ for those of you that paid even less attention in Spanish class than I did). Todos Santos, of course, goes wild for their special day and has a festival for at least three days. It centers around reverent visits to the cemetery and a giant horse race. Of course, the town does love to drink, which adds a whole new element to the atmosphere. Still quiet and humble as Mayan people tend to be, but quiet and humble on a three-day bender.

But the horse race. Damn. Incredible. The guys save up all year to rent a horse, mount up on a 100-meter dirt track, and ride back and forth until they’re too exhausted to stay on. We couldn’t even figure out how each lap “started,” or when you knew you could get on and off the horse, or even who won. But this is an amazing tradition with deep roots, and at least it’s going on whether there are gringo tourists watching or not. Here’s a YouTube video of it.

Ya Queremos Pastel

2007-10-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

My birthday was awesome. I thought I was going to go to a restaurant for dinner with a few friends, then out in Zone 4, the fun neighborhood that’s Guate’s answer to Adams Morgan. But when we stopped at Cheers, the Canadian bar where our friends watch sports, all of my friends were there as a giant surprise party for me. Honestly, a ton of people were there and all in costume.

I loved how everyone’s costume reflected their personality. The wholesome Iowa guy who we all suspect has a hidden wild side was dressed, literally, as a man whore. My friend who likes to make the offensive joke dressed as a Guatemalan maid, complete with lunch-lady nylons rolled to his hairy calves. Last year, he dressed as a pregnant nun. We made sure the whole bar, in this highly Catholic and conservative country, saw him smoking and drinking. But the highlight of that costume was when he got the help of our nurse-costumed friend and he gave birth, live in the bar. To a beer. That’s about as good as it gets.

Anyway, my amazing girlfriend put together the whole thing, just for me. And she did it all without me finding out, and it was awesome. Thanks, baby.

Duh, They're Catholic

2007-10-21T16:16:00.000-07:00

I’m fascinated by religion here. Mayan people here have held onto their traditions with stunning fidelity, given how fast those of other indigenous groups in the west were wiped out. Then, you add Catholicism to it all. And on top of that, evangelical Christian groups are growing much faster than Catholic ones here and will soon replace them as the dominant churches. As I write this, the giant Mormon temple looms gigantic outside my window from up the block. Apparently, nothing says Mayan like a gold angel Mormoni on a 50-foot pillar.
And we got a chance to see it all come together last year, when we went to Xela. Our guides brought us to an offering site, a clearing on the side of a cliff where people come to perform religious rites. They ask their holy person for guidance, getting an important job or healing a loved one, and are told what ritual to perform. At this site people offered food, drinks, spices, anything really, into large bonfires. The ritual instructions are specific: come to this site and offer corn every Sunday for 6 weeks, for example. And they have to be performed to the letter – if you fail to come for even one visit, the belief is that your request will go unheard.
Some people were amazingly devout. A 60-tear old woman who could not walk had dragged herself down the steep, rocky hillside to the fires with only her arms, and she had done this every time she came.
I guess fireworks are a way to mark an event and communicate with a higher power, as the launches of bottle rockets were constant form the hillside. There were even permanent metal tubes dug into the ground, just to launch fireworks. It goes on all day, pops and crackles in the sky over the green valley. Really impressive.
The best part was asking the guide about the site as we left. I was so nervous to ask any questions, but I had to know, so I asked him what faith all of these people were (the site has 20-40 people at any given time). He looked at me as if I asked him what color the sky was. “Uh, they’re all Catholic,” he said, walking off.

On Holland, Barack Obama, and Naïveté

2007-10-04T22:50:00.000-07:00

On Holland, Barack Obama, and Naïveté
Volcan de Poas, Costa Rica

I wrote this on our trip to Costa Rica & Panama. We had an interesting crowd and I got to thinking, which I try to do some of every single day.

We started this trip by bouncing right out of the airport to a lodge on Volcan de Poas. It was removed, winding up dirt roads through the clouds into perfect silence. I imagine Ireland looks a lot like this. Bright green valleys, isolated cabins, a few cows. Our lodge was the perfect retreat: thick stone walls and a monstrous fireplace to complement the cold at night.

It had the diverse crowd and common meals that make these places priceless. It was Kris and Sarah and I (Adam & Kari & Scott hadn’t joined us yet), a couple from Holland, and a couple from Israel.

The couple from Holland (the Netherlands? Should I be saying the Netherlands instead?) showed me that their country is not quite the diverse utopia the stereotype would suggest. The old folks pine for the old ways, a simpler time that may never have existed. Mayberry without Maycomb. They also worry that the constant stream of people from everywhere but the Netherlands is eroding native Dutch identity, whatever that is. But if you put these concerns side by side, it’s hard to differentiate what you see from a society that blames minorities for its problems. Xenophobia under a cheap mask of patriotism. Off-color makeup on a scar.

I notice all this, I stare at it, because it violates my preconception of Dutch people as a peaceful and tolerant culture. I want to believe in such a place, and this is the moment where I am disillusioned. There are plenty of places that have different races and have tension, like the US. There are also places that have peace but no diversity to challenge it. Is it naïve to ask for both peace and diversity in the same place? This would be the only real tolerance.

But to hear that the Netherlands struggle like we do is as encouraging as it is disappointing. It’s selfish consolation, but I feel better if we’re not the only ones struggling. My first year teaching, I was so bad at maintaining an orderly classroom that the only thing that made me feel better was peering in the window of the room across the hall, which was worse. It’s the attitude of ‘ha-ha, now you know how it feels’ elevated to a worldview. I am slightly encouraged because, relatively speaking, maybe we’re not that far behind after all.

So where does this path lead? How far have we all come, and how much of the weight of past prejudice are we still carrying? Our current presidential race is led by a black man and a woman, which is to our credit, but that man was given his Secret Service detail for the sheer amount of racist threats he received from his own countrymen*.

Maybe, hopefully, this path leads to a worldview that includes everyone. Cosmopolitanism, as Kwame Anthony Appiah describes it, is a sense of fellowship with the whole world - not just one isolated pocket or another. Sure, it’s far off, but if the businesses of today no longer see borders, how long can the rest of us hold out?

Growing pains, I pray, are not too cliché as a metaphor to hold these ideas together. Progress toward inclusion has to be uncomfortable for our culture, but through it we do gain new ground and we keep it. We all feel a bit invaded when new tenants move into the building, so to speak, but we get used to it. I had a powerful conversation about race with a friend of mine named Tony, a professor who is black. The progress he points to is that sixty years ago, we had zero black people in the Senate. Now one of our black Senators may be the next president. To drag the Obama references further, only sixty years before he was born, ours was the kind of culture that would annex his home state of Hawaii altogether. Hegemony under a cheap mask of manifest destiny.

But it didn’t take long to get from there to here, in terms of the generally tectonic movement of human history. Perhaps we, as a culture, tend to worsen the same problems which we then lead the fight to end. We definitely stray from the path, but we also light the way back. Thomas Sowell points out that the US worsened the slave trade, and then, after a 400-year change of heart, led the world in eradicating it. Maybe we could lead the world in other areas. Or, God forbid, work together with it. Global warming? Poverty reduction? Equal education?
We do have some advantages, some head starts. I live in a Guatemala that puts far worse pressure on women to fit a strict image than the US does. I visited a China that puts many in jobs that are, essentially, slavery. Which is not to say that we are in much of a position to make speeches. We often find, as a culture, that our soapbox in fact a dunce chair in the corner.
But when we put our collective mind to a task, we accomplish it. Perhaps we could put our mind to shortening the admissions process for nonwhite, non-US people; we slander, we punish, we marginalize, and finally we offer a seat at the table. Perhaps we could do better? Pretty please?

*http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_123160038.html

Maybe Jesus Loves Fireworks

2007-10-04T19:43:00.000-07:00

DECEMBER 'O6

Maybe Jesus Loves Fireworks

Every 7th of December, Guatemala celebrates Quema del Diablo, burning the devil. On this important family holiday, everyone in Guatemala burns devil piñatas to rid the Christmas season of demons and make room for God. Along with the piñatas, they burn unused things from their houses and set off huge amounts of fireworks.
For the night of Quema del Diablo, Sarah and I went to the house of one of her 8th graders. He’s the cousin of one of my students, and he lives on a compound up the carratera with all the related families. Their two and a half acres was more than enough room for the barbecue (catered & staffed), the drink tent for kids, the 12th grade party in the house next door, and the middle-schoolers setting off roman candles around a ten-foot bonfire. It was great, and I’ve never seen anything like it. But back to the devil piñatas.
As the holiday approaches, everyone starts selling piñatas. Everyone. All the street vendors that normally sell anything but devil piñatas, they all sell devil piñatas. The old lady selling hot dogs (“shukos” here), the old guy with fan belts. Even the team of DVD bootleggers who often sell hardcore porn accidentally mislabeled as a romantic comedy. Oops. They all sell devil piñatas of all sizes. From little shoe-sized guys to the Big-Bird rivaling gargantuan ones, papier-mâché diablos are everywhere. In Zone 1, we even have a piñata district, you know, like New York has a fabric district and we have a piñata district, and it all converts to devil piñatas.
As we pulled back into the neighborhood from the Quema del Diablo party, sure that all would be asleep as it always is that late, we saw that nobody had gone to bed. In fact they were all out in the street, huddled against the cold in the street in front of their houses. Old folks, kids, people we’d never seen before. All in groups, huddled over small, burning devils. We saw that this is a tradition that will even keep the old folks in the street late at night: you drag out unneeded things from your house, you pile them in the street with a devil piñata, and you burn it all down. If you have kids, by the way, you stuff the piñata with firecrackers first. It’s funner that way.

Wanna see a clip of a Quema del Diablo party? Click here.
How about what it looks like when the Quema al Diablo display takes it a little far? Here. But watch to the end so you can see that's a person in there.

From the top of Acatenango

2007-09-02T15:08:00.000-07:00

This is us, in the middle of a cloud on the top of Acatenango Volcano. It's just up here so I can experiment with posting videos, but why not leave it? It was an amazing trip; I'll write more about it later.

--Campbell

From The Mouths of Babes

2007-06-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

NOVEMBER

From The Mouths of Babes

Thanks to the internets, I have my best cheating story yet. I caught one of my kids cheating, and it’s just funny. And no, I’m not going to mouth platitudes about it-isn’t-really-funny-when-children-compromise-their-integrity. There will be no downside presented here for the morally pure who are reading this. This story is just because it makes me laugh. But fair warning, it’s a little dirty. Not Caligula dirty, but more like John Waters dirty. On with the show.

This particular child, the first student I caught cheating in my class, sits in the front row, and we’ll call him Arny. Arny received the first fiction assignment of the year, which was to write a diary from the point of view of someone enslaved in the early US. We had been studying slavery and the post-Reconstruction civil rights movement as background for reading To Kill a Mockingbird. The students had some choice about their main character – age, gender, situation, even slave-owner or enslaved – but Arny took his license a bit further.

When I read Arny’s paper, I was really impressed at first. In class, his English isn’t that great, but on paper, it was almost flawless. I was overjoyed. Hooray! A motivated student! O frabjous day! Validation through someone else’s work! Until I got to the end.

I had gotten suspicious about his writing. Call me a cynic, but the vocabulary was just too advanced. So I took one of his sentences, a long one with clauses and big words, and just Googled it. And there it was, the very first search result. With the title of the page “A Slave’s Diary.” So sad, and I had such hope for Arny. So I thought I’d check out the site, and make my case airtight. Not only had Arny downloaded his entire paper lock, stock, the whole fuckin’ lot from some website, but he hadn’t even read it first. This site was not about the diary of someone enslaved on a plantation; this was the diary of a bondage slave. As in lots of zippers, stiletto heel on the back, rubber ball strapped in his mouth. That other kind of bondage. And Arny had downloaded this man’s diary, which he posts every day to share his experiences. One click away from the entry Arny stole, really just one click, is the delightful episode in which Our Hero’s girlfriend feels moody and passes him around to her girlfriends as a toy. The girlfriends then do things to him that even a congressman wouldn’t be caught doing.

Despite how easily Arny was caught, he did add one spectacular touch of personal effort to his work. A little lagniappe for the teacher. In the original bondage diary, when the “slave” first tries out licking his mistress’ shoes, well, even Arny knew that wouldn’t fit in a paper for English. So that was handily deleted and in it’s place, the subject of Arny’s diary had to do something, let’s see, something that fits the narrative but connects to Mr. McLean’s PowerPoint in class. Yes, that’s it: instead of having the slave make out with some Payless, this slave will help Harriet Tubman knit a quilt! And so she did. The main character of this diary, in just a few keystrokes, went from licking shoes to knitting with Harriet Tubman. Who says technology isn’t revolutionizing education?

The Heritage Foundation Expressed Concern

2007-06-05T20:50:00.000-07:00

OCTOBER

The Heritage Foundation Expressed Concern

All the teachers here are asked to do one extracurricular. I thought about helping with student government earlier – I’ve always thought it has such potential to be empowering for kids. And this place could use a little more community spirit. I know my faith in student gov’t is a little idealistic, and it often ends up being less of a democracy than a race by the cool cafeteria table to promise the biggest ice cream machine. But here in Guate, we do things a little different. I didn’t end up with student gov’t, or SGA; I’ve got something better. But I love the history of the SGA.

Apparently, the SGA has taken a hit on overall popularity recently. Three years ago, a rising star of the high school social scene realized his ambition to climb the SGA ladder. I don’t know his name. He was really involved, and decided he would run for SGA president. His family was huge in Guatemalan politics, I think, and he was sure he’d be big here too. So he ran, the kids voted, and he lost. This is where the stereotype of politics here gets funny. Outraged at his loss and determined to bring down the SGA administration, he staged a student-government coup. That’s right, a 17-year old in Guatemala figured that was the next step – stage a coup, install his own administration. I wish I knew how the story ends – Did he get away with it? Did he repent and tearfully type out a tell-all memoir that made Oprah’s short list? Is he living in exile in Mexico, with only a fleet of yachts and a $40 billion dollar safety net as consolation? I have no idea, but it’s probably best to just make it up anyway, so here goes.

Caught, exposed, and steeped in shame, he was rejected immediately by an elite New England university. This university is now desperately trying to raise the funds for a new library and food court that will, with great regret, not be donated in the name of a certain prestigious Guatemalan family. The boy chose his second-tier school in the Florida panhandle where Air Force ROTC built his credibility with the local voters. He is running for City Council in the fall.

The Start

2007-06-04T21:59:00.000-07:00

SEPTEMBER

The Start

So I guess I should start with the general story. Sarah and I are liking this kind of teaching. It has no urgency, and our work here does about as much to improve the world as it as we would sending on that forward to fundraise for a little girl in Kansas. But with this job we can actually do things in the afternoons. And – gasp – on weekends! Zounds!

We live on a cul-de-sac, and we wave to the guard as we speedwalk past him every morning to the school bus. As we haven’t been late enough yet for the driver to leave us behind, we drink our morning coffee on the way to school. I spend my day in a pretty big classroom, literary quotes on the walls and one wall of all glass, opening onto the basketball courts.

I have 40 minute periods and 30 kids in each section, so we usually do one activity, some discussion, and that’s it. It’s To Kill a Mockingbird right now, and there’s nothing better than discussing Boo Radley’s representation of innocence, all while reading a southern drawl in a Guatemalan accent. As schools go, this one’s pretty ridiculous. The high school just bought a fourth LCD projector, the student government took a trip to El Salvador, and principals are given cars.

Incidentally, they sell off those cars after a few years, and Sarah and I bought one. We are the proud new owners of a 2005 Mitsubishi Lancer. It’s been a great car, despite one adventure. The second day we had it, we drove it to Lake Atitlan a few hours away with a group of teacher friends. We stopped to check maps and it wouldn’t start. Sarah, always one to double down, flagged down 4 cars at the same time. No cables, but one lady knew the answer, which was to pull out our friend’s battery from their car and trade it for ours to get our engine going. This was done while she repeated how we really, really shouldn’t pull over like this and stop, because people get robbed. We didn’t get robbed.

Lake Atitlan:

But we did make to Lake Atitlan, a small town (right) on the south edge of it called Santiago. We tried a spot called La Posada. Utterly idyllic. You sleep in small stone cabin with a hammock hanging out front, and everyone gathers for meals together in a giant dining room. The days there are pieced together with blue corn pancakes, ice cream sundaes, and Cajun blackened shrimp (don’t ask why Cajun food in Guatemala, it just is. And it’s good.)

You cross the road to the lake’s edge and you can split your time between the pool, hot tub, and sauna. When we went to use the sauna, another hand-made stone hut (left), and it was cold. We asked about it in the hotel, but before I could translate the explanation with my feeble Spanish, two guys from the office came jogging down to the sauna and started to work. They opened a hatch in the side and built a fire from kindling to heat what is the only fireplace-powered sauna I’ve seen. So we ran back and forth between melting in the sauna and jumping in the lake.

This is our friend Kris from CAG, with Sarah and our friend Amy, who taught with Amber in Ghana and now teaches up the street.

The view from the pool.

Sunset.

Intro

2007-06-04T21:53:00.000-07:00

Hi there. This is my blog, and I’m not going to present it like I’m supposed to. I haven’t been posting these stories all year, so I’m going to start posting some now. So it’s retro. Think of it as the He-Man lunchbox of blogs. The Members Only jacket of blogs. But not nearly as cool, and hopefully not as pretentious. Enjoy.