An Open Letter Home:

Dear Mama and Daddy,

“The North wind doth blow, and we shall have snow,” soon enough. The winter is bearing down, and as the city hunches its shoulders against the chill the recesses of my soul turn to a house opened to summer, ice tea on the table and that Alsup laughter which buoys up so much. How I wish to be telling stories with you all.

I went to church this week, and had the same thought I have nearly every week – “Train up a child in the way [they] should go…” and I haven’t departed from it. There was a family in front of me, and both the kids had a dollar to put in the basket, and I remembered when I would get a dollar to put in the basket. A whole month of Sundays have I sat between you, and it leaves a lasting impression upon me.

I was very cynical last week about my time here and my place here. I left college very much believing that the good you put into the world makes it just a bit better, any small act of kindness tips the balance towards a better place, so I thought. It’s easy to be disabused of that thought here in Baltimore. Some days it doesn’t seem like there’s enough good in anyone to change this city. Most days it doesn’t seem like there’s enough kindness to even start. There’s just too much brokenness and hurt; it’s hard to even begin to know where to fix that.

But the world doesn’t need another cynic. As a friend told me last year, cynicism is unbecoming. I return to what I know to be true – that I don’t know what difference I’m making, but if at the end of the day I can say that one kid in Baltimore left my classroom smarter, kinder, and more ready to use their brain then their fists, then I believe I can call that a good day. Maybe they’ll remember what I’ve tried to teach them longer than I expect.

I was thinking about all the towns in Texas that we’ve been through: Abilene, Amarillo, Parker, Austin, West, Lubbock, Houston, Corpus. Especially about driving out to Abilene for music auditions – whatever I expected for my life then is certainly not what the reality became. I couldn’t have imagined Baltimore, or this great compassion that my better angels encourage. If you had told me then all that would happen, I would have called you crazy.

But here I am down the road. Your wandering child with perpetually itchy feet – there only seem to be roads that lead me far away from those I love. I hope the road will circle back someday and soon.

A lot of my kids don’t have much of a recognizable concept of family, nor that they are representatives of their name. I don’t think there was ever a time that I didn’t know my name, or what you and Mamma stood for, what I was expected to uphold. Even now, I carry it with me. Hard work, concern for others, care for you family, sticking always to the right thing, deep integrity. Train up a child, and they’ll walk that good path.

It was a long day, as are all a teacher’s days. Up on your feet, no break, and it isn’t as though the children ever let up. They’re kids, they need a lot. We had chess, and then I tried to teach music at the rec. Three kids left me today knowing where middle C was on a piano, and who doesn’t know but that the knowledge might spur them to greatness. I sure hope it does – Baltimore’s got enough people to stand uneducated on corners, we could use some musicians. It was a full day of work.

I wonder at times what it would be like to commit myself to this city, to building a life here, working to beautify this ancient, fading belle. I admire the people who do, but I’ll be shaking the dust off my feet in 211 days. Whatever of Eliot’s mermaids are singing in Baltimore, they are certainly not singing for me.

I’ll move on what is sure to seem like greener pastures, and I will relish it. I’m hungry to beat the pavement again with a memo pad in hand, telling the stories of a community. I might not be able to change much inside a city school system, but I’m sure I can make people care about it, and maybe that’s the beginning of change.

Time’s drawing nigh here, a sliver of moon in the sky and all too soon I’ll be in my classroom waiting for the kids. And it’ll be another day where I start from scratch trying to make sure that each student leaves me a little different than when they came – Truly a work that’s never done.

Miss you as always, but know that I carry you close in my heart. Glad you’re my folks. Christmas is coming soon, and I’ll be beating a path home.

Love,

Elizabeth

I'm going to go on the record and say that today was a less than radiant day in the fourth grade.

I lost my voice in the middle of the day, a hoarse whisper was all I could do. Not surprisingly, it was difficult to control the 10 year-olds with the power of my mind.

But as a comrade of mine would say, "Ain't nobody die."

There's also a very annoying child in one of my classes. He's often absent, for example the last two weeks, and these leads to us forming a comfortable routine without him. He enjoys attention and drama. All this to say he was there today in all his, "come say it to my face, I didn't do nothing, at least I got a good body not like a hippo," and of course he cries at the drop of a hat, at everything

No less than three other children asked if they could hit him. One little boy tried to bargain it down to a pinch. Another little girl said she would just feel so much better. What was my brilliant, compassionate response?

"I totally understand, but all your life you'll have people you don't like, and you can't go around hitting them. The bottom line: We've got to make through the next hour and 20 minutes without violence."

Some kids are just annoying. And yes, I have tried to encourage this boy to be less so.

C'est la vie.

In other news Baltimore City Schools have abandoned their efforts at getting lead out of the water pipes, and is simply providing bottled water for staff and students. This after high lead levels were found at at least four schools.

Just another week in Charm City.

Board of Dreams:

Nine students today, and my co-worker. We are a team. We are commanders of armies on a field of 64 squares, from the oldest to our second grader, who moved the toughest, roughest middle school boy to laughter today.

We groan when it is time to go. We are learning to play strong chess, to castle early, to think before we move, to keep the hands back from the board, to control the center.

I set the boards up, and the students come, and our team starts asking to meet two days a week. And roughest, toughest asks about going to tournaments, and I am already planning who I will take to the first one.

I walk my team to the door, knowing from their talk that they are thinking about chess outside of club. Double T makes me promise that no matter what I will play him next week. And our second grader promises to take down my co-worker. We are chess players all.

Still here

There were eight students at Chess club this week, and more are on the way.

Five middle school boys.

Two fourth grade girls.

One co-worker, one grandmother of a middle schooler.

And one round and eager gentleman from the second grade.

They groaned when it was time to go home. And for a second we felt like a team, united in a purpose - to play a game of war on a board of 64 checkered squares, manipulating armies across of the field of play.

There's a lot of noise in a school, particularly in an urban school. A lot of frustration and grief. It's hard to hold on to a center of quiet, but you dig down and you find something to get you through.

It's raining here in Baltimore. I was on my way to bed and I got caught up in the lightning. Watching it crack against the sky over Baltimore, where the air has been full for days of storms waiting to burst.
Some jazz crackling through the stereo, and storms rolling in. And maybe things will:
cool off.
slow down.
mellow out.

Maybe I'll
worry less.
rest more.

My days at school are mostly good. Hectic, yes. But mostly good. It can be a wearing place to be, but that's not the kids fault. I understand why teachers go back every year. There's such great need.

Chess club met for the first time today. Three kids came. That is a start. It went well - two had never played before, and one had just learned how. we introduced the pieces - it is a game of kings and nobility I told them and we will conduct ourselves as such. We talked about the lowly pawn, brave footsoldier he, the bishop sneaky and mean, the knight, gallant and quick, the rook, solid and protective, the queen all powerful and the stately, treasured king.

The school needs security cameras for two blind spots on our grounds - I'm in the process of looking for grants and funding for this- if any of you have any suggestions, I welcome them.

The community rec center attached to our school is finally getting up and running. I hope our chess club will be meeting there soon. There is a non-profit organization running it, and I think good, good things will come of it. I've already shown my face round there, and said I'm available to teach music lessons to kids - apparently there's a lot of interest in that.

And so hope starts to grow. The kids have a place to hang out after school, a place that will only get better, things seem to be going well at school. This is how communities turn around - hope begins to grow.

Go well, stay well.

No matter how hard I try to remind myself that I will not have to teach forever, or how much I try to remember all I have to be thankful for, somedays just feel like Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade."

Half a league, half a league
Half a league onward
All in the Valley of Death
Rode the six hundred...

'Forward the Light Brigade!
Was there a man dismayed?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to do and die.

Then there are other days when I take a line from Bob Dylan and say to Baltimore:
If I'd known had bad you'd treat me
Honey, I never would have come.

Some days are all King Henry V and once more into the breach, and we few, we happy few, we band of brothers we and these things shall the good man teach his son.

Other days still, are just standing on Boo Radley's front porch and walking around in his shoes for a while and trying to understand.

And so it's another Monday here in the East - the same East that James Gatsby and Quentin Compson did so well in. Monday here in Baltimore where the fog hangs low with heat and heaviness in the second week of October, in the second year of my being here.

Half a league, half a league, half a league onward.

Washington Morning

Saturday morning, October sun falling on the rough pavement twinkling, blinking up at passersby.
Old songs on the stereo, nearly empty coffee cup, the remains of an apple pie on the kitchen table and a comfortable trio of friends reading the paper making lazy plans in lazy ways.
Existing where one's feet are, sheltering in Sabbath rest, laughing and jiving and singing and playing.
Coming round a table, walking on the street, shoes off on the National Mall tossing a white frisbee in the shadow of Smithsonian structures.
Metro rumbling, sidewalk shuffling, Saturday morning in an old pair of shoes, with an old pair of friends in an October sun.

It may surprise you, gentle reader, but I was a precocious child of eccentric tastes. Raffi’s Baby Beluga was fine, but for my money I dug the Broadway Cast Recording of Evita starring Patti LuPone in the title role. I am not making this up. By the time I was 5, I had the entire piece memorized.

When my niece was about 3 she had a real thing for the Beatles and Eleanor Rigby was her favorite song. I always found it disconcerting to hear those lyrics coming out of her 3 year old mouth (all the lonely people, where do they all come from?). I can only imagine that the lyrics of Don’t Cry for me Argentina (So I chose freedom, running around trying everything new, but nothing impressed me at all) emanating from me were equally disturbing to my family.

We owned this recording because my Dad saw the play, with Ms. LuPone, in New York. In a theatre so small he could smell the smoke from Mandy Patinkin’s cigar. He has always said that the show “was great.”

She won a Tony for that show, she originated the role of Fantine in the London production of Les Miserables. Most recently she was in the outstanding 2005 revival of Sweeney Todd, in New York. When she is on a stage she commands it, her voice able to navigate deep gravity of emotion as well as delicate comic turns.

I heard the orchestra director at Mizzou say that as musicians, we must absolutely walk the very edge of disaster, must be willing to walk to the very edge and then that tiny bit more – if we don’t walk that line then we are serving neither our art or our audience. It stirs no great response to give a perfectly safe performance. And this is the kind of performer LuPone is – you can hear it in every recording she has ever made.

In her turn as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, LuPone at once inspires revulsion and sympathy for a character who by all rights is disgusting. The audience, despite Mrs. Lovett’s obvious flaws, does want her on some level to get a house by the sea with Mr. T.

Tomorrow night I will hear LuPone in person. She will sing and I will bask in the presence of one of the all time great performers. And it will be a wonderful evening.

Woolgathering:
When the little girl, who often struggles with classwork, saw her paper on the board with a sticker and a one hundred on the board - that was a good moment.

When my student stood in the line to go to lunch with a book in his hand I asked him what he was doing with the book. "I want to read at lunch," he said. That was a really good moment, and read he did - I saw him.

Other thoughts:
Good weekend - books and card games and songs and lots of food and sweet company. I heard Ken Burns speak at the National Book Festival and it was really eloquent and inspiring.

Further thoughts:
Patti LuPone on Friday - get excited!

Misguided, but funny
This week the children and I read part of Sarah, Plain and Tall. This is what one of my students put in answer to the question:
How do the chilren first recognize Sarah? (the correct answer is that she is wearing a yellow bonnet)
The children first recognize Sarah because the see her on page 51 and that's when she was introduced.

A bit more literal than was needed.

Lift up your heads, O ye gates.
I wasn’t going to go to prayer on the lawn this morning at my school. Every Monday morning there is a small prayer group that comes for Morning Glory and I have the same internal dialogue each Monday.

“You best get yourself to prayer.”
“I’ve prayed already this morning and I could really use this time in my classroom.”
“You best get yourself to prayer and start this week off right, don’t matter if you already prayed, pray again.”
“But I need to prepare.”

And then sometimes, the voice of one my co-workers comes through the ceiling intercom, not unlike one might imagine, the voice of the Lord from the heavens, and says “Ms. Alsup, you coming round to Morning Glory, it’s starting.” Translation: “You best get yourself to prayer.”

“Be right there,” I answer.

This morning was Prayer on the Lawn, inviting the members of the community, parents and children to pray with us.

It was a small gathering, and the Eastern sun rose over our backs and lit the faces of the ministers and the pray-ers and the Amens rose up to the sky. Hallelujah, yes Lord Jesus.

We prayed over the students. We prayed over the parents. We even lifted up a prayer for the facilities and for the cafeteria. Hallelujah, yes Lord Jesus.

A minister in a snappy brown suit and fedora led the service, introducing community members. Another minister, so frail he looked as though he might blow away and with a voice like a wispy breeze, prayed in fervent tones. The Amens rose to the sky. Hallelujah, yes Lord.

The congregation swayed to each prayer, hallelujah yes.
And then the bishop of a local church came to give the benediction. “I have a two minute thought for you from Psalm 24 this morning.” And those familiar with a Baptist church know that it is never just a two minute thought, and the congregation dug in its heels for the haul and began to warm up to the subject.

“Lift up your heads O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.”
“Yes Lord.”
“Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.”
“Hallelujah, yes.”
“Lift up your heads, O ye gates,” the minister implored us. “Even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory.”
“Amen”

The sun lit his face and his smile, and he leaned forward to give his message to us.

“We’re going to do something different now, brothers and sisters, we been bowing our heads all morning, but this time we are going to lift them up, lift up our eyes to the heavens.”

He went on to say that life can bow your head, that life will bow your head. Troubles come and we bow our heads and we get so low we forget to lift our eyes up to the hills. And his voice started a long crescendo and the congregation began to sway a little.

Lift up your eyes he said. Life will bow our heads, and our students’ heads. And it ain’t always the devil, friends, it’s just life and its trials and troubles. So teachers: we must help our students lift their heads, and parents: we must help our students lift their heads. And teachers you got to keep your heads so up so that you can lead your students.

The crescendo rose, and the congregation swayed one foot to the other; the Amens rose to the heavens. Hallelujah, Lord Jesus. A woman in a gray hat clapped her hands together, and said “Come on, Holy Ghost,” as though exhorting an athlete to get warmed up and really let us have it.

And community, he shouted through the speaker over our small number to the sleeping houses beyond, We gotta Lift. Up. Our. Heads. Amen. Amen and amen. Praise Jesus. If you get up every morning, and you take time to talk to Lord, He will lift up your head If you get up, even while the dew is still on the roses, He will lift up your head. Mmm, yes Lord.

And the swaying slowed, Amens fell to murmurs and in we went to welcome the students, heads up and eyes on the hills. Morning and afternoon, a whole school day; I believe the Lord saw it, and I believe He declared it was good.

And all God’s people said: Amen.

14 Days till Ms. LuPone:
Ever since I was a wee musician, I have known that there are just some performers one should go see. Musicians who are such consumate talents that they define genres - my list is relatively short, though I add to it occasionally.
Wynton Marsalis - saw him at Jesse Hall.
The Count Basie Big Band - done in Dallas.
Sonny Rollins - still trying to get myself to New York.
Patti LuPone - 14 days and counting.

I am way pumped.

And now for something completely different:
In a departure from its usually meaningful content, Bears and Penguins brings you things that make Sara laugh out loud. (Admittedly it helps to be familiar with Wuthering Heights)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0vgZ2UNS54

Rather Endearing:

I turned on the local news this morning to see the results of the mayoral primary here in Charm City. While I was waiting for that story, the weather came on, and something I've never seen before happened:
As the weather woman was describing yesterday and today's cooler temperature, the word "PLEASANT" showed up on the weather map right over Maryland in large red letters. On the competing channel, the words "PLEASANT" and "QUITE COOL" showed up over the state.
Maybe in winter, they'll put up "Really effing cold." That would make me laugh.

Democracy Disappointment:
I was definitely disappointed by the results of the mayoral primary - my guy got knocked completely out of the race. I'm not sure quite how Baltimore's electoral system works, but the winner of the primary is definitely going to be the mayor. I guess it says a lot about the Union vote.

Third Week of School:
Teaching is an exhausting job. It just is, no matter how wonderful the students. But so far the students are doing well in spelling, though less well in reading comprehension.

One more election thought:
It's no secret that I'm not having a huge love affair with Baltimore, but...There is a certain way that Baltimore people sound that is unlike any place else I've been, and you could definitely hear it in the acceptance speeches of the mayor and the city council president. And somehow it's endearing to me - it just sounds like Baltimore.

Best get on with my day then. But there are things to look forward too, and that is not a bad thing.

I remember very clearly in one of the English Royal Palaces I toured that there were two little girls, probably 7 or 8, who were staring at the queen’s throne. They had long hair and were dressed in t-shirts and shorts, and were the closest of friends.

“Ooo, that’s where She sits.”
“Ooo.”

And it was the epitome of all little girls who know that truly it is good to be the princess, but also a unique view into my American country. An American child learns that the White House is a house of the people.

One of my students wrote in his journal that he knew he could be anything, even the President, if he worked hard at reading. This is our American right: that any of us may seek to lead our nation, that we all in fact bear the responsibility to do so. When I watched those two little girls I realized that no American child was ever meant to think that they could not sit in the seat of government. That an American child may look at the tallest chair in the cabinet room and say, “Someday, it will be me.”

So much of the White House and the presidency seems inaccessible: a person not of us, a house unknown by its meanest citizens. It stands austerely cool cloaked in white, set well back from the masses teeming, its surrounding grounds sylvan in aspect as though to say, “I am well above, as needs must be, to protect the fragile system cherished.”

Still the White House seemed just a bit smaller, a bit more approachable, a bit more warmly American and welcoming when I left it this afternoon. When I left having seen Teddy Roosevelt’s Medal of Honor, having seen lithograph prints of Lincoln and his cabinet, having seen Norman Rockwell’s take on the West Wing tour, having touched the chair in which the Wall Street Journal sits in the press room and breathed deep the smell of richly turned earth in the rose garden. The White House seemed a bit more mine after all that, and certainly a bit more the house of the children which I teach. It is a place embodying both the greatest triumphs and most heartbreaking failures of the American people and it is humbling in both respects.

I couldn’t help but think that if we could just get everyone in America on a bus with a brown bag lunch and let them see these things too, that finally we would start to get it together as a people. We’ve grown too far removed from the people’s house these days.

In Jefferson’s administration, great Western Native American chiefs camped on the White House lawn, having come at the president’s invitation.

In the Lincoln years, when enemy campfires could be seen from the grand old see, the people of the city would come to celebrate and mourn and serenade the President and his lady. Remember he was the man who famously declared our nation a “government of the people, for the people and by the people.”

And at no time is that feeling more clearly crystallized than in stepping from the halls of history and power and decision into crisp sunlight, knowing that any of us may lead, in fact all of us must.

I imagine the British girls, as young Americans, heads bent together in conference at the richness of furnishings before them, and saying not “that is his seat,” but rather “that is our seat.”

A charge and house to keep have we the people, a gift of wise, if fallible, men. May we keep our house, as well as they intended us too.

I think this is maybe the fourth incarnation of Bears and Penguins, the title I chose as a nod to my favorite writer, favorite book and favorite animals - efficiency is key.

Clean slate. Back in Baltimore - a city who's NPR station declared it difficult to love to day on air. This is not untrue, nor is it untrue that some people love it. I feel neither love nor hate. The feeling that comes most strongly is gratitude for what I see. Though it is hard, it has changed me, and I think time will bear this out, for the better.

It is a strange experience here, like the haze that cloaks the harbor bridge keeping hidden all perspective. And it is gratitude I feel when I hear Miss Y. playing gospel music in her room and singing, oh she sings, and how she loves those children she teaches. The children who are often very damaged and needing her careful, gracious patience. Gratitude I feel when Miss C advises me to get my room annointed. Gratitude and admiration for the teachers who have been at the Radiant for 22 and more years. That's something, that's a real thing, a deep committment.

I am a short timer here. But when I leave, those teachers will still be working, striving to be everything for children who have nothing. I do think there is too great a tendency to canonize teachers as though they were holy, sanctified and infallible beings. And yet, I know some very fine teachers at the Radiant and they are greater because of their love.

Love bears up, and is not always softly gentle. Love bears all things. The gangs, and the drugs, the dangers and disappointments. Love bears up, and the teachers come back to the Radiant, to hang paper over gray walls, to set up aquariums for hermit crabs and snakes, to calculate how many books may be purchased - secondhand - for the children. Love bears up.

So I feel gratitude to have been taken in, to have observed and taken part. Gratitude for the year ahead, however fraught it may be with all the inner-city trauma that is par for the course. Gratitude because in Baltimore, these things remain: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.

Sara and Lynn are G.T.T.

Letting you know so you can cross your fingers...

We might get a half day today because of heat (all the Texans roll your eyes now). If the mercury tips 90 by 11, it's a holiday in the city.

Out of context at the Radiant:
*Yes, these things have all been said this week, and only one of them was said by a student. I laugh occassionally at work.

"Guerilla warfare is a bitch."

"I wasn't a drug man, I was an alcohol man."

"Are the eighth graders wearing clothes at their graduation?"

"Will we go swimming in the gym today?"

"Who is that over there - oh it's Godzilla."

"When she said, 'Call the po-po, I called the po-po."

"If he be stinking like that, than she must be stinking too."

While Blythe was here in Baltimore she told me that she had read something about, and I paraphrase, putting your credo into 6 words. 6 words to describe the way you wish to live, how you define it. 6 words is not a lot.
This was (is) mine:
"Hand to the plow, forward ho."
I don't think I could have come up with anything better than that.

There are four weeks left in the school year; between field trips and school assemblies it promises to be a busy time. Texas is so close that I can taste it. Some of my friends are traveling the world this summer, but I'm more than content to turn my feet toward Texas.

I grow weary in the work, and it's hard not to give up sometimes. But hand to the plow, you know.

I read through the book of Jonah yesterday. Of course all Bible characters are human, but some seem much more human than others, and I always seem to identify with the worst of them - Thomas "I'll believe it when I see it."
Peter "I talk a good game, but lose it when it counts."
Moses "I'm a stubborn fool."
and Jonah "I'll go my own way, thank you very much."

Anyway, I don't like Jonah much, but I know him. After he goes to Nineveh, he gets angry because (long story short) the Lord shows compassion on the people. God asks Jonah what right he has to be angry, and of course, the answer is none.

This hit me hard this week, because it's ever so easy to throw myself a pity party here. And the question that comes to me when I want to call a friend and whine and ask sympathy, the answer that comes (as I know it should) is "So what?"

I'm fed, clothed and sheltered. I've friends and family who pray for me. I've hobbies and enjoyments and experiences to fall back on. Whereas the kids I teach have not. So what does it matter when I have a tough day, a lot of the students I teach have tough lives.

What right have I to a pity party? None.

So humbled, I reach my hand once more the plow, placing the traces about my shoulder. Forward ho.