Community

This is the topic I am to speak on next week at a school tour for LCW (Larchmont Charter West Hollywood). There are few restrictions, no guidelines, and I am, to be clear, not the main attraction. That would be our outstanding and inspiring principal Kristin Droege, who is truly one of a kind--Phd in education from LAUSD, hands-on teaching experience in both public and private schools, and entrepreneurial--she has already started a Charter School herself in Victorville that runs on Montessori principles. Now she is running ours. If we could clone her she could save LAUSD.

Anyway, at the end of the tour, her presentation, and a few words from a teacher, I will speak. About community.

What will I say?

When I heard my assignment I wanted to back out. It is not that I do not believe in community (I do!). It is just that I am still more comfortable being the observer than the motivator. I like facts and tangible things more than squishy intangibles. And now I will be standing in front of people I don't know talking about the absolutely squishiest of intangibles, trying to inspire them. The thought makes my stomach curdle.

So for the past week this word has been rattling around in my mind.

And I think of what this school has taught me. In many ways it has changed my life--or at least my outlook on life. And I know that when I die being part of this grand and inspiring experiment--whatever happens in the end--will be one of the things I am most proud of in my life.

When Marya and Jay (THE two founding parents) came to us (referred to us by a friend who helped start the original Larchmont Charter) to ask if we would help start a school we went and met them on a playground in February. It was the four of us and some kids. They wanted to get the school up and running by the following September. Jonathan said yes. I nodded politely, but thought, there is no way in HELL this is going to happen. Believe me, we had a backup plan for our son.

Before we even got the charter approved Marya gathered a group of founding parents and told us we needed to raise $200,000 by September. We didn't have a charter yet, which meant we didn't have anyone to call except ourselves to raise money. Inwardly I scoffed. And the next day I made sure my paperwork was in order for Melrose Elementary (another great neighborhood school, now a magnet).

The charter was approved. A principal was hired. A lottery was held. Teachers were hired. We had two classrooms in half of an old Catholic school that we would share with the original Larchmont to help them pay the rent. Two kindergarten classes were squeezed into one large old classroom with a moveable wall in the middle that did little to stop the noise between two boisterous classes. The teachers endured and did a fantastic job with our kids. My son dreamed of being in first grade so he could have a full classroom just for his class.

By March we had held a drawing for the following year, but still had found no spot for our school. It was a crisis. Would the experiment end so soon? We scrambled. And so did a lot of other people. Again, by the skin of our teeth, Prop 39 came through about four months late and we got four classrooms at Rosewood Elementary School. The new principal graciously agreed to share the space and even gave us an extra room.

Over the summer parent volunteers came, painted, planted trees, put our insignia on the doors. When school started in September the school looked spectacular. I almost wept, the transformation was so complete.

All through this process I was the skeptic. I did not believe we could open the school by September. (we did) I did not believe we could raise $200,000 by September (we did). I grew anxious in the spring that we would not have a site for the following year. (in the end, after sleepless nights and much anxiety, we got one!)

I wasn't a downer or a negatroid. Throughout the process I kept my thoughts (mostly) to myself, and I always pitched in and tried to help out--as did ALL the other parents.

And this is what I learned: with a community, you can achieve incredible things. You really can change the world. What I personally did was not spectacular or amazing. There are some amazing people on board to make this school work. But even they could not have done it alone. The miracle is, that if everyone really pitches in, really volunteers, really does their best to make something work, it really can happen. If you add the labor of 80 dedicated parents, or 120, or 160, then throw in fantastic teachers and staff, you can accomplish a lot. In a society where we cannot typically reach those in power to even say what we think, and reform can take years, if not decades, this experience was so empowering.

I care about making the world better. I wrote for a newspaper so I could try to do that. But to join forces with others, to stand side by side with people and build something out of nothing--it is an amazing feeling. The lessons extend so far beyond the school and your own children.

And our children are all watching. They know their parents built this school. We don't run it. We leave it to the professionals. But we are essential to making it function. And that passes that feeling on to them: that with work, they can engage, they can work with their friends who share their vision, to make the world a better place.

As our Executive Director Brian Johnson said last week: "Part of what we are teaching at the Larchmont Schools is how to build a community from the ground up. And that is something people do not know how to do in Los Angeles."

Those lessons on how to build community are woven throughout the curriculum for our children. They learn it when they sit down to eat lunch family style in our Edible Schoolyard program. They learn it when they build the garden. They learn it in projects they do at school that teach them about the world, and their responsibility in it. And they learn it watching all of us pitching in--not being critics or consumers--but community members.

This isn't a church. But it is a cause. It is a vibrant community that is building a school committed to community, diversity, eco-literacy--that is determined to provide an extraordinary education to children of every social, racial and economic group.

To be part of something like this is a privilege. And it makes you feel good besides.

Have you ever been part of a community that changed how you looked at the world?

Their 15 Minutes of Fame...

Check this out, to see my boys. Scroll down to Halloween Weekend to see my boys on the blog of our most favorite babysitter.

A Rumination for Writers

I read recently, and I think this is true, that the job of writers is to take the reader somewhere they either do not access, or cannot access. In journalism this was absolutely true. Our job, in the best cases, was to break into some world, some subculture, some political group, some organization, and tell the reader how it really worked from the inside.

In the past, writers traveled to distant lands and wrote great tales of what they saw there. I think this kind of British writing influenced me greatly.

But now, when people can travel wherever they want to go, where do readers want to be taken? Do they want to travel into someone else's life (the memoir)? Do they want to travel inside an institution that is basically blocked to everyone, including the media, to get the real, inside scoop (hence the rise in tell-all books from people once they leave an organization. The "This is what it was really like" genre of memoir).

Do they want to go inside a religious cult? Inside Hollywood? Inside a school? Inside a mind? Inside a dysfunctional family?

In this age where a staggering amount (too much?) incredibly personal information is available with a dance on the keyboard that takes you to a blog (like this one!) facebook, or youtube, tell me, dear readers and fellow writers, where is it that you want your storytellers to take you?

Or, is that, since we can now find a way to go anywhere, that we are looking more for a specific kind of a guide to take us there. Are we looking for a certain perspective? A certain voice? Is that the change?

Please drop me a line with your thoughts. I am so curious.

...and MORE

Forgive me! But they are so cute, so irresistable. So I indulge myself, and here are two more.




So tell me, what were YOU?

Halloween Pix

Belated pix from Halloween



Above: Theo and Benji.

Below: Theo the wizard (angry because he forgot his giant trick or treat bag) Benji the knight, Elsa, as Glinda the Good (her fantastic costume made by her mama, Gina) and Sloane, as Dumbo (another amazing costume made by the magical Gina)

Down With the Flu

This is day 3 of being trapped in the house with sick boys, watching too much television and eating nothing but chicken soup, apple sauce and Ritz crackers.

Is it swine flu? We don't know. It is fever and headaches and achiness and malaise. Pray you don't get it.

By today the boys still have a low fever but Theo is jumping off the sofa inspired by Peter Pan and Benji is spending a lot of time feeling himself. I hope to God I do not throttle them today. There is nothing worse than keeping almost-but-not-quite-well children stuck in the house.

As for me, I feel like a caged animal, but this has all been very very good for my writing.

Stay healthy, dear readers, wherever you are.

Direct Dial to the Goddess of Fiction

I am blessed to count among my friends some truly amazing people. Among them is the fabulous, wonderful, exquisite writer Sarah Shun Lien Bynum, National Book Award finalist and author of two hauntingly beautiful books.

As I woke up this morning I found myself still trying to figure out which voice I wanted to tell my novel in for NANOWRIMO. This is not just a masturbatory procrastination technique. I am really struggling.

Last year I tried telling every chapter in the voice of a particular character (you know the literary device, it is practially de rigueur for fiction now) , but I stumbled. I realized that really, my book was about the struggle between two of the characters. The story was what was going on in both of their heads, even if there are other characters who are essential the story. So this year, as I wade back in, reworking, fictionalizing, and adding plot to the mix, I found myself using the classic omniscient narrator. But going into night three I realized that wasn't working either. I could not get the voice, the perspective, the DEEP motivations of these two main characters into this mode. And yet, I did not want to be redundant, telling the same important incident twice from different perspectives in a Rashomon type account. Nor did I want to write in first person.

I talked to Jonathan, who listened carefully and said he would have to read it to comment. I am not ready for that.

So I headed to my computer and typed a "HELP ME" email to Sarah. Minutes later, she called from her little green Mini, on her long trek down to San Diego to teach at UCSD.

"Yes," she said.

I laid out my problem and she considered carefully. She knew the basics of my story from last year, and had followed my dilemmas and, remarkably, retained every detail. She asked me a few probing questions. Well, she said, omniscient narrator is usually for a grand cast of characters you can barely keep track of all laid out on a huge canvas (nope, not me). First person can work, do you want to do that? (no) I find limited third person can be even more revealing than first person, if you are trying to get to deep-seated emotional truths (interesting, and upon consideration, true!) And I wouldn't worry about repeating some sections with the point of view of different characters. That is fine (really?) And, from me, one more question. Should I add in the other characters and their perspectives. Oh no, said Sarah. Your lesson from last year was that two characters emerged as the main ones. Do not push it. Go with that.

And with that brilliant advice, dispensed from a speeding car racing through San Clemente, I am on my way, ready to go, and dive into DAY FOUR,

All you secret NANOWRIMO writers, where are you now? I would out you all, but I know you chose secret names and Everytown USA addresses for a reason.

I am at 5981.

Onward and upwards!