One of the saddest things I've ever seen

It's hard to know what to say, watching former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head at her own political rally two years ago, now pleading with her former colleagues for laws to promote responsible gun use and curb gun violence.   She is partially blind, needs help to walk, and is very slowly re-learning how to speak.   Today, her little girl's voice and child's hand-gestures implored members of Congress to Be bold and Act now.   I felt guilty thinking, as I watched her painful testimony, that her prepared speech and its delivery had the look of a Saturday Night Live sketch except it was much too real and sad.    Gabby Giffords will never be her former self.   She will probably always speak in a child's voice, with a child's hand gestures, to people who sympathise but have no empathy for her situation.

And this is because of a crazy twenty-something guy with a gun.   Yes, it's true that we need better mental health care in this country.   It's true that in some cases, it should be easier to commit someone showing dangerous, unhealthy behavior to a mental institution.

But Wayne La Pierre of the NRA (National Rifle Association)  would have us believe that knowing the  whereabouts of severely mentally ill people, keeping some of them in a national database, is fine while keeping a national database of gun owners is not.   It infringes on our right to privacy; to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

He asserts that keeping guns out of the hands of criminals is all we have to do, so we won't infringe on the rights of lawful gun owners just trying to protect their families.

To me, the first statement is hypocritical and the second is simplistic.   Because when does a criminal become a criminal?   Maybe he's already committed some criminal act before he buys a gun at a gun show.  OR, maybe she doesn't become a criminal until she takes the gun out of her purse one day and shoots someone in the grocery store parking lot.   Maybe he's always been a mild-mannered dentist until one day he gets depressed or angry, slides the gun out of the drawer, and shoots his wife and children.

Criminals may be able to get guns, and that's "criminal,"   but using a one's own legally bought gun when you've never used one before can make you a criminal.  It usually does make you a criminal, immediately.   Charged with murder, attempted murder, or something else.

So I hope we can get beyond the simplistic, the hypocritical in this issue and pass legislation that's practical, based in public health and common sense.  Guns are too easy a tool for killing and injuring people.

Foreign fallacy

I watched the Obama - Romney debate last night on foreign policy.   I didn't catch onto Romney's strategy until I listened to the PBS commentators afterwards:  Romney was trying to be calm, agreeable,  less aggressive, even the hurt puppy, to appeal to women.  He wanted to come across as someone who isn't scary, isn't ready to go to war at the drop of a hat, in order to appeal to women who evidently worry more about that than men.  (And perhaps that's true).

I'm voting for Obama anyway, but I have to say I thought he came across as more personally connected to foreign policy than to some of the other issues they've discussed.  (Except health care).  I was thinking about why it appeared this way to me, and I've concluded this:  So much of the news in the last four years has been economic:  to tax or not, to bail out or not, to spend or not, the price of houses, how many people are out of work, the percentage of increase or decrease in unemployment and home sales . . . numbers, numbers, numbers.    This isn't completely the case, of course:  some news stories focus on human examples of these economic realities.  But more than ever in the last four years, I find I can't listen to the news on the radio for more than 5 or 10 minutes, because it's so much about numbers and financial institutions and strategy.

Obama seemed very personally connected to foreign policy last night, because he's been living it the last four years.  He's been living all the issues--economic, environmental, health care--but health care is (at least in the news, often when it's discussed) completely intertwined with money, too.

But, as I was pondering why the president seemed to take all the issues so personally last night, why he glowered at Romney as he realized that Romney was just going to repeat everything he said about foreign policy because he didn't want to appear scary--as I was thinking about this, I realized that foreign policy, more directly than any other issue a president tackles, involves people dying.  President Obama--anyone who's been in that office after four years--has seen people die on his watch, die as a direct result of him sending them to war, or of the results of what other countries do because of our relationships with them.  People dying is not necessarily the US's fault, and there's not necessarily anything the president can do to prevent our citizens, our soldiers, or other countries' citizens from dying, but that's very often what the stakes are in foreign policy.

I thought of all the students and faculty I've worked with, from the Middle East and all over the world, and how they would react to the unmistakable assumed superiority of the US that both candidates projected.   How we arbitrarily say that Iran must never have nuclear weapons and Pakistan, who already has 100, can't have any more.  Nobody mentioned India, an enormous presence (and nuclear-armed too, right?)  I understand that these issues aren't so simple; that the nuclear arms race was called a race for a reason, and I can accept arbitrariness in who's nuclear-armed and who isn't.  

But do WE always get to decide?  Really, the US gets to be the decider of these things?  I guess a candidate for the US presidency can't say otherwise.   And if I'm honest, having grown up in this country it's hard for me to imagine the US as not having some kind of major influence in the world.  I just wish it didn't have to be voiced in such starkly simple and arbitrary terms; that Obama didn't have to say, "If I am president, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."  And Romney to say "Me too, and I'll even cripple them some more."

At least, to me, the debate brought out Obama's decisiveness in an area of experience that Romney just doesn't have.   In that way, it seems a bit unfair even to debate foreign policy, when one of the debaters has been in charge of it for the last four years.   It made me think of the sobering influence a US president has over the lives of people.  That foreign policy means life or death at times, and it's complex and messy and important.

Teenage passions

I'm a college counselor at an international school.   My students apply to colleges/universities in the US, Canada, and UK.   If you've attended any admissions information sessions or applied to college in the US in the last 10 - 15 years, you've probably been urged to tell colleges about your "passions."   For colleges with a selective admission process--that is, who require more than rigorous classes/high grades/strong test scores--they distinguish between students based on what makes them interesting.   Interesting in the context of their particular campus, to be sure--but increasingly, it's the student with a "passion" for an instrument or a cause or a subject (multiply that times 10 for a sport) who is "interesting," rather than the classic "well-rounded" applicant.

When I first started working as a college counselor almost 10 years ago, I may have used those words:  "Tell them about your passion."  Eventually I stopped doing that because it began to sound trite, to ring hollow.  To me, it assumes that everyone who's seventeen or eighteen is passionate about something, and that if you're not, then you're not okay.  It even sounds like that to me, 30 years older than my students.   I did have a passion when I was a senior in high school--music, specifically playing violin and flute--but  even though I applied to a couple of music schools, I don't think I ever said "I'm passionate about playing violin"  to anyone.   I said I wanted to be concertmaster in a major orchestra someday, which was much more recklessly ambitious, but I don't think I would have ever called playing violin or flute or singing in ensembles a passion.

I suppose that concept, as a catchphrase for college-admission cachet, is relatively new, developing as more students apply to college and more students apply to more of the same selective colleges.

In the last four years--since I've worked at a school that teaches the French national education system--I've noticed more keenly a blank stare or a whisper of fright across a student's face when an application, or a university rep, has asked a student to describe a passion.  I'm not sure it's a concept that is contemplated as much in other cultures as it is in US culture.   We toss around the word "passion"  freely here in the US, without embarrassment (not a love-of-another person passion, but a consuming drive for an activity or subject), as if we should feel free to go around telling people we have a passion for reading Faulkner or rowing or blogging about sports.   If it's truly a passion, shouldn't it be obvious to others?  Do we have to name it?

Well, of course we have to name it when its importance is implied, or directly asked about, on a college application.   I find that many of my students have a difficult time naming a passion, and I'm on their side where that's concerned.  Their school day is consumed with classes from 8:30 - 5:30 on many days, working toward huge end-of-2-year exams whose results can determine a lot of your life.   This is the case in many, if not most, other countries.  

I put this out there to wonder if I'm right, whether the concept of having a "passion"  for something is a particularly American one . . . or if even naming something as a passion is a very American thing to do.  I don't know.

What if I just want to be President of the United States?

We hear every day, and we have heard for the last two years, about Mitt Romney's changing positions. He wants to protect a woman's right to control her body; the same day, he says he is firmly pro-life.  President Obama modeled his health-care bill after the Massachusetts plan that Romney implemented when he was governor, yet Romney would repeal "Obamacare"  on Day One of his presidency (except for the parts that everybody likes, such as denying coverage for pre-existing conditions).

I'm sure it's no secret that I'm an Obama supporter and generally vote blue.  I am not posting this to try to slam Romney, believe it or not.

While I will add that his aggressive behavior to Jim Lehrer during the first debate, and his "47 percent" comments, have not endeared him to me, my overriding impression of Romney is that he just wants to be president.  Period.  He wants to be president of the United States, and that desire seems to be his substance.  I respect his devotion to his church and family, and I can respect his ambition.  But after two years--even four years, remembering him from the 2008 Republican primaries-- all I can say I really know about a Romney presidency is that he wants to be president.

Now, normally showing that you're "hungry" for a job is a good thing.  In fact, the first time I ever realized the similarity of running for president to a 2-year job interview was in 2000, the first time George W. Bush ran.   I got the distinct impression that he didn't want the job he was interviewing for.  To me, he didn't have that fire in his belly, that sense of urgency that usually comes through in a candidate's interviews and speeches.   I had never noticed that before in any presidential candidate.

So, I keep saying to myself, it should be a good thing that Governor Romney wants so badly to be president of the United States.  Usually wanting a job means you'll take it seriously and you know why you want it, what the job will satisfy in you and what you want to accomplish in the job.

But there's something missing.  I still have no idea why he wants to be president, why it matters to him.      Yes, on many--perhaps most-- days during the campaign he has expressed differing philosophical views about the role of government than Obama.  (In the debate last week, they suddenly sounded more alike).    Maybe he does believe in less government, and maybe a hell of a lot less federal government in people's lives, than Obama does.

I realize that, as I started this post, I said I wasn't going to harp on Romney's changing positions.   But I think that's why my impression of him is what it is.   I don't know what's at his core.  If he is elected, I have no idea what would or would not change in the first month, three months, six months, one year, of a Romney presidency.  I can't recall ever feeling this way about a candidate.


Mitt Romney, more than anything, puzzles me.  And he points out a conundrum that is larger than himself.   What does it mean that a candidate just wants to be president?  If that's the case for Romney, is that enough to make him an effective president and a serious, circumspect leader?  Is it enough just to really, really, really want the job?

Guru-ma: Back to school

Guru-ma: Back to school: The "Wedding Cake"  building at Cal Tech, where I visited last week. This week--last week--next week--lots of us will head back to schoo...

Back to school

The "Wedding Cake"  building at Cal Tech, where I visited last week.

This week--last week--next week--lots of us will head back to school.  

When I was a kid, I loved going back to school.   I was usually bored in the summers, and missed my friends.  I also tend to like an imposed structure, or purpose, in my life and school provided that.   (And, luckily, I was interested in most of what school had to offer).

I'm still going back to school.  I've only had a couple of jobs in my life in which I didn't have to go back to school.  Something about school obviously clicks with me. I've worked in three colleges and three high schools, constituting most of my career.  I have yet to figure out exactly what it is about school that resonates with me.

And as I creak my way back to school this year, rev up the school gears again, I'm still wondering what it is about school that has always drawn me in.  I read about school and college even on my vacations, even when I swear I won't.  I can't help it.

So what's up with school, as a profession?

(Hmm . . . I've just noticed that this building, above, looks faintly religious, as many college buildings do.  Lots of college architecture is modeled after Gothic cathedrals or 60s-era churches.   Maybe there's something to that?  Check out this Arts & Sciences classroom building at USC--Univ of Southern California--which I visited last Wednesday).

The slab of vulnerability . . .

Click on photo to enlarge

I started this blog to explore the notion of leaving one's country and coming home.   A Canadian friend and colleague at my school in Zurich was eager to hear about the adjustment of coming back to your home country.  I didn't know what kind of adjustment issues to expect when I moved back to the States after five years overseas in two countries, but I expected to feel that I was "adjusting"  all the time.  I expected to be bombarded with culture shock.

In fact, I didn't feel that way at all.  Many elements of life were a relief:  I knew how to find an apartment in the States.  I discovered that, after five years of letting myself live in the housing that was provided or found for me, on or very near campus, it was exciting to look for an apartment in Washington, DC.   (And when is finding an apartment anything other than a chore)?   Knowing from afar how the system worked was reassuring.

I couldn't name it during those five years, but living in a new country made me vulnerable in way I'd never been before.  I don't know if others of you have experienced this, but I now realize that the foundation of me the expat was resting, 24-7, on a concrete slab of helplessness.   I don't mean to be overdramatic--and maybe this is just me-- but I can see now that part of my day-to-day Amy-ness that I lived pre-2003 (pre-India, pre-Switzerland) was replaced with a layer of vulnerability, helplessness, openness, fear, blank slate, whatever you want to call it.  It has taken me four years back in my own country to know this about myself.

To illustrate this, I can attach the vulnerability to a particular element of life, in both places.   In India, the snakes on campus and the big gecko in my kitchen took the rug out from under me, 24-7.   There was nary a single second of any day in three years on campus that I didn't look for that cobra on my office window (this had happened to my predecessor) or take a step back when I flipped on the fluorescent light in my kitchen, for the disappearing tail of the huge gecko that lurked or lived in the masonry walls.

In Switzerland, the label on that slab of vulnerability read GERMAN, two kinds of German that are different enough to be different languages.  You are not the same person anymore when you can't read your own mail you take out of the mailbox when you get home:  the stuff from your insurance company, the political candidates'  flyers, the newsletters from the gemeinde (the county).  I can begin to imagine how immigrants to the US feel when they arrive here and don't speak English.   Part of me felt ashamed, part of me felt helpless, literally like a baby in an adult parallel universe.

On the other hand, I did get used to hearing another language around me in daily life.   In fact, when I would come back to the US in the summers, it would almost feel too easy that I could understand all the announcements over the PA system in the airports and recognize the newspaper headlines.

So when I moved back to the US, I was excited because I could speak the language and talk to the landlord and live in whatever part of the city, or suburbs, I wished.   I could make small talk with the people next to me in the elevator, in the grocery cashier's line.  I could talk to the tourists on the DC Metro or bus, if I wanted to, or if they asked me directions.  I could introduce myself to my neighbors.

Click on photo to enlarge

And the opposite was also true:  because I came back to the States to work in a French school, where the classes are taught in French and a majority of the emails and the meetings are in French, I felt as though I was still living in another country.   French is the only other language I understand fairly well.  I still work at the Lycee, and I still feel as though I go to another country every day.

Because of this last fact--that I came back to go to a little island of France every day, and live in one of the most diverse cities in the US--I never felt the downpour of culture shock that I anticipated.  At the same time, speaking the language and knowing my home culture began to chip away at the slab of vulnerability.

The real adjustment, however, has been . . . .   well, I will save that for another post.  And welcome anyone's reactions.