Clownmommy

I am so happy, so relieved, so hopeful. I cried. I have never felt this way about a president. One of our own. Much is being made of the color of his skin and that is an inspiring first. But this is a president of my generation. Someone who was a child in the 1970′s and came of age in the 1980′s and married in the 1990′s Someone whose children, for better or worse, are influenced by the Disney Channel.

Early 2000s recession 2001–2003 22 months
The collapse of the dot-com bubble, the September 11th attacks, and accounting scandals contributed to a relatively mild contraction in the North American economy.
Early 1990s recession 1990–1991 23 months
Industrial production and manufacturing-trade sales decreased in early 1991.
Early 1980s recession 1980–1982 25 months
The Iranian Revolution sharply increased the price of oil around the world in 1979, causing the 1979 energy crisis. This was caused by the new regime in power in Iran, which exported oil at inconsistent intervals and at a lower volume, forcing prices to go up. Tight monetary policy in the United States to control inflation lead to another recession. The changes were made largely because of inflation that was carried over from the previous decade due to the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis.
1973 Oil Crisis 1973–1975 24 months
A quadrupling of oil prices by OPEC coupled with high government spending due to the Vietnam War lead to stagflation in the United States.

I was a nervous wreck all day. My Kid was home from school so I wasn’t able to hike around the city checking out the energy of the lines outside the polling places. I can go walkabout on my own, but My Kid requires a destination.

Finally, around 6 pm I got her on the Q train heading to Times Square where I’d heard people were gathering. There were people with Obama signs gathering in the center of the square. That was interesting to me. But, we went into Toys R Us. I bought my kid a toy stuffed rabbit and a tube of sugary goo from Candyland in advance payment for patiently waiting with me.

I half hoped that the election would be such a landslide it would be called right at 7:00 pm when the polls closed. That’s what I was hoping for when rushing out of the store. No such luck. Early southern states with 5% of the vote counted were going for McCain and I got scared.

We joined the crowd in the triangle watching the ABC broadcast on the big screens and the backs of Cokie Roberts in blue and Donna Brazile in red and two, non-random white men but I didn’t know who they were. My Kid was the only little kid there smack dab in the middle of Times Square, most other parents had more sense. She kept asking when Daddy would be there. But, Daddy was delayed at his office. Times Square wasn’t so crowded that he couldn’t find us. When he joined us we watched some more. I tried to tell them I could have stood there in Times Square cheering the small victories and waiting for the final result all night and if they wanted to eat dinner they needed to take the initiative. I was willing to leave Times Square after Obama won Ohio. We walked towards Rockefeller Center. We ate at McCormick and Schmicks. My Kid was having desert and we were waiting for the check when we heard screams in the kitchen. The restaurant was almost empty and the manager had just announced that the doors were closed, no more new customers, they could start their closing chores. Then we heard shouts from the kitchen and all the waiters moved towards the bar where a silent TV glowed election information. A waiter asked and the manager gave permission for the sound to come on. “The lady’s crying.” We’d already moved our desert and coffee to the bar and I was crying.

After McCain’s concession speech we left the restaurant and went to Rockefeller Center to watch Obama’s victory speech on the giant TV’s. So many cheering people. So many honking taxis. So much happiness!

My Kid was melting. We had to go home.

When we came up out of the subway station at Lafayette we could hear drumming and cheering. It was a scene in the street between Ralph’s corner grocery and Moe’s bar. So many young adults dancing in the streets. The Husband was carried My Kid home while I took a quick detour to check it out. When I got home I made The Husband go out and check it out.

So much happiness.

There were police but they were just hanging out. There was nothing for them to do, everyone was so happy. All the mob did was dance and cheer.

Every time a car went down the street it would honk and everyone would cheer.

We lay in bed listening to the waves of cheers that continued till 3 am.

Such a happy night!

My kid is happy as a clam to watch Sponge Bob and eat Halloween candy on this day off from school due to Election Day.  Before I found out there was no school, I thought I would work off my Obama waitin’ nerves walking around Brooklyn and Manhattan checking out the lines at various polling places.  This morning I saw an event happening in Times Square and I thought My Kid and I might go there (My Kid does love Toys R Us Times Square and in fact when she was little she thought Toys R Us WAS Times Square)

But,

We’re still in the apartment.

And

I’m getting a little stir crazy.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=x5F-sXW6tCM&feature=related

I’m not surprised that the New York City Department of Education failed to increase the number of minority students in gifted and talented program; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/nyregion/30gifted.html.  The program was obviously created by a man used to working in an office with a staff, not a mommy juggling school and work and family and HOLIDAY obligations.  

I am a white college educated woman stay-at-home-(at least some of the time) mom-obsessed with my only child’s education AND I FAILED TO GET THE PROPER FORMS IN ON TIME in order for my child to take the gifted and talented test. 

Last year, right before vacation, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PRE-HOLIDAY CRAZINESS a letter came home about signing up for the special test.  The form was to be turned the first or second day back in school after the long Christmahanakwanzikadan New Year break.

The teachers were ambivalent with an “if this is interesting to you, it’s not mandatory…” note.

In MIDDLE OF THE PRE-HOLIDAY CRAZINESS this piece of paper did not get special treatment…

After the holidays, in the school office, a casual question in the school office.  The school secretary said the test was only if you wanted to leave this school.  My kid’s happy at the school where she is, which also happens to be on my husband’s way to work.

I don’t want to yank my kid out of the school where her friends go, and add a significant commute to her morning for her to attend a gifted and talented program somewhere deeper into Brooklyn that may be nowhere near our go-to subway line.

So…

For whatever reason…

I filled out the form, but I failed to turn it in by the deadline and my kid was not pulled out of class to take the special test.

I felt like a bad parent on that day of the test when the other more organized parents were talking about it.

My kid’s statistically minority friend who took the test well and was accepted into the gifted and talented program, well, she didn’t change schools.  Our school has no “gifted and talented” program.  They aspire to nurture the gifts of all the children.

Kids are not interchangeable like bricks.

Schools are eco-systems.

Children need more than accelerated programs, they need friends, they need to feel at home in the school building and comfortable in their classroom.  They need to be able to like their teachers and know their teachers enjoy them.

At 8, 9 or 10 years old kids are not thinking about their future.  They live in the present looking forward to the end of the week at best.

Even Malia Obama, a bright student in a good school, with very prominent parents–when faced with the prospect of her father’s campaign’s unprecedented TV buy on multiple channels–only concern was if his program would pre-empt her favorite Nickelodeon and Disney Channels (which also happen to me my own child’s favorite channels–another reason to vote the Obama Family into the White House).

Yesterday there was a rather spectacular shooting in a beauty parlor near our “home subway stop”.  One of the injured innocent bystanders happened to be an off-duty cop, a female, shot in the leg while sitting in a salon chair having her hair done.

In the blogosphere there is some criticism of this off-duty officer for not having her gun at the ready.  Some people believe off-duty cops are required to have their weapons with them at all times.  I did a google search and this was the law in New York City until 1981 when some drunken off-duty cop shot someone.  (Yes it would be a really good idea for 20-somethings on a St. Patrick’s Day pub-crawl not to carry loaded weapons.)

The concept of requiring someone, a woman, to carry a weapon at all times baffles me.  Does this mean women, who happen to be officers of the law, should carry a gun into the delivery room?  I’m sorry but I think, if I’d had the option available to me,  I might have shot the nurse who put the fetal monitor on my belly after I pushed it off for the umteenth time while in the throes of labor.  I’m not saying having your hair done an experience of that magnitude.  But, come on.  There are some moments when a girl just needs to be a girl. Sitting in a salon chair in a beauty parlor is one of those times!

From a photo essay in the New Yorker

Elsheba Khan at the grave of her son, Specialist Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. Photo by Platon.

Last year My Kid joined her elementary school’s robotics team.  They spent the year trying to solve alternative energy challenges using Lego’s.

As a child, I too learned about renewable sources of alternative energy –off the back of a truck:

This week, My Kid came home with a letter from her First LEGO League coach about their mission for 2008

The Project: 

1.) Research how climate affects your own community.  Identify a climate problem in your area, analyze climate data about the problem, and discover what your community is doing about it.  Find another community somewhere in the world with the same issue and identify any solutions they are working on. Discuss the various ways climate impacts your community and your lives. Look at climate data available for your area as it relates to your climate problem.  Consider talking with experts who work with or in climate everyday, like climatologists, farmers, foresters, and community leaders.  Then find another community in a different geographical area that is experiencing a similar problem.  

2.) Create an innovative solution based on the information you gathered that could be used on a local or even global level to solve this climate problem or improve on an existing solution. Consider all the potential solutions to your climate problem and how great an impact you can have.  Talk with experts to see what solutions are already being developed or used.  Build your climate connections by creating an innovative solution to your chosen climate problem that could be applied in both communities and could be adopted by even more communities who face a similar issue.  

3.) Once you have researched and developed your solution, get out there and share it!  Take what you’ve learned to build awareness of the problem and promote your solution.  Show your research and solution and use this project to see just how great an impact you can have on your community and your world!

That’s a lot to ask of elementary school students.  And yet it is the same thing they asked of us when I was in grade school.  Our teachers, and TV, told us that the adults who built the factories with smokestacks that filled the air with acid rain causing pollution, and poured the sludge into the rivers that killed the fish, and the birds that ate the fish, were ignorant.  They didn’t know that would happen. 

So Woodsy Owl told us kids that the clean up was our job!

This year My Kid’s multidisciplinary curriculum is based around the theme of community, both local and global.  The children are taught the same thing they learned watching High School Musical; “We’re all in this together”.  In the spring there will be a large art project utilizing recycled materials.  The students will learn how to police the glass, paper & plastic sorting skills and light bulb choices of their parents.  They will sell us canvas shopping bags covered with pictures drawn in Sharpie marker of crying trees and slogans reminding us to reduce, reuse and recycle! 

“Next year I am going to save the world.”  My Kid said in happy anticipation, at the school festival last spring, believing this to be what one does in the third grade.

As children, we were told that the world was ours to save.

Years later my kid is being told the SAME THING because WE FAILED!

My generation was raised in the 1970′s during the Energy Crisis, in cold houses with adults fretting about the length of our showers and the high price of oil. “Could gasoline ever really go over $1 a gallon?” was one summer’s unending conversation.  Yet, many of us grew up to buy SUV’s to chauffer our own kids from mall to soccer field to McMansion in suburban housing developments without any sidewalks, miles from the nearest store. 

Renewable energy missionaries were out in force when I was a kid in the ’70′s:  

I rode my bike to  their revival meetings.  I wanted to be an actress, but there wasn’t much live theater where I lived.  Desperate for role models. I fell for The New Western Energy Show hook, line and sinker.  It was like meeting the real life version of my  Sunshine Family dolls, made by Mattel, Inc. (NYSE: MAT)

 I even had the Sunshine Family Van.  I considered it one of my best Christmas presents ever! It was converted truck, with a wooden shack on top, from which the dolls apparently sold handmade pottery and leather goods at craft fairs.  So you see this all seemed to me, at the time, to be an acceptable, viable, creative, even mainstream, future way of life.

But, by the time I was graduating from high school and college in the ’80′s, communal living hippie-types had turned into selfish Yuppies, and those who hadn’t were scorned.  I polished my resume and wore suits in order to project a professional image.  Wall Street said “Greed is good”.  

Now, hipsters are getting crafty with recycled textiles, making clothes and bags to sell at flea markets and festivals, magazines and newspapers offer frugal living tips, and billboards advertise energy saving appliances.

DEJA VU!