woewifey's Open Salon Blog

The dream

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 10:12:20 -0500

Great Adventure

When I was in 4^th grade I went on a school trip to Great Adventure. I had never really been to an amusement park before, so I felt fairly fearless. I easily followed my friends from ride to ride happily spinning and turning on Spiders and Enterprises and Round ups. When approaching the rollercoaster, “ Rolling Thunder” I again comfortably waited in line for an hour, pointing out and passing the posts ornamented with chewing gum like modern mosaics, tributes to American teenage impatience. When my turn came, I naturally took my seat and felt the exhilaration as the car chugged forward, methodically clicking like a metronome up the first hill. For those well versed in roller coasters you understand that at the summit there is a pause and then the descent begins slowly.. One can almost enjoy the view of the entire park for a moment, and then just like the moment of waking from a dream where you are screaming and sweating and falling, you actually are falling and screaming and sweating and falling.

As a child I had a very loud scream. The volume and pitch of my potential and up till that moment completely unrealized scream was not a squeally, shrieky scream, but more of a full bodied amplified harpy scream. I have heard that screaming actually helps equalize the pressure in your body upon such a descent. Whether my body knew this did not matter. All I could feel was absolute terror and with my heart rocketing through my throat all I could do was release scream after scream after scream. I could hear the shouts of my fearless friends yelling at me to stop shattering their ear drums, but I didn’t care. And then it was over..the descent, the screams, the first hill. And naturally, we began climbing again..the metronome clicking, ticking taking us upward. I was shaking uncontrollably, violently. I was trapped. I couldn’t get out.

On the second hill I crouched really low in my seat. I closed my eyes. I felt the pause at the summit and then I took a deep breath and held it as tight as I could as if holding my breath would keep my intestines from flying out of my mouth. The terror was still there, but I had it trapped. Like a bird frantically pecking and throwing itself at the bars of a cage I could feel it flail and scratch, but I held on. I was silent, closed, holding on till the fall ended and then I released my breath and prepared for the next hill. The third hill was much less steep than the first two and I was able to, if not comfortably at least gracefully, weather the rest of the ride. When we pulled into the station I was eager to get out. My friends all wanted to go again. There was another girl who had been screaming as vigorously as I had and was said to have been sobbing on the ride as well. Even she volunteered to go again. I did not.

Living the dream

We are looking at Real Estate. When buying a house there are many challenges, but the first as with any life decision is to know your self. Who are we? What do we really want? Uncomfortably, like the couple in Revolutionary Road we fancy ourselves artists. We believe we want more than the 9-5, new construction, suburbanites. We understand that we need space; space to dream, space to be separate and space to create. For Artists the Dream means having a barn studio on some land separate from your home.

“Don’t you want to live the dream?” The Examiner asks me first, with romance in his voice. We can have lots of land and a studio for you, and for me, and we can set up a print shop. I can almost hear the two for tea music in the background.

“Dreams are not cheap” I counter. Wasn’t this move about scaling back, simplifying?

“Do you or don’t you want to live the dream?“ he then states as a challenge.

“ What about the house? It’s smaller than what we have now. It needs work, more work. When are we going to have the time and resources for the dream?” I answer.

“Don’t complain to me that you cannot be an artist..that you can not create work..” he passionately counters.

“ An artist doesn’t need a particular space, I can make art on the couch. ” I yell back.

“ Well, I need space to make art.” he returns, with passion again.

For 14 years the Examiner has not created art. When we met we were in Art school. He was pursuing his MFA in printmaking and I a Certificate in painting. He left his graduate program to pursue a stable career of public service. We married after he joined the police department and for 14 years he has proudly served as a Police officer. It was a choice I supported and one that I have rethought and reflected upon on several and then several more occasions. When I met the Examiner he was an artist; full of passion, critical aspirations and gnawing insecurities about the place his white male art had in the pantheon of multicultural artists’ statements. Becoming a cop at 34 seemed a more manageable gauntlet for a former marine. The work; the police work though rigorously stressful presented manageable obstacles. The passion once spent on making images sing from a flat two dimensional plane was now vocal, physical, more concrete with easily traceable causes and effects.

People always used to ask me what it was like being married to a cop, didn’t I worry? I never had a true answer to this question until now. Perhaps now that it is over I can, like wives who welcome their husbands home from combat, weep with relief, and I am. He is here. He made it physically intact. His spirit, his soul these will need some mending.

Being married to a cop in Philadelphia is like living with a man who works in a fourth dimension. In the morning he puts on his uniform and drives to the other place. It seems like that place is only 15 minutes away and the streets look like normal streets, the people like everyday people. There may or may not be an economic difference, but that is not the true lens shifter. He gets out of his civilian car, checks in at the station, gets in a police car and in warp speed he is on the street. Not the same street he just drove in on. He is now on the “Other street.” And on this street he is suddenly visible and his perception is tuned into the emotional carnage of the broken, the abused, the unloved, the sick and in some cases the wicked.

In my husband’s first year as an officer a woman died in his arms after being stabbed multiple times. Throughout his career he has talked people off of bridges, saved people from gun shot wounds, negotiated hundreds of family disputes, lectured parents on parenting skills, dented some police cars, shouted innumerable expletives, made acquaintances with teen-age drug dealers, read about their deaths not too much later. He has been spit upon, cursed and withstood insurmountable racism, prejudice and ignorance, attended the funerals of his brothers, and guarded the line at O‘Bama‘s inauguration. He has stood for hours without breaks in the freezing January cold of Mummers parades, directed traffic and held the line on riot patrol at Greek festivals. He has mentored Rookies, taught in the Academy, testified in court and finally put a number of people in jail. This was mostly all before he became the Examiner.

He would talk sometimes with other cops about the sickness of being on the street. The problem with being in that dimension is once you see it, you can’t stop seeing it. It is not more vivid or important than the reality most of us as civilians live in, it is just unavoidable. Like a magic trick it can be taught. Don’t you want to see? He would ask in so many different ways. “No, I don’t really want to see, but now that you have pointed it out..I can’t help but see.” And I did, I do see. Early in his career, early in our marriage we saw many and many more petty robberies, transactions and things I did not see before. The sight is wearying. It believes in it’s self-importance and uses words like truth and knowledge to justify its precedence and in doing so clouds the other equally important, equally vivid realities. Thus the knowledge and the truth that empower the officer of the law also sickens him or her.

As a cop’s wife, I worried very little if not at all about my husband’s physical safety. I was never privy to that reel of danger. As for the rest, I worried, I watched and I dealt with it every day. And now, I am astonished, amazed and proud of all that he has made of himself, and finally I am thankful he is retired. I am exhaling and ready for the next ride.

Don’t you want to live the dream? He asks me.

We are making this move to Texas because we have agreed; those equally important and vivid realities; our children, and our creative souls need to take precedence. These are our life boats. After 14 years my husband is asking for the opportunity to make art again and now he shall have the space. Welcome home my love, I can’t wait to meet you.

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Up In Arms

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:12:02 -0500

The year is 1995. I am sitting at the bar in the Tin Angel with my, now husband, then boyfriend. We have come to hear Richie Havens. He is singing about Peace and Freedom and playing furiously as he does lighting the darkened room with a catalytic kinetic fever. The passion in his voice is plaintive and fits my mood as I sit nursing a beer. This is not a good date. I have just opened my eyes enough to finally realize that this guy, that I am beginning to feel serious about owns a gun, and well not just one, but two. We’re at a Ritchie Haven’s concert for God’s sake. But serendipitous absurdity is nothing new in my life, so here I am staring at my beer, feeling the weight of choices, my choices. He is not a cop yet in fact he won’t be one for another two years. We are in Art school. He is an Artist and so am I, at least that is what we are working toward. That is what we discuss, Art: changing the world with soul crunching, mind opening visionary experiences or not. We draw, we print, we carve, we paint, we dream, that is what we are about.

The bartender is aware, I can tell, that our conversation is not a happy one. I feel his closeness, dark and warm and somehow reassuringly objective, on the other side of the bar. I know my face is weighted and sullen. I am not good at hiding my spirit. I don’t like guns. I don’t believe in war, in violence in conflict. I don’t like men with guns and yet here I am sitting at this bar, on this night, with this man. He is uncomfortable. There is an invisible wall between us. He knows this is a deal breaker. He placates me by saying he will sell them. I believe him, I want to believe him. It is so easy to just reach through the bubble that separates us and merge.

He is not surprisingly the first man I have dated who owned guns. In fact, my first official boyfriend in college was a hunter. He showed me the variety of guns given to him by his grandfather and I didn’t really have any feeling about them a the time. He took me shooting too. He let me shoot a 12 gauge shot gun and a 22. The shotgun was heavy and kicked back a bit, but it felt good and I was a decent shot. The 22 was lighter and harder to aim. I was 19 at the time. After we shot at some cans we walked in the woods outside his parent’s property. He wanted to show me where he went hunting. As we were walking, a rush of pheasants flew out of some nearby bushes, “ shoot them!” I said. Like challenging targets I couldn’t wait to see the system in action. “ No, we can’t shoot them now silly.” he answered. “It isn’t pheasant season.”

My mother’s father was a hunter too. He hunted deer and had several heads displayed in the basement, where he also had a bar set up. This was my grandparent’s social room. It was the room where we often played and the room where my father asked my mother to marry him. As I recall his gun was displayed in the room as well.

My mother hated guns. She would not entertain the buying of guns for her sons and I don’t really recall too many play guns. My brothers found a way of course and one of them ended up with bb’s in the rear-end. Today one of my brothers is a hunter, who has raised his own pheasants to kill, and the one who was the graceful recipient of the bb was a soldier in the army for 10 years.

My discomfort with guns probably coincides with my becoming a feminist. At 19, I didn’t really think much about anything except the drama of my pre-marital excursions. When a girl from the suburbs of Long Island sheltered in a college campus wakes up politically to the violence of women’s lives around the world, weapons and war suddenly, become the symbols of narcotic savagery and male oppression. I saturated myself with the words of Andrea Dworkin, Margaret Atwood and Audrey Lourdes and painfully forced myself to read Women’s Lib. I wept into their pages, crippling myself with their sacrifice, hoping it would empower me. Outrage in the face of violence against women and children is always righteous and I believed I had armored myself well with this knowledge. I thought I was strong and fierce. A later boyfriend would describe me in his poetic manner as an unopened rose. Like the Little Prince’s rose, I had but a few thorns.

15 years later I am living with my family in a city that rates the highest in violent crime as charted in the Philadelphia Inquirer’ s Sunday December 13^th, 2009 edition. My husband, then boyfriend, has been a police officer for 14 years and I have lived with guns in my home for 15 years. So what is different? The kids. The kids change everything. For ten years I could just pretend they; the guns didn’t really exist in my home. I didn’t think about them unless we had guests and then of course they would need to be locked up as they always were anyway.

After the birth of my first son my husband and I had our second real gun conversation.

How many do you have? More than I wanted to know.

It would turn out that as the mother I suddenly wanted to be sure there were less and as a father he felt the need to have more. We both have a family to protect….our methods are often at odds. Do you recall when I wrote about the war between a feminist and a soldier? So how did I do? If I had really wanted a chance winning this war I would have won it 15 years ago.

We must teach gun safety I would say, not really knowing what that truly means. He agreed. Then I would hear him upstairs with his son. I know what they are doing. He is teaching his son about his guns. The blinders want to go up. Don’t look, whatever you do. If it is painful just look away. You trust him. You married him. You knew that night at the Tin Angel. You said, “yes” then. But my head is screaming…my sons,….my babies…..not yet. And this is only the beginning. I know because some day it won’t be a conversation about cleaning or handling an unloaded gun, it will be about shooting or owning a gun and I need to be ready, Now. I need more than fear and outrage to be relevant in this campaign.

And so I begin. What is my goal? To eradicate the use of all guns by my sons.

Won’t happen. Think broader.

I’m exhausted. Why am I having this battle? Why can’t I just be worrying about ..I don’t know my son’s athletic abilities.

Didn’t we just go over that?

Ok then, keep my sons safe.

Better. How do we do that? What are our strategies?

Well, in terms of parenting I always research. The internet, books and primary sources i.e. talking to other people. I also find ranting and glowering pretty effective. Meaningful glances and heavy sighs also can pack a punch when nothing else seems to work.

( sigh….) though they are not much good in this case.

I hit the internet. There are lots of sites dedicated to “talking” about the need for gun safety and educating children. There is the Ask campaign which focuses on making sure you ask other parents if they have guns in their houses. The most informative site was Common Sense about Kids and Guns. This site provides basic information for educating kids, teachers and parents about gun safety. The site also has the most current statistical information on firearms deaths among children. Unfortunately the statistics end in 2005. The statistics that most sites like to quote are the following:

40% of American Households with children have guns.

At least one third of those owners admit to having a loaded gun accessible to children.

1.69 million kids 18 and younger are living with loaded and unlocked household firearms.

What the statistics show for Pennsylvania is that most gun related deaths among children and youth occur through some kind of homicide, 99 deaths, specifically among the 15-19 year old youths. The second largest number, 28 deaths occurred by suicide in the same age group. There was only 1 accidental death in the 0-4 yr old group for the year and 3 in the 15-19yr old group.

The other gun safety program touted by many sites is the one funded by the NRA. It is called Eddie Eagle. The Eddie Eagle program is specifically geared toward educating children prek - 4^th grade on some basic principles: Stop! Don’t Touch, Leave the area, Tell an Adult. They also advocate talking to children about gun safety and the difference between toy guns and real guns. Finally, they present some basic gun safety rules ( That is for those learning how or already using guns): Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction, Always keep your finger off the trigger till you are ready to shoot, Always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.

When I queried, When should I teach my son how to shoot? I only found two blogs; one really right wing and scary and one more reasonably second amendment, but the blogger really advocated teaching a 7 year old because he believed that they are developmentally ready to learn the skill of gunplay? …I would need more convincing. The NRA does have youth and junior shooting clubs, but they don’t say on the website how old a kid needs to be to start training. I found the lack of specific information disturbing. I imagine it is something they want to leave up to their members.

What I learned from this research is that gun safety education today is much like an abstinence campaign. Lock them up! Don’t touch! Walk away. It is possible that the gun safety campaign is more effective, but they are theoretically working the same principle. The “enemy/danger” is out there, know that it’s there and stay away. As an educator though, I don’t think this educates anything except fear. Naturally, I support these strategies as strong safety measures, but what if the child/teenager in this case because clearly they are the more at risk, is holding the gun? What if they know how to access the gun in spite of “safeguards” as many youths statistically reported they could? What then? The problem for me personally is…well I don’t believe that abstinence or fear are particularly good strategies and since my household is already armed, where do I go now?

I finally find some relief in talking to my neighbor. He gives me a flip book by Massad Ayoob titled, Gun Proof your Children and on the flip side, Handgun Primer. It is a slim book with 44 pages of vital information I need to read, but I let it sit on my table for a week. It isn’t just information; research. I need more psychological time. So I take my time.

Massad Ayoob is a internationally renowned firearms and self-defense instructor. I liked his book at first glance because of the initial content. The fact that the Handgun Primer is attached to the Gun Proof your Children shows me that this person understands, when you become a gun owner/user you make that choice for your family as well. As a father of two daughters he begins his book with a clear understanding of the risks of gun ownership. Ayoob firmly believes there really is no fool proof way to lock up guns. Children as young as 3 can figure a great deal out. He offers some suggestions such as a magnetic ring that unlocks the firing mechanism for the wearer or a handcuff locking system on the gun. There are also some special locks, that look like bike locks that are offered free by some cooperating Police Agencies ( not the Philadelphia Dept though, of course.) These are first line measures of safe storage.

What he also addresses is the education children today are receiving about guns. He does not offer the pat conversation of , “ well son that gun on tv is not real.” Instead he discusses how through the flood of media children learn that guns are powerful and empowering. For children and adolescents whose lives are directed by parents and adults the fantasy of power is very real and should be recognized. In answer to this for gun owners, he recommends dispelling the mystic and allowing your children supervised access to the firearm. He suggests having the child help with cleaning of the parts. I would not personally recommend this activity with a child younger than 4.

I would also add that while learning about the parts the parent has a great opportunity to discuss with their child the following: What is the gun? How does it work as a machine? Why do I choose to have it in my house? When is it appropriate to use? Ayoob suggest two basic gun handling rules: TREAT EVERY GUN AS IF IT IS LOADED and NEVER POINT IT AT ANYTHING YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO DESTROY. He also adds later, if you find a gun or are with someone who finds a gun, WALK don’t run to find a parent. The uneducated child is easily startled and unpredictable. I would add part of the NRA’s rule, NEVER PUT YOUR FINGER ON THE TRIGGER. All these questions and conversations, I believe help better educate children about guns. Does this require the parent/gun owner to have good thoughtful answers? Damn right.

Ayoob also recommends offering to take the child to the shooting range and to open that invitation to the child’s friends with parental permission. If status is the matter then just as we offer our children safe options to explore their own power this is a way to keep their interest in the open and validate it, safely. Shooting a gun does not have to involve a love of hunting or killing. There are clubs that teach firearms training and target shooting can be a very rewarding and fun activity. (Did I really just write that?) He does qualify this suggestion with an vehemenant, “ your child does not have to become a target shooter to be gun proof.” A solid education in the gun parts, how it works, and how to safely use and disarm one, Ayoob poses is as necessary as teaching children about power tools or knives in the home.

And finally, when is a child ready for learning how to shoot? When they are mature enough to responsibly take care of a pet or to have a key to the house. I agree with this answer because realistically if my child is trustworthy to be home alone he should be trusted to be home alone. And my fantasy is this that if and when my sons find themselves alone or in the company of peers with a gun: a. they take the situation seriously and rely on their education/training and b: they are able to know how to disarm and dismantle the gun and render it useless. I guess it really isn’t such a fantasy. It is just what I need.

Wow that was hard. I promise the next blog will be lighter.

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1, 2, 3, race around the Thanksgiving table

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:11:11 -0500

“There are two presidents” S remarks from the back seat of the car. I look around trying to find his reference and I see two clean cut black men with suit jackets on selling pies.

Oh you mean the men selling pies. They are not Barack Obama. They are just two black men or as the boys would say, “brown” men.

“Why are the Barack Obama’s selling pies?”

It is fascinating to watch my sons as they explore their own understanding of race and the ways in which they describe people. They don’t have at this point any real context for cultural assumptions regarding race. They describe their “brown” friends by their color because it is an obvious and easy difference. They don’t identify their Asian friends by their physical characteristics because ..well they look like them and that is not a clear marker…like short or tall or long hair or dark hair. Their perceptions can not be “racist” or “prejudiced” the word of choice from my childhood at this time because their descriptions don’t carry the weight of character or personality assumptions. People are all still people at this point.

When children learn to speak they begin with basic categories or associations for things. The classic example is the child who looks at anything that stands and walks on four legs and calls it a cow or a dog. This group identity will last for a bit as their brains develop and their experience with each different animal becomes unique. It does not take long for the child to differentiate the sounds a dog makes verses the sounds a cow makes. As the brain develops it begins to add new categories and contexts for meaning.

On another day S and I are at the dentists office. I have gone in the back to speak with the Dentist and he is in the waiting room. Upon my return I see that he is talking to an older gentleman in his late 60’s. They are discussing the Alligator toys teeth..S is trying to get them all out. When I show up the man looks at me and then at my son and he says…well I forgot to say Ni-hou. I smile and ignore his comment as I usually do in these situations. I shouldn’t of course. I mean he is trying to reach out a cultural hand of friendship isn’t he? Well, should I look at him and say, Dasvedania because I note he has a heavy brow or perhaps, grazia because he looks Italian? Now that I think of it Caucasians are often impressed and flattered when you discern their ethnic heritage from the pot of possible genes. So why am I not equally flattered when people assume that I am Chinese? The Chinese aren’t bad people at least not in my experience, and that is where the problem is: experience.

Many Americans, like children, see Asiatic features and their brain searches for the category and they find Chinese. The general rule seems to be that all Asians look Chinese, and that we are all named Kim, yet another sentence I have learned to disregard. Oh it was nice to meet you Kim. To some people who I may only know in passing..I will be remembered as Kim. Wasn’t that Kim…nice, or abrasive or bizarre…fill in in the adjective.

Most people have a very limited experience with Asians. Historically, the Chinese actually have been in this country since the settling of the west. It is funny when people get excited about Chinese company’s owning buildings or real estate in New York, when so many of the Chinese helped to build the first Railroads. But how have Americans perceived the Chinese people? Well let’s break out the bag of stereotypes…short, peasant like, non-English speaking, slanted, chinky eyed, slimy noodle eating, sneaky, dragon ladies, fu man chu’s, pagan, happy Buddha’s, china making, prostitutes, geisha’s- wait that’s Japanese, I am getting ahead of myself..oh well they all look alike don’t they? dumb and then super smart, but mostly dumb, mongoloid, effeminate men, hot women ( to those with yellow fever), oh yes submissive and these labels are pre-1940’s. The wars with Japan, Korea and Vietnam certainly did not add any great associations to American’s perceptions of Asians.

It isn’t really until the 1990’s that Asian’s start becoming real people from different powerful nations with different traditions and ways of living. We can probably thank the market economy, the booming Asian technological industries and Hollywood for the sudden increase in vocabulary regarding Who or What an Asian is. There is nothing like money and competition and ultimately power to make people start looking a little harder. When someone points to a person and says, hey look at that Chinese person..in America their curiosity is too often laced with ignorance. And irregardless of how that particular person knows, understands or sees Asians..if in most interactions being Chinese is associated with all the aforementioned perceptions then…I sure as hell don’t want to be Chinese do you?

Even my sons, the fruit of my womb…when looking at a picture of me said,… Hey mom looks like an old Chinese lady…indeed. They were corrected. I am Korean. (dammit) You are in part from Korea. This is where it is on the map. This is an example of our Art. This is what the Korean American grocery store looks like and this is the food they like to eat. But the problem is I am not really Korean..not culturally anyway. Which is why they need an education about their ethnic heritage. If I really were culturally Korean, they would know it every time they saw their Korean grandparents. They would even at this young age be able to see how we do or eat or act or speak differently specifically because we are Korean. Yet they have none of these visual or cultural cues to guide them into understanding their difference and neither did I.

Internationally adopted children such as myself, or any child whose outward racial appearance does not match the one of our immediate family deals with a specific challenge regarding how we know ourselves and how the world sees us. My culture at least for the first 18 years of my life was that of an American girl raised in a suburb on Long Island by parents of German descent. The key difference in my understanding of being Korean is that others always see my race or visual appearance first and this is not necessarily seen as a good thing. Being Asian in a White society does not empower me. This understanding of disempowerment leads many adoptees to disassociate ourselves from our racial identities.

The New York Times recently published an article titled: Adopted from Korea and in search of Identity by Ron Nixon. In this article Mr. Nixon expands upon a recently published study of Adoptees by the Evan B. Donaldson Institute. What the study in part concludes is that Korean kids raised in predominately Caucasian families and neighborhoods in America, for the most part, associated or saw/see themselves as “White.” Many of the participants of the study struggled immensely with their racial identities and some still do. The truth is that our history, our culture conceived at the time of our adoptions is that of our Caucasian families. For many of us when identified by our faces…we think oh no you must be mistaken that is not me. But like ghost baggage from our former lives we are cloaked in a mantle of unclaimed history. And unfortunately it; this face; this race is the first thing most people see.

Who is this person in the mirror? As a child I did not own that reflection, I was so busy trying to understand the myriad of ways other people saw my face. Based upon their behaviors I was certain that face they saw was not me. I was faceless. But there it was, every morning: an unclaimed history, a reminder of exile, a second class stamp. It has taken me personally 41 years of aging to finally be able to look in the mirror and say, yes that person looks like me.. I know her..I know that mark and that age spot I know that mouth and those eyes I recognize them, those are mine.

It is the history that needs to be reclaimed, it is an appreciation of genetic lineage because though it might not be pc to think it matters, it matters. It takes self-knowledge to understand… I am not that which you perceive me as. It then takes ownership to say I am this face, this is what it means and this meaning is powerful and empowering. We all must at some point, claim ourselves. I see those genes, I recognize their influence in my art, in my palate in my aesthetics in my character. And in claiming my racial heritage in discovering it’s finer aspects, I finally get to mourn the loss of my ancestry. I mourn the loss of my sons’ knowledge of their genetic grandparents and ultimately, I mourn my birth family’s loss of me.

The truth about racism or prejudice is that it is rooted in elementary perceptions. There are a slew of perceptions or assumptions people have of me good and bad, when they see me. Our perceptions of others depend upon our upbringing and personal experiences. This is all visual baggage that takes time to unravel. In some cases…perceptions are easily traced..for example being called a Gook by a white child in South Philly or having an older white neighbor say as I walk by with my sons…Ah I love the smell of Napalm in the morning. These names, these references are rooted in very personal experiences handed from one generation to the next. For my sons, being bi-racial and in some cases visually Asian, in a Caucasian society will inevitably cause conflict. And this journey I have had to take, in many ways they also will need to wrestle with. The face of their race will be an identity they will have to contend with. But thankfully they won’t do this alone and the world I grew up in is in many important ways different than theirs. My son is right when he says there are two Presidents. There are two Barack Obama’s, our president; a bi-racial man raised by a Caucasian woman in American society, who used to called himself Barry.

There is the Black man that the one category, racially challenged can see and Barack Obama the man who clearly owns his personal, racial and social identity.

Therefore on this momentous 2009 Thanksgiving let me say,

I am thankful for Avatar and Astro Boy and the movies of Ang Lee. I am thankful for mixed marriages and Sony and Hyundai and Bul go ki.

I am thankful for teachers who teach with wonder and respect about the Chinese.

I am thankful for Korean TV and their sword and sandal version of the Choson Dynasty.

I am thankful for Sandra Oh and Margaret Cho and Kim Chi. I am thankful for Bollywood and Slumdog millionaire , and Jhumpa Lahiri.

I am thankful for all the people and images that enrich and empower our multiple-Asian American identities.

I am thankful for my husband who has always seen me as more than an ornamental flower exiled from the east.

I am thankful for the sweet blending of ancestry in the faces and forms of my sons‘ eyes, noses, mouths, teeth, hands, hearts, brains, skulls, feet.

And finally I am thankful that there is an amazing country filled with history and culture and people that awaits re-discovering. No, not China…Korea, Korea, Gogoreo, Goreo, Beautiful country in the North.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's not just about pretty pictures

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:11:41 -0500

For several semesters I was given the opportunity to teach the Arts in Learning course at the Tyler school of Art. This course is a required course for the College of Education students at Temple University. With the cut-back of Arts funding for visual art or music classes in the schools, this class looks to support ways in which classroom teachers may integrate arts into the daily curriculum. This class also is geared toward helping build or re-build positive connections to art making in general. Many of us have been the unfortunate patrons of two opposite and equally detrimental ideas: a. that Art making can only be done by the talented and: b. that “Art” is anything you make. Both of these ideas do damage to our perceptions of who can make Art and how that Art is made.

How many times have you heard a teacher or anyone say, “ Oh, I can’t make Art..I am not talented.” This statement frustrates me because of course some people are born with greater aptitude for certain activities, but that does not mean they are completely incapable or should not venture to try. If I am not that great at throwing a basketball do I not play the game? Can I practice and get better? Of course I can. The same can be done for Art making. Most artists don’t just wake up and suddenly know how to draw a picture in 3 point perspective. What people discredit when they say, oh he/she has “ talent” is the fact that it actually took time, energy and work to become “talented.” Although he/she may have self-selected drawing because for some reason he/she finds it pleasurable, he/she more than likely draws all the time i.e. Practices, learns, perseveres.

Quite frequently I would have a student who would complain about the price of Art work. My stock answer would always be…when you see a doctor for a visit..how much do you pay for 5-15 minutes of their time? What are you paying for? Their expertise. It is the same with Artists. We do not say that a doctor’s skills are “innate.” Why should we wrongly handicap Artists with that brand? Artists work lifetimes to achieve the skills and understanding that they bring to their work. In fact sometimes artists work lifetimes and find that their one best piece of work was a painting, print or something done in an hour. Don’t great gymnasts find the pinnacle of their careers in single performances? There are moments when all things come together, all the work, the frustration, the perseverance the practice and then there is Art; the nexus where truth and beauty come together. Beauty, not in the sense of something pretty, but as in something awesome.

I don’t believe that “Art is anything you make.” When a child makes a drawing, any drawing, a line on a page a quick sketch of a dog, I would not be so quick to label it as Art. As an educator, when we make this blanket statement we are discrediting any work or standards or level of thoughtful editing that is a necessary process in the pursuit of making great “Art.” Can a child make a great work of Art? Yes! But, and of course there is a but in an educational setting the journey and process toward making that “work” qualifies it’s value as Art.

These ill founded perceptions about Who makes Art and How it is made greatly effect the general perceptions of what “Academic” skills are necessary in schools. If only the “talented” can really make art and or it is just a matter of giving a child some paint or some crayons well then naturally anyone can teach it. Art then becomes valued merely as an accessory to actual learning. In a September, 2007 article, Art for our sakes,¹ published by the Boston Globe Two researchers for Project Zero at the Harvard School of Education, Lois Hetland and Ellen Winner write about a study they conducted in the Boston Public schools In their article they suggest a reframing of how we understand the value of Arts education in schools. What they found is that there are certain important skills taught in Arts classes that are not necessarily taught in the academic subject areas. They identified 8 distinct habits of mind that are taught specifically in Arts learning classes; visual and performance based. These habits of mind may be understood as tools for learning and thinking. They are as follows: persistence, expression, making connections between the school and world, observing, envisioning, innovating through exploration, reflection and self-evaluation.

What the researchers focus on as distinct to re-valuing our understanding of Arts learning were the last four modes of thinking: observing, envisioning, innovating through exploration and reflection and self-evaluation. These habits of mind they pose represent skills that are essential to becoming successful as scientists, inventors, doctors and any other profession that requires one to critically analyze something and come up with diagnosis, prognosis, and solutions whether they be aesthetic, cultural or scientific.

Clearly we who are Art educators know that these habits of mind are taught and addressed in the best Art classes, but what we need to remind educators, administrators and parents who choose schools is that Art isn’t just about making pretty pictures that anyone can do. Simply because you don’t think your child is talented or motivated to make art doesn’t mean he or she does not have important value added to their repertoire of skills as a thinker when they engage in Arts learning. Art is something everyone can and should learn to create, understand and value. The value of art making and education is not that of a handbag on the well constructed suit of knowledge, but rather an essential thread of learning. Arts learning creates the opportunity for students to engage in “vital modes of thinking: seeing, and envisioning.”² These modes are useful and I would pose, necessary to all their pursuits as learners and thoughtful adults.

As a parent it is not because I am an artist that I want my sons to have access to great Art programs. It is because as an educator I have practiced, witnessed and been part of the transformational learning that happens for all children when they engage in creating and thoughtfully expressing themselves through Arts media. When my students design a picture that tells a story about their family, sew a pillow stitch by stitch eagerly anticipating its 3dimensional form, sculpt a ball of clay into a magical creature imagining how it will change once fired, I know and they know how much thought, how much energy, how much love went into their work of Art. Whatever my sons become, study, or develop a passion for, it is that type of engagement or approach to learning and thinking that I believe in and will always fight for.

Now if the person who just received 43.7 million dollars for the purchase of their Warhol painting of “200 one dollar bills” ³could donate just one percent of their profits to Public school Art programs in Philadelphia then perhaps our most wealthy one percent might have some competition in the future. Or better yet if someone would donate 43.7 million dollars to The Public Schools of Philadelphia’s Art Education programs then perhaps Administrators and parents would have the opportunity to witness and realize the true value of Arts learning in schools and education.

1http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/09/02/art_for_our_sake/

2.E. Winner, L. Hetland, Art for our sake, Boston Globe, Sept 2, 2007.

3.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/arts/design/12auction.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=warhol&st=cse

Blessed be the orphans

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:11:41 -0500

I hate asking for money. This year as M is in Kindergarten the first level of charity or “community service” as we term it today, began. For Halloween he brought home a UNICEF - trick or treat for Halloween box. He was very excited about collecting though I could feel a neurotic stress level increase at the thought of having to ask strangers for money. I should have done what I am doing now..that is looking up UNICEF reading about what they do, explaining that to my son and discussing how much he wanted to give and then ending it there, but I just ducked for cover. I just don’t like to ask for money. When I was 14, I had a paper route. I dreaded knocking on people’s doors and asking them to pay for the paper they received every day. When there were fund raisers as school I sold the very minimum and I pretty much never did community service. I am uncomfortable with charity.

As a Korean adopted by a Caucasian family in the 1970’s I was a commodity of Christian charity. It cost my parents 1700$ which at the time was 1/10 of the cost of their house. Holt, the Christian organization that facilitated my adoption used to send out pamphlets with pictures. Like toys in the Sears catalogue, our pictures were neatly captioned with Korean names and numbers. There were enough of us to choose from, many of us mixed Asian Americans already left over from the ripples of the Korean war and some of just extra sons or daughters. Just as in any sale if you buy one you can get a discount on a second or a third. Kids with special needs always come “cheaper” because they cost more in the long run and well…I won’t be crass. When you are orphaned reality begins by sucking and then it possibly gets better, but the primary condition that I will always share in common with all orphans and adoptees is that , “ Life‘s first order of business is exile.” What happens afterwards is up for grabs as it is in any child’s life. What everyone who is adopted understands is that life, that is the happening of events that directly relate themselves to us can and will randomly knock us out.

I myself was left on the doorstep of an orphanage with a note stating that I was of full Korean Heritage, because blood matters to Koreans as it does to so many others. When a child is adopted from a foreign country or is of a different race, during my generation there was no misunderstanding about who was doing who a favor. The parents were often put on a charitable pedestal. Even today when people find out my parents adopted me and two other children they ooh and ahh at , “How wonderful that your parents were so generous.” Wait? Were they doing me a favor? Yes, yes they saved me. They saved me from a life of prostitution on the streets of Seoul or so she would say in her fits of feeling ungratified. I love you, I saved you …two very different things. I am ungrateful.

Am I doing my sons a favor by loving them and feeding them and making a life better than the one I had? Children are not charity. Orphans are not currency to be bartered for a better next life. Orphans just need parents who really want kids. Love only comes through love, never from indebtedness. For me, asking for money for “charity” reminds me of my own “indebtedness”, and that I will always be ungrateful because it is a barter that I never agreed to, and one that I will not replicate.

In Obama’s declaration of National Adoption Awareness month, he reminds us to look to our own nation of orphans in foster care. Here in Philadelphia, the Inquirer is continually plastered with articles about abused children and dead children. The articles are horrifying and we read them. I am not moved to charity, but I am moved to think. I think about being a stay-at-home mom and what that affords me and my family. I think about how and when …there might be room for more. I think, as I prepare to close the door on making more babies and I wonder and perhaps dream of a family that grows in different ways. I think about love that creates better passage ways for others because I have more to give. I look at my sons and I know that for what I give and do for them the value and meaning they have added to my life already is immeasurable and then I think ..do I have more room to wonder?