Friendly Night in Vietnam? What the heck is THAT?

By Kelly Fitzgerald

It's times like these that I really wish I had my camera with me.

Yesterday in class, one of my Vietnamese students invited me to Friendly Night, which took place this evening at 6:00 p.m. in the auditorium. I obliged, and all were ecstatic.

When I got to the auditorium, I was, as usual, the only white person there. I was escorted by one of my smallest students to the front row where he asked me to "pliss be zeated" so the show could begin. I followed his orders, feeling 200 pairs of eyes on the back of my head as I sipped the complimentary bottle of Aquafina placed before me. Water never tasted so good.

At 6:15, the show had yet to begin. Typical Vietnam. I was still the only teacher in the front row.

Finally, five Vietnamese girls strolled through the side entrance and stood in a line side-by-side, about three feet apart from one another, with their hands on their hips and their heads hanging down. Then, the music began.

They looked...really uncomfortable. They were dancing like cheerleaders would, but instead of big toothy grins, their expressions read HORRIFIED, and their bodies weren't straight, but slumped. Then they did a pyramid...and every single girl looked so still and so scared to be up there that the pyramid dissembled as quickly as it was put together. Then they exited stage right.

Act 1, down. Act 2, even stranger.

First, one girl strolled in, walking very slowly from one side of the stage to the other, stopping at each side to pose (uncomfortably) for the audience. Each girl had a number pinned to her left shoulder. After the third contestant finished strutting her stuff, taking her place next to the previous two, I asked Stephen, the student seated next to me, what the hell was going on.

"Oh, this Vietnamese beauty contest," he said, opening his right hand to expose a crumpled piece of paper. "You see which number you like best, and you vote."

I ended up choosing number 5, a short girl with glasses and a messenger-style backpack hanging across her chest. She may not have been as pretty as taller-than-life number 7, but she was definitely the cutest.

Then, after the runway show went down, the singing started. One of my quietest boys who sits in the back of Pronunciation on Wednesday was the third performer. He was actually pretty good, and quite theatrical. I thought about pullin' a Kanye West and interrupting his number before it was over to inquire why he couldn't participate this much in class. Reluctantly, I held my breath.

But the absolute BEST part of this show was when two of my students were speaking in rapid Vietnamese on stage after the singers were done. Understanding not a word of what they were saying, my eyes drifted to the floor, and were only raised when I clearly heard my name.

"KELLY."

I nervously looked up, seeing my student motion for me to come on stage. I'm sure my expression looked just as horrified as the dancing cheerleaders' did. I pointed to myself, as if there would actually be any other Kelly's in the room, and he kept motioning. I walked really slowly to where he stood and turned around to face the crowd. You'd think I would have gotten used to all eyes on me by now, but I haven't.

Two other Vietnamese teachers were called to stage as well. They shook hands with me and introduced themselves. I don't know why they were hiding amongst the crowd of students and left me dry to hang in the front row by myself, but they were too nice not to like.

Then, we were all presented with roses. I got roses simply for just coming to the show. That's how damn appreciative these kids are.

Due to earlier arranged dinner plans, I had to bounce after an hour into the show. But I got this text from Stephen around 9 p.m.:

"I'm sorry, the person you love - number 5 - isn't in top five of the most beautiful ones."

She wins in my book.

Kelly Fitzgerald graduated from the University at Albany, SUNY, in May 2009, and she is currently teaching English in Vietnam. The photo above is decidedly NOT one taken at Friendly night at Can Tho University. Fitzgerald's blog is fantastic, and can be found at www.kelefitz.blogspot.com.

It's Not Over Till It's Over

By Dan E. Beauchamp

The historic vote Saturday night in the House of Representatives for health care reform is incredibly important. We should all celebrate and thank Speaker Pelosi for pulling it off. Yet, as most know, the 220 to 215 majority reminds us that the struggle between strong democracy, majoritarian democracy and weak, anti-majoritarian democracy within the Democratic Party is not over, and will likely continue for some years into the future.

If the Democrats succeed in the Senate and if they make the most of this victory next year by reminding the electorate, time and time over, how historic this shift is, then the future of a stronger, more progressive majority in the U.S. may be in the cards.

This vote will put pressure on the Senate. And while the narrowness of the victory will encourage some Blue Dog Democrats in the Senate to risk voting against their party, they also surely must know that the Republican Party is coming after all Democrats in 2010 no matter how they vote today to seek to bury this victory. And those in the House who voted against their own party know that reform when and if it comes will change the politics in their own districts.

A very substantial fraction of the Democratic Party is holding tight to the politics that brought them, sectional politics, "red" versus "blue" politics, and it may just be beginning to break up.

The next month and the next years will be crucial for all of us who hope for, who wait for, a democracy of days, a democracy that battles to make daily life for ordinary people more secure in the United States, and not just with health care reform.

Writer Dan E. Beauchamp, Ph.D., led health care reform efforts in the mid-1990s, and served in New York State government. He lives in Bisbee, Arizona, where he served for a time as mayor.

Don't Worry, Be Happy...or at least, Calm

I am less than two hours away from an appointment with a dental surgeon. He is scheduled to pull out a wisdom tooth, and doesn’t expect it to be any big deal.

So why do I feel as though I’m heading into open-heart surgery? I keep imagining the absolute worst possible scenarios: Dr. P slips with the pliers and puts a hole in my cheek. Or he causes bleeding that somehow won’t stop. Or I get an infection that snakes its way through my body. Or he finds that it isn’t just the wisdom tooth that’s cracked, but all the rest of the teeth are too, so he has to pull the whole set.

You get the picture.

So maybe my husband was right the other day when he came up with a new word to describe what I do, day in and day out.

I “negitate.”

He is clever, that husband of mine. He knows of what he speaks. He sees me get up every morning and head straight to my Native American blanket, outfitted with a candle and special crystals and stones and a few feathers and such. He watches while I spend 20 or 25 minutes sitting cross-legged on the mat, focusing on my breathing and generally, trying to realign my brain.

He also knows full well that when I get up off the mat, I will lapse back into my cataclysmic thinking.

I’ve been meditating now for maybe 13 years. So why am I still the queen of "negitation"? I’ve been through my share of hardships. But in the end, I’ve triumphed. And generally, I’ve been a very lucky person. I have blessings galore in my life, and even more reasons for optimism.

Part of the issue: growing up, I probably earned the equivalent of a Ph.D. in worry by the time I was 10. My mom herself will admit that she’s the original nervous Nellie. One itty-bitty example: my freshman year in college, we walked into my dorm room and Mom headed straight for the window, which had a sill about 18 inches from the floor. Immediately, she began to fret that I would fall out of that window.

I love my mom, dearly, but I hate the fact that she – and I—worry the way we do. There is no reason, as my dad often points out, to open your umbrella before it rains. Or even, for that matter to carry the umbrella in the first place.

A year ago, when the whole nation (or at least the Democratic half of it) was reveling in the thrilling possibility of hope and change offered by the Obama candidacy, I was secretly dreading his election. Why? Because it meant that my husband and I would move to Washington, D.C. for his job.

I know I know, everyone and their cousin was telling me how silly I was. They were raving about how DC would be the most exciting place in the Universe to live. But for my own set of neurotic reasons, I was terrified of the move. And so, in my heart of hearts, even though I couldn’t stand John McCain or that silly running mate of his, part of me was hoping he would win.

I can hear the hissing and booing coming in through the screen. I am not proud of it, I'm just willing now to face up to how stupid I was. The moment we arrived, I realized, hey, this could be kind of ….fun!

Indeed, moving to DC has been quite a splendid thing, both personally and professionally. I really love Washington, and its monumental buildings (all the architecture is awe-inspiring.) I enjoy my teaching job. We have a cool apartment in the heart of downtown, a few blocks from the White House. And I really value all the people I’ve met.

And so I look back a year ago and think, what a waste of time all that worrying was.

Of course I’ve grown to love it so much that now I am tempted to worry about moving back.

But that’s where I am drawing the line.

In the best tradition of meditative practice, I am now asking the universe for help in my quest to stop negativating. I am telling myself every which way I can that there is no purpose in turning the future gloomy, and assuming that the worst will happen. I do not want to forecast rain and thunder or hurricanes or tsunamis when the sun is shining overhead and there’s nothing but a gentle breeze behind my head.

So I sit here. I take a breath in, and when I breathe out, I consciously think about letting go of any of those awful thoughts, as if I were flinging each one of them off the top of a mountain.

I breathe in and out several times. I take my hands from the keys momentarily...

And let them rest on my knees. I let my shoulders sag.

I focus on the breath filling my chest and

Now, I am not so concerned about what is going to happen with my tooth. I am ok in this moment.

I imagine myself smiling, leaving the dentists’ office. I imagine myself sitting on a warm sandy beach. (OK well, that part might be a bit of a stretch.)

The point is, I am setting my intention to give up the worry. I am asking the universe for help. I am, in effect, giving up my will, my fear, to some greater power (isn’t this how AA works? Isn’t this what recovering alcoholics do day in and day out, yield their will?)

Well, so, I am doing it in this moment, because that’s all I have. We can only exert our will, or yield it up, moment by moment.

I will go forward to the dentist’s office, without popping an Ativan – even though Dr. P’s instructions say I can.

I am calm. I think. For now.

Mother Nature: Still Better Than You Tube!!

Photo by Susan Prisant
By Alexander & Susan Prisant

Thank God. Real life is still better than You Tube. And we have the miracle to prove it, right in our own backyard.

It was a bright August morning when we opened the bedroom blinds and were stunned. Centered in our window pane, not 15 feet away, a larger-than-life land turtle was laying her eggs. A dozen perfect white ones plopped into the hole she’d made just under our bushes.

It was just like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuW0E2Horh8.
Only better.

Like the difference between watching National Geographic and actually going to Botswana.

That August morning, we instantly became official Protectors of Animal Life, or PALs. It was only 7 a.m. on a Saturday, but Susan went into action. She phoned the fire department, animal shelter, humane society and three endangered turtle protection groups.

They all told her the same thing: turtle young cannot be moved. This had happened on our property and so it was our solemn duty to protect those eggs. At all costs.

A flurry of google searches ensued. It turned out that ours was a Peninsula Cooter, native to Florida. They’re huge -- up to a foot and a half in length. In a big, dusty book we found, we discovered the turtles' love-making ritual: “males court females by swimming backwards in front of them and gently stroking the sides of the females' faces with their long claws.” What more would you ever want to know?

That You Tube video looked like our kids’ Mom had posed for it. And there were others -- how to protect eggs from predators and disinterested chainsaw-bearing ex-felons, posing as “gardeners.’ We learned about clever uses for refrigerator shelves and red pepper. Dead leaves were reborn as camouflage.

Having laid precisely a dozen eggs -- just as the dusty book said she would -- Big Mama decided it was now our problem and slowly ambled down to the canal in back. We nervously approached and looked at how well she’d covered her young and her tracks. And then promptly proceeded to turn the site into a 4th rate Times Square, with red reflector and 3-foot full-color sign, to warn off the literate, and lots of that red pepper to warn off the illiterate

Our garden is like a jungle.
Photo by Susan Prisant

We have scores of seasonal births: microscopic frogs jumping 20 times their height or slipping under the two-mm gap below our terrace door, while baby geckos cling to the screens, halfway up.

A larger lizard once set up shop in the sun at our garage door -- dicing with death every time we rolled up and honked. He’d force us to get out and finally shoo him into the bushes. An absolutely wild cotton-tail, aka Mr. Bunny, is shrewd enough to come for his carrot, most evenings, precisely at cocktail hour, while blue jays and cardinals vie for the bird bath.

And all the while, the newborn of several Florida species scream for food from their nests in our trees. The whole place is like a four-legged, two-winged maternity ward.

But the really hard part about hatching turtles is that they run on a schedule even less dependable than the old Erie & Lackawanna Railroad. Those experts told us we
were looking at a two-to-seven month mission -- the babies could hatch at anytime in between.

As the weeks dragged on into months our anxiety grew. We spent half our lives staring stupidly down at the ground. Were they already dead? Was it our fault? All the usual, irrational concerns of the (self-appointed) Keepers of Life.

Then, at the very end of October, a miracle. My wife went out on patrol to discover a perfectly shaped hole in the soil, with our grate undisturbed still on top, meaning no predator had come in from above.

It had happened after all. In spite of everything, Mother Nature refuses to quit.

We missed the births, but in the face of some pretty ugly stuff in the world, it still made our week. If we were still in the scouts, I just know we’d have gotten the Tortoise Merit Badge, with Oak Leaf Cluster.

Writer Alexander Prisant and his wife, Susan, live in Florida.

Older Americans Arrested As They Protest Health Care Reform

Photo by Susan Prisant


By Alexander Prisant

Once upon a time in America, people would say: "Sometimes I have to stand up and be counted." That was in the past.

But a few days ago, I had a glimpse of the past. So did this woman in Florida. 70 and cuffed, Patty Bender was among a group of Floridians arrested outside the corporate offices of Humana in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Similar protests against large health insurers took place simultaenously at corporate insurer offices in nine U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Reno and Washington. This was a bold display of old-fashioned civil disobedience -- an orderly sit-in to protest the outrageous behavior of insurance giants like Humana.

The wild-eyed radicals who demonstrated across the country were mostly senior citizens and mostly middle class, except for some like Leslie Elder who lost all insurance when her cancer recurred twice. Elder now risks losing her home because of medical bills. (That''s the way a majority of Americans go bankrupt these days.)

In West Palm, protester Patti Bender was up against eight police cars, 20 sheriff's officers, plus two paramedics and one growling police dog. A lot of power to face down that 75-year old lady.

So what did she do that made police arrest her?

All she did was respectfully submit a letter at Humana's door. The letter asked merely one thing: allow treatment prescribed by a physician for life-threatened Humana patients. The company refused. So a few gentle people sat down at the door until they got a better answer.

The group Health Care Now, which praises the protesters' actions, says: "Nonviolent action is a worldwide tradition based on an understanding that in a society power flows not from guns or positions of authority but from the consent and cooperation of the people."

Martin Luther King said: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

The first sheriff's officer who moved toward and prepared to handcuff the gentle old folk sitting peacefully on the lobby floor glowered and said: "All criminals." Photo by Susan Prisant

"I"m doing this for my daughter," said James Elder. "She's 27 and if we don't fix health insurance now, it could ruin her life later."

As I write this, Mr. Elder, a simple man well into his 60's, sits in jail.

Writer Alesander Prisant, formerly a Vice President of a large Silicon Valley company, keeps a blog called Wordsmith Wars at http://WordsmithWars.blogspot.com.

Hedge Funds, Securities and My Ukulele

Ukulele virtuoso Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, on stage.

By Stephen Lewis

Here I sit, in my dorm at Georgetown University, not studying my finance texts, but instead, strumming my ukulele. I am staring at two graphics on my wall thinking that although my path may not be so clear-cut anymore, that’s fine with me.

Of course grades are important, and I do study plenty. I set high personal standards, but sometime last year, it hit me. Chasing a prestigious degree and a corner office were practical pursuits, but they weren’t things that would fire up my passion. Yet, I didn’t know anything else. So if not this pursuit, then what?

A close friend of mine once told me that she thought I had a ‘God complex’ in high school. She was right. At the time, I held a cut-throat mentality towards schoolwork and always kept the future strictly clear and in focus: I’d attend the best college possible, and then I’d land a cushy job on Wall Street. I didn’t have time for non-practical matters; I regarded artistic pursuits -- say, ceramics or jazz band – to be inferior or only time-permissible.

Once in college, everything changed. Freshmen year was not the work hard, play hard experience that I had anticipated it would be. Rather, days grew sterile. Waking up in the morning became a chore, because it meant more textbook chapters and term papers, even in classes I had once anticipated with pleasure. When I wasn’t sleeping or working, I was thinking about the tasks ahead. Suddenly I felt lost and couldn’t figure out why I had come to college, and where I had made a wrong turn.

Looking through some old photos one day, I found a shot of me laughing with two friends from high school, Maxx and Lee. Maxx hadn’t gone to a typical college. Rather, he was on his way to becoming one of the most successful talents in graphic design in the country. Lee is holding a little ukulele in the picture, and he has one of the best ears for music that I know, playing at least three instruments. Bells started ringing in my mind.

Most of my classes that spring semester happened to include texts from Immanuel Kant, several of which explored the danger of projecting a means to an end as the end itself. I had already fallen into that trap. I thought more about my high school friends. Mike plays soccer at Brown, Angad writes a column for the Daily Trojan at USC, Nick is programming video games at Penn, Jeff plays the flute at McGill, and Kayla has done so well on stage at Emerson that she has earned an understudy position for a Broadway show.

I found myself envying my artist friends. They wake up every morning excited to share their creative expressions with the world. While I knew the reality might not be as quite the romantic scene I envisioned, I began to recognize extraordinary value in their efforts, and slowly it dawned on me: art might help alleviate my stress.

That’s when I stumbled upon music. Music? At Georgetown? Most students here are aspiring politicians or diplomats. The number of visual and performing arts majors (and the portion of the University budget devoted to those pursuits) are minimal. Only a year ago, that wouldn’t have bothered me. Since then, though, I have become something of a musician.

Or at least, I play the ukulele – an instrument I bought for a song one day while browsing Amazon. Now, I play cover pieces by Zach Condon and Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. But I didn’t stop there. I have recently latched onto electronic dance music (when people hear it they sometimes call it “techno music,” or, “eurotrash.”) I’m now starting to learn to use live-mixing music software.

But what can a student in business do, practically speaking, with all of this music? Lots of things. Several friends and I are already engaged in building a social networking website for college bands and musicians. Moreover, coming from southern California, where the entertainment industry thrives in my backyard, I now see that my analytical skills as a finance major might one day land me a job in the music industry. While I may not possess the natural born talents of musicians, actors, impressionists or sculptors, there are still ways I might make a living in the world of the arts.

And the real point of all this is that I’m happy. Every free moment I get, I have those nylon strings beneath my fingertips and I’m strumming the work of my oversized ukulele hero, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole.

Stephen Lewis is a sophomore at Georgetown University, where he is majoring in business. This is his first published writing.

DC Students Watched While Police Removed Their Teachers from Classrooms

By Claudia Ricci

If you don't live in DC, chances are you don't know about the troubling things that have been happening in the schools.

Even if you live in DC, you might not know.

There have been local stories http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/02/AR2009100202289.html?nav=emailpageabout the teacher firings -- more than 200 teachers were purged on Friday, October 2nd -- just a few weeks into the school year. But most of the coverage has focused on whether DC Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee was justified in firing the teachers -- many of them veteran educators -- and replacing them with new teachers making smaller salaries.

But what is astonishing is how little media coverage there has been about HOW those firings came down. (I saw one mention in the Post.)

It's a horrible story that bears repeating. It's a story that deserves a giant front page headline that screams out:

DC TEACHERS YANKED FROM THE CLASSROOM LIKE CRIMINALS

Or

STUDENTS WATCH WHILE DC TEACHERS REMOVED BY ARMED POLICE

My source on the story is a good friend who teaches in one of the DC schools affected and was there when colleagues were fired. This friend - who will remain anonymous, because God knows I don't want to see one more teacher fired - called me from a cell phone the Friday before last, frantic, and practically in tears.

"You won't believe what just happened here at school," my friend yelled into the phone. I was working in a crowded office where I couldn't talk, but I whispered back, "what?"

"It was like some kind of armed coup. Twenty minutes before the end of the school day, with all the kids sitting in the classroom, they walked in and fired a bunch of teachers."

I got up from my desk and went out into the hall where I could hear better.

My friend described the scene. It was just minutes before the bell rang. No one knew it was coming. The doors of certain classrooms opened. Armed policemen wearing bullet-proof vests appeared. Accompanying the cops were the new teachers who informed the existing teachers that they had been replaced. No warning at all.

"Teachers were given exactly five minutes to pack up their things and exit the building," my friend said.

Some of those teachers had worked in the schools for more than 20 years.

Some of those teachers left in tears.

And the students? God knows what they thought.

The teachers' union is suing, protesting the firings. At a rally in DC last Thursday -- it attracted thousands, according to the Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/08/AR2009100803502.html - the union accused School Chancellor Rhee of union busting, systematically removing more expensive, experienced teachers.

In their lawsuit, the union noted that more than 900 new teachers had been hired during the summer, about three times as many as normal. These new instructors, the union argues, will cost the system less in salary.

Rhee denies the union accusations, insisting that the teachers were relieved of their duties for legitimate reasons, including incompetence.

The controversy about why the teachers were removed will undoubtedly rage on.
But the story of how they were dismissed is crystal clear.

In my friend's words, "the teachers were treated like criminals."

Even if they deserved to be fired --and that is not at all clear-- "they deserved to be treated with dignity and respect."

Uh, yeah. If for no other reason, consider the kids.

Consider the lessons imparted that day. A person may devote him or herself to a job for two decades, but that matters not at all when it comes time for the budget ax to fall. An employer has no obligation to treat a loyal employee with respect.

So my question is this: who decided how these teacher firings were going to be executed in DC? And did those decisionmakers give even two minutes of thought to how their decisions would affect the kids who sat and watched the debacle unfold?

This post originally appeared in The Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/claudia-ricci/the-students-watched-whil_b_316859.html