FeeFiFoto Blog

Option One: A New School?

Option One:

Move Cupcake to a gifted program, either in a public school where she'd be singled out taken out of class a few times a week for personalized tutoring, or in a self-contained program where all the students yuk it up together over quantum physics jokes follow an accelerated curriculum.

Let me just say -- BLECH to both options, since either would necessitate contending with a kid who liked her friends and her school (except for the frustrating and boring part).  I sensed it was fairly unlikely I could convince her that her school that had just been repainted... and renamed... and relocated... and repopulated. 

Still, I had to explore all the options at once because I had no way of knowing which might flop and which might pay off.

In April I called the administrator of one of these programs to arrange a tour and learned that I was calling WAY too late in the season to have ANY hope of acceptance, there were NO spaces available, NOR would there be, as students simply NEVER withdrew from this PRESTIGIOUS program once accepted, and she wouldn't even CONSIDER allowing me to apply until AUTUMN.

Now, I recognize that this lady gets daily calls from parents who insist that their itsy-bitsy phenomena would be an asset to any educational program.  I realize that every potential student has x-ray vision that can melt away cellulite while giving a nice, even tan; or can recite Pi to 100,000 digits forwards and backwards in Aramaic; or can construct a working model of the USS Constitution out of matchsticks, dryer lint and maple syrup.  I get it.  I get that she's the gatekeeper for a program pursued by maniacal parents convinced that their children will develop a cure for tone deafness or homesickness before the age of 17. 

But I also know that, should Cupcake have been admitted to her precious program, this sentry lady would have instantly transformed into my bestest friend ever, inviting me over to enjoy a Nehi or YooHoo, house sitting when I traveled, and offering valuable advice on what to wear to the next American Idol concert.

Meanwhile, I had to scramble to get my ducks in a row before the beginning of the next school year.  If Cupcake was going to have to be relocated I was going to need to know that and prepare for it before the Gatekeeper started offering tours in the fall.

So. Transferring to a different school.  Can't even begin to apply until next fall.  Meanwhile, Cupcake frazzles herself daily.

Tune in next time for: Home Schooling? 

Spoiler Alert: No Way.

Smart Kids: Not So Easy, Actually

Third grade was not an easy year for the Cupcake. 

No, you're not in a time warp and no I'm not rerunning old posts.  You're right -- she did just finish fourth grade, but I have a point here.

One of her teachers, the poster child for the phrase salt of the earth, had recently moved up from teaching second grade and was accustomed to having to repeat each instruction eleventy times to guarantee getting through to the kids in the back who were busy shredding their shoelaces and drawing on their hands.  Cupcake couldn't stand it.  She didn't need to hear variations on the same instruction for the benefit of audio learners, visual learners, hands-on learners, and learners who learned only by being screamed at.  She didn't need to drill third grade spelling words like grass, smell or kitten.  She became frustrated to the point of nearly screaming in class (she saved the screaming for the ride home, bless her shrill little heart) because she rarely got called on even when she totally knew the answer. 

By second semester Cupcake moaned every morning about having to go to school, and implored me to teach her at home, which would have been fine with me except that the state might have cocked a few suspicious eyebrows upon discovering how well versed she was in art and literature and how non-versed she was in math and gym.

I tried to help her.  I asked her teachers to have the best spellers learn some of the vocabulary words in French or Spanish.  I asked them to call on her more often or try to give her more class responsibility or recognition; they swore all students were treated equally but I knew they were lying, the fiends.

Cupcake's frustration endured and intensified.  She could hardly stand it when other students dilly-dallied.  She began to lash out and blame it on everyone else.  The low point came when she punched her on-again off-again BFF and then claimed it was the other girl's fault because she didn't get out of the way of Cupcake's oncoming fist.

Misguided?  Perhaps.  A little full of herself?  A bit.  Somewhat justified?  Decidedly, at least the frustration part, not the punching.

By spring break I was becoming desperate.  If Cupcake was this unhappy in third grade, what was I going to be able to offer her for fourth?  Stay in the same school situation and expect different results?  Keep her where she was but hire tutors to give her the stimulation she needed?  Move her to a public school where she'd be entitled to special services for gifted students?  Take out a deluxe library membership and dump her there every day, hoping her evolving interests would eventually even out her education? 

I began to investigate various local options for gifted students because there was not way I was going to survive all the whining and complaining for another academic year. 

And I didn't want to hear it from her, either.

Next: weighing options

Please Show You Care

Please visit Her Bad Mother and offer her some love and maybe some assistance.  Her 11-year-old nephew is terminally ill with a form of muscular dystrophy and the boy's mother is a single parent trying to care for him at home.

What I've Been Reading Lately

Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood, Jill Watts, 2007

Hattie McDaniel should be a permanent Hollywood icon: a singer, a comedian and, as anyone knows who's paid due attention to her performance as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, a gifted actress who could have conquered any role brilliantly, a la Tom Hanks.  Because of her race, McDaniel was pigeon-holed as a domestic worker or minstrel show performer in every movie role she ever played.  Small consolation that she paved the way for so many talented actors; she deserved better. 

Despite the heavy-handedness and occasional inaccuracies in the prose (McDaniel's full name is overused, and at least one photograph is mislabeled), this story of the neglect of an extreme talent is touching and maddening.

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Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast At Tiffany's and the Dawn of the Modern Woman, Sam Wasson, 2010

Ahh -- Audrey Hepburn.  I'm swooning a little bit right now.  The face.  The dress.  Who is there who doesn't adore Audrey Hepburn?

This book is the captivating story of the making of one of the most beloved films out there, a film based on a novel about a carefree hooker and her gay best friend during World War II. 

Sound familiar?  No?  That's because the movie's producers, paralyzed by anxiety over having to sell as a hooker a star who might as well have been a certified princess, dumbed down the original story to get it past the censors and the public.  Gay narrator becomes straight gigolo in love with Holly.  Hooker becomes party girl.  Instead of disappearing to South America and then Africa, Holly retrieves her nameless cat, kisses "Fred," and they presumably stay together. Mickey Rooney does a resoundingly  unfortunate turn as a Japanese photographer with ridiculously squinty eyes and such a crowd of teeth that he looks like he's wearing somebody else's dentures along with his own.

The result?  A somewhat generic (in 2010 terms, that is; it was groundbreaking in 1961) love story about a girl looking for her place in the world.

Still, the narrative nimbly transports the reader, especially the parts about how Henry Mancini created a completely fresh musical idiom, and why Blake Edwards's miraculous cocktail party scene, which lasts about ten minutes, took a week to film.

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What Is Life Worth?: The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of September 11th, Kenneth Feinberg, 2006

 

Kenneth Feinberg, currently charged with administering the $20 billion BP fund to compensate those harmed by the Gulf oil spill, wrote this memoir about his role as Special Master of the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.  This is the story of the humanity Feinberg invested in attempting to help ease the pain of the inhuman events of September 11, 2001.  He and his law firm tackled the job pro bono, spending months meeting with every potential claimant to determine eligibility for compensation and arrive at a fair settlement.  "Poignant" doesn't begin to describe the tone of this book; one of the most wrenching vignettes comes near the end, when Feinberg describes his profound sadness at being unable to get through to seven families so paralyzed by grief that they were unable to apply to the compensation fund, even though he and his staff begged to be allowed to fill out all the paperwork for them.

A Few Gems From Our Weekend In New York

This was positively amazing. I myself have personally been remarkably uncool most of my life. My first concert was ... let me see ... Eagles? Beatles? Springsteen? No -- Beethoven's 9th at the symphony hall. I'm indisputably among the top ten in uncool. But look here -- Surprise! They have cool inside! Wonder if they take credit cards?

Incontrovertible evidence that my sister, as a photographer -- let's see, what's the word?  Oh yes -- sucks.

This person was making darn sure his bike wouldn't be stolen, rendering it unappealing by basically shredding it, shall we say.

That's definitely Vladimir Lenin on top of that apartment building, which happens to be called "Red Square."

 

Why Lenin stands on that particular building we weren't sure, until later in the day when the condo building next door caught fire, attracting dozens of very loud trucks and helicopters, and it became clear that Lenin's job was to point the way for the firefighters, kind of like a statuesque Bat Signal.  Wonder if he moves around depending on where he might be needed next?

Candy!

Compass!

umm... Sign!

Pretty dress!

Pretty boots!

Miss Scarlett -- really

I Shot An Elephant In My Pajamas

What an elephant was doing in my pajamas, I'll never know.

Image borrowed from Paula J. Becker, who has a really cute blog.

The point of this extremely lame joke is that I killed a fly with a spoon last week. 

Not that the fly had a spoon in its little fly hand.  Although it might have, for all I could tell, since fly hands are normally microscopic and my vision isn't too sharp, even with glasses.  And for that matter, it was a pretty big fly.  As flies go.  So it's possible that the bigger-than-normal fly did have a demitasse spoon in its hand with which it intended to stir cream and sugar into its iced coffee.

In any case, I saw no evidence of a spoon in the fly's hand as I picked up the spoon with which I swatted the fly.

The point?  The point is that when writing a letter to Cupcake at camp, I wrote "I killed a fly with a spoon last week."  And then I had to clarify my statement because the way it was written it appeared as if I might have killed a fly that was holding a spoon in its hand, which we have already established was not the case, and in any case would be most unlikely.

As I was telling this story to my sister (an instinctive grammarian, like me -- it runs in the family, like prominent noses and curly hair), we tried to dissect the sentence and figure out what was wrong with it and how to fix it. 

But we couldn't find anything grammatically amiss. 

"I killed a fly with a spoon" seemed to be completely proper, especially if the sentence were spoken rather than written.  If, in conversation, you say "I killed a fly with a spoon," your listener, while finding your choice of subject rather grotesque, should nevertheless understand the implication that you picked up a spoon in your hand and used the spoon to swat a fly, which fell down dead on the floor.

Yet, the written sentence begged to be restructured so as to make abundantly clear that the fly was killed with the spoon, not that the fly came equipped with its own fly-size spoon.

Can anyone explain this conundrum to me?  In a way that won't make my eyes roll back into my head and my knees to buckle, thus causing me to fall backwards on the floor, bash my skull and end up in bed for a week with hallucinations of flies stirring coffee in china cups using teeny tiny silver spoons?

Thanks.

Independence Day Is Just The Beginning: Bizarre July Holidays

Make personalized calendars even more personal with the addition of peculiar dates; here are some for July. 

The kids and I design calendars for our family on our web site, FeeFiFoto, and in addition to the usual birthdays and anniversaries, we choose one day each month for a fictitious holiday just to see if anyone is paying attention. January 16 was Talk Like Pirates Day, February 24 was Walk Backwards Day, March 1 was Talk Really Fast Day, August 17 was Snowball Fight Day, and November 2 was Kiss Your Mom Day. We also acknowledged some legitimate holidays and anniversaries, like the Ides of March (March 15), Beethoven's Birthday (December 16) and the anniversary of Paul Revere's Ride (April 18). It was fun and silly.

Don't forget: as of today, June 30, there are 177-odd days left until Christmas.  Why not begin designing holiday calendars now?

1
Canada Day
Creative Ice Cream Flavor Day
Build A Scarecrow Day
Second Half of the Year Day

Duh

2
Visitation Of The Virgin Mary Day
I Forgot Day
Thurgood* Marshall, b. 1908

Really?  I Forgot Day?  Seriously?

3
Stay Out Of The Sun Day
Compliment Your Mirror Day
Disobedience Day
George M. Cohan, b. 1878

 

4
National Country Music Day
Tom Sawyer Fence-Painting Day
Rube Goldberg, b. 1883

You'll need that napkin to wipe the melting ice cream off your face and hands.

5
Workaholics Day
P.T. Barnum, b. 1810

6
National Fried Chicken Day
John Paul Jones, b. 1747

Fried chicken goes well with ice cream.

7
National Strawberry Sundae Day
Chocolate Day

Every day is Chocolate Day, isn't it?

8
Video Games Day

9
National Sugar Cookie Day
Nicola Tesla, b. 1856

Sugar cookies go well with ice cream.  And chocolate.

10
Clerihew Day
Don't Step on a Bee Day

11
National Cheer Up The Lonely Day
E.B. White, b. 1899

12
International Town Criers Day
National Pecan Pie Day

Pecan pie goes well with ice cream.

13
Gruntled Workers Day
Fool's Paradise Day

14
National Nude Day

 
15
Blame Respect Canada Day
National Tapioca Pudding Day
Rembrandt Van Rijn, b. 1606

16
International Juggling Day

17
National Peach Ice Cream Day
Art Linkletter*, b. 1912

18
National Ice Cream Day
National Caviar Day
Red Skelton, b. 1913

19
Flitch Day
National Raspberry Cake Day

20
Ugly Truck Contest Day
Mood Day
National Lollipop Day

21
National Tug-Of-War Tournament Day
Isaac Stern, b. 1920

22
Ratcatcher's Day
Hammock Day
Alexander Calder, b. 1898

23
National Vanilla Ice Cream Day
Hot Dog Day
Harold "Pee Wee" Reese, b. 1918

24
Amelia Earhart Day

I've always wondered who'd be brave enough to use an Amelia Earhart postage stamp.  Wouldn't you worry that your letter would be lost?

25
Threading The Needle Day

26
All Or Nothing Day
Vivian Vance, b. 1912

27
Take Your Pants For A Walk Day (graphic from the BBC)
Walk on Stilts Day

28
National Milk Chocolate Day
Beatrix Potter, b. 1866

29
Cheese Sacrifice Purchase Day
Chili Dog Day

30
National Cheesecake Day
Emily Bronte, b. 1818

Cheesecake goes well with ice cream.

31
Parent's Day

*Spellcheck offered Thursday, and Newsletter

Bamboozled: The Advantages Of Planting The Right Sort Of Bamboo In The Yard

Last week we did it.  Planted bamboo, I mean.  Here are a couple pictures of the little tykes:

Why bamboo?  First, personal reasons. 

We live on a very wooded property, which means we have lots of volunteer moss, weeds and miscellaneous plants, along with thousands and millions of leaves every fall.  What we don't have a lot of is grass, or, as some might put it, lawn. 

 

Photo originated here.

I tried planting sod and grass seed, which would enthusiastically flourish the first summer, and never return.  It took me a couple years to catch on but catch on I finally did, that while the grass seemed to enjoy summering with us, for some reason we weren't the best of year-round grass hosts, and after a winter slumbering in the shade, the grass moved to greener pastures every spring.

So I planted ivy, in anticipation of a thick, lush yard of dark green springy vines.  Every year I planted a little more ivy.  And every year... I planted a little more ivy.  Yet there never seemed to be any more ivy than when I'd started.  Finally the guy who cuts my weeds (since I have no grass) summoned the courage to suggest that maybe ivy doesn't like the acid from the oak leaves. 

So I crossed ivy off my list.

And then I read an article in the New York Times about bamboo that suggested using it as a ground cover.  And I thought, Hey!  I have ground!  And it needs covering!  Bamboo might do.

Second, environmental reasons.

According to the Times:

"Bamboo is a workhorse at sequestering carbon dioxide and pumping out oxygen. It is a tough plant that manufactures its own antibacterial compounds and can thrive without pesticides."

 

Additionally:

"As a natural and renewable resource bamboo offers an opportunity to turn away from the destruction of native forests towards managed commercial plantations that can be selectively harvested annually without the destruction of the grove or stand. Tree plantations obviously have to be chopped down and their nutrient arrest terminated at harvest. Bamboo keeps on keeping on, with edible shoots capable of extraction after less than five years. ...  bamboo can be harvested without the destruction of the grove or stand.

Bamboo minimizes CO₂ gases and generates up to 35% more oxygen than equivalent stand of trees."

That sequestering carbon dioxide thing made so much sense I felt quite stupid for not figuring it out myself without having to be told so by the New York Times.  Here's how it works:

• Bamboo, like all plants, sucks in carbon dioxide and emits oxygen.
• The carbon  dioxide becomes part of the plant, making it a carbon-based life form (a characteristic it shares with Paris Hilton).
• The carbon remains locked in the plant instead of being released into the atmosphere.
• The angels sing, the ozone layer is repaired and global warming is stopped in its tracks, although, sadly, Paris Hilton is still at large.

But bamboo grows like... a weed, I suppose.  And the last thing I need is the burden of maintaining my property with a machete in an attempt to subdue a plant:

Image from Movie Dearest

Thank goodness Nature thinks of everything.  Who knew?  There are TWO kinds of bamboo: 

"One can divide bamboos into “Runners” and “Clumpers”. The Clumpers don’t invade. To remove a clumper, just dig it out (and transplant it.) Runners can be well-behaved in cold climates, but some kinds when in a warm climate, and given plenty of water, can become a serious problem. Don’t plant a runner in a small yard in a warm climate, unless you put a barrier around it.

Homer running

If new shoots of bamboo are coming up all over your yard, it is a running bamboo. To get rid of it, there are four steps:

1. Cut it off.

2. Cut it down.

3. Water and fertilize the area, to cause new growth.

4. Cut it down again. And again."

And again and again and again.

See, it's that "again and again and again" part I can live without.

But there are many varieties of Clumping bamboo.  Clumping bamboo, unlike horizontally spreading bamboo, sends out individual rhizomes, allowing the plant to spread only a few inches a year and maintain its original shape.

And... GOOOOOOOOAL!  We have a slow-growing ground cover that helps renew the environment and can stand up to shade and leaves and acid and Miss Puppy.

Take that, weeds.