Mystery, Part II

Margarete, my learned colleague and friend, contributed these words in response to my recent sleuthing:

"My dear Beth,

I was greatly amused by your blog concerning the smoking oven. It is my considered opinion that your warming drawer may, in fact, be a broiler. My reasoning is quite elementary, my dear Beth-

First- having observed the size in of your appliance (Exhibit A) I reasoned that it would be unlikely to have two heating elements.

Second- considering the dietary preferences of the typical apartment dweller, a broiler would be in greater demand than a warming drawer.

Third- based on your statements the muffin cups scorched in a remarkably short time period. Surely, a warming drawer would produce a lower gentler heat.

Fourth- logistically how would one warm plates in the warming drawer while baking lasagna at say 350• Fahrenheit in the oven? Wouldn't the plates also be at 350•? If so, why not just put them in the oven??

Fifth - are there guides on the sides of the alleged warming drawer that would accommodate a....broiler pan??

Based on this deductive reasoning we must conclude that your warming drawer is, in fact, a broiler."

Beth and the Mystery of the Strangely Smoking Oven

Case closed on this one. I have used my oven only once for real purposes (two other times which I'll discuss momentarily), and while it was still preheating both the carbon monoxide detector and fire alarms started going off. Luckily, the apartment has lots of windows, so I opened them up as much as possible and things were quiet for the duration of the baking. However, I didn't like to think that I was breathing trace amounts of gas, and the thought of baking something in February with all the windows gaping was not appealing.

I tested the oven again a few days later by turning it to the same heat with nothing inside. I had to wait fewer than ten minutes before alarms were going off again. That settled it: this wasn't a fluke. Either something was burning inside the oven or else there was a leak. Either way, I was annoyed. A leak was bad news, and if there was something burning inside the oven, I didn't feel obligated to clean it; I had just moved in and felt I should have at least reasonably clean appliances to start off with.

I called the management company and the snippy receptionist put me through to the gruff maintinence guy. He told me immediately that I need to clean the oven. "But it looks fine," I protested, hoping to get him to come out and look at it anyway. "Buy some oven cleaner, scrub it out real good, and call me again if it's still acting up," he said, in the kind of tone that told me he was sure I wouldn't be calling again.

Resignedly, I stopped by the hardward store on the way home. I changed clothes, armed myself with rubber gloves, and opened up the oven to peer inside. My kitchen is tiny, and really getting in there to scrub was going to require some serious contortion if I was going fit in the small space between the oven and the cupboards. Everything looked fine. Then I opened up the drawer at the bottom of the oven, figuring I might as well do something about that too while I was at it, and this is what I saw:

What I had figured was a handy storage compartment turned out to be a warming drawer. The new cupcake tins, with paper labels still affixed, and cupcake lining papers in their plastic container, had not stood up well to the heat. Who knew? I removed them, then turned the oven up again and waited half an hour. No so much as a beep from anything on the ceiling.

I was suddenly really, really glad the maintinance guy didn't come out.

It's a Small World After All

I've written several times about weird, geez-the-world-is-small coincidences. One involved Julia, a friend from TC, who randomly knows Lia, with whom I went to Cate. (This one's particularly unlikely because there's no reason at all I should know Julia; we're not in the same program and except for the day we met in August we virtually never cross paths.) Here's another one in which Julia proves that perhaps there are fewer degrees separating us all than we originally thought:

Julia, who is from Wisconsin, is a huge musical theater fan. She can practically recite the casts of most of the shows on Broadway, knows who won which Tony in which year, etc. I don't know how much she performs/performed, but I know that in college she was involved in costuming, set design, etc. She and I were walking around the other day and she told me about taking a visiting college friend to see "A Little Night Music," a hit musical on Broadway featuring Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta Jones. I was anxious for her to get to the end of her story because I was all ready to impress her - I know somone in the show. Sort of.

Back in Visalia, Jan V. was the principal of St. Paul's when I was in kindergarten. She pulled my friend Margaret, me, and two other students (Danny and Meghan?) out of class a few days a week and taught us to read because she felt we were ready. Fast-forward 21 years and you'd find Jan and I teaching middle school English in adjacent classrooms at St. Paul's. We chatted a lot, and while I learned volumes about education from her, I also learned a lot about her sons' endeavors. I remembered them vaguely, particularly the younger one, Kevin, from when we went to St. Paul's together in elementary school. Kevin, two years older than I, was living in New York. As an actor he was barely scraping by until he landed a job as an understudy in "A Little Night Music." So I couldn't wait to rock Julia's world by sharing with her my sort-of brush with sort-of fame.

Julia gave "A Little Night Music" two thumbs up, then said that the best part was that one of the cast was out that night and a guy she knew filled in. "Yeah," she said, "it wasn't a huge part, but it was kind of cool to look up at a Broadway stage and see Kevin V. up there." After I'd picked my jaw up from the sidewalk, I explained to her my connection to him. Turns out they'd gone to the same college, although she was a freshman when he was a senior and she said he probably wouldn't recognize her name. She knows of him because, as she said, he was "a big deal" around campus his senior year, particularly to her and her friends who were a bunch of theater geeks.

Julia and I attended a free opera benefit concert at a lounge and spent the rest of the night interspersing our commentary on the acts (which included an acapella ode to the Pythagorean Theorum and a heart-wrenching duet between Mama Cass, played by my friend Eddie, and the ham sandwich accused of killing her) with exclamations about our revelation. One of these days, if things like this keep happening, I will cease to be surprised by them. Today is not that day.

Suzie Homemaker

Ah, the joys of having a kitchen! Behold my latest culinary endeavors:

Trail Mix cookies, made for my dad's visit. I was proud of the way they turned out (new recipe found on the Internet) but I was even more proud of my cooling rack; it's actually part of a shelving unit which I didn't assemble completely because the shelves wouldn't all fit. Score! A slight problem, however, is that my oven sets off both the carbon monoxide and smoke detectors when I turn it on. I've really got to call the landlord about that... In the meantime, I'm grateful that we have a lot of windows.

Raspberries FINALLY went on sale, so I'm infusing a second batch of vodka. Since I took this picture almost a week ago the raspberries have gotten paler and the vodka has gotten pinker. I hope this is a sign that the flavor is leaching into the vodka along with the color. I have yet to taste it, but it still smells a lot like rubbing alcohol.

I have been wanting to try making pickles for ages, and I found a recipe for bread and butter pickles that got excellent reviews. It includes cider vinegar, cloves, and mustard seeds among other things and I think the finished product is absolutely delicious. My dad came up with number excuses to avoid tasting them and Dave seems wholly repulsed by the idea (I think he soured when he came home to the smell of boiling vinegar), but Anthony was impressed. Well, if no one wants to share them with me, that means I get to eat more.

Brooklyn Half-Marathon

Most of my soreness has dissipated already, and I hope my dad and brother are faring the same. The three of us took on the Brooklyn Half-Marathon on Saturday and a good time was had by all, despite some hiccoughs.

Dad arrived a few days in advance, and after some enjoyable touring around NYC (pictures to come), on Friday evening he and I headed out to Brooklyn where Anthony and I had booked a hotel room; the race was scheduled to start at 7:00 A.M. on Saturday morning and we wanted to be ready to go. Our hotel was, if small, very clean and even stylish, although it was in a pretty dismal neighborhood. Dad and I had to walk for about 25 minutes before we discovered a restaurant that didn't sell greasy, pre-made slices of pizza or Chinese food (also greasy). As we walked, following a remarkably unhelpful map, we asked several locals to point us in the direction of Prospect Park, the location of the starting line. No one seemed to have any idea where it was, which is pretty remarkable considering that the park is enormous. We elected to take a cab in the morning, rather than try to find the park ourselves and risk being late. Anthony arrived, and after chatting and readying our race gear and attire, we went to bed.

The alarm went off too early the next morning, and we dressed and headed out into the gray morning light. Anthony and I purchased breakfast bagels and Gatorade at a corner mini-mart which we ate with Dad in the taxi on the way to the park. It took us a while to find the starting line, and because I decided to use one of the Porta-Potties nearby (which involved a 15-minute wait in line), we arrived at our appointed starting corral literally seconds before the gun went off. No matter - we were pretty far back and we didn't start running for 8 more minutes.

I ran the first two miles with Dad and Anthony, then pulled away. I clocked myself as I went with the Garmin watch Dad gave me after the NYC Half. It is unfashionably large, but it keeps track of my distance, pace, and time, as well as doing just about anything else one could think of. I felt ok, but not fantastic. There were more hills in the park than I had anticipated, and it was muggy. After 7 miles of looping around the park, the course opened up onto a straightaway through Brooklyn which led us towards Coney Island. With about three miles to go, I realized that I was going to have to push it pretty hard to beat my previous time of 1:44, and by the time I had a mile left to go I was absolutely spent and pretty certain I wasn't going to make it. A sharp turn which spit us out onto the boardwalk confirmed it: no way was I going to be able to shave off crucial seconds running along the tops of bowing boards. I crossed the finish line with a frustrating final time of 1:45. I'm not sure I could have put any more effort into it, however, so at least I have no regrets.

I spent the short time it took for Anthony and Dad to finish gulping down Gatorade. Anthony was suprisingly chipper, having finished much faster than he expected to (and sounding genuinely surprised by this fact, despite my telling him repeatedly that this would almost certainly be the case). Dad looked tired and a bit relieved it was all over. We didn't have the energy to look around Coney Island, and it's likely that no one would have wanted us to get too close to them in lines for food or rides anyway in our condition, so we headed back to the hotel to shower up and follow my somewhat skewed directions to my apartment in Manhattan. Our route included a fascinating and unexpected detour into a Harlem subway stop, for which Anthony was not grateful.

I made Guad Squad t-shirts to pump up morale (and make it easy for us to find each other).

I enjoyed myself, although not as much as during the first half-marathon. I'm disappointed that I didn't beat my time, and the fact that I was so close almost makes it worse. I'll get another chance soon, though; Anthony has decided not to run the Boston Half-Marathon this weekend and has given me his spot. I will have to look for my results under "Tony Guadagni," but I'm still looking forward to a run in a new city with Jane and Lucy.

Dad and Anthony in Coney Island, heading to the Subway after the race.

Showcase

At long (long, long, long, long) last, Jill and I wrapped up our duties as Zankel fellows with one last day at the school and then a display at Teachers College's annual outreach showcase. We spent our last day administering reading assessments to students whom we pulled from class one by one. The assessment consists of two parts: a word recognition section called the San Diego Quick Assessment Something Something Something Test, and a passage which students read aloud to demonstrate their fluency. The whole thing takes about four minutes per student. The San Diego Test consists of lists of ten words, one list for each grade level. The student reads each list until they make three errors on one list. If they can't read three words on the 8th grade list correctly, this means they're reading at a 7th grade level. It's a pretty basic test, and both Jill and I were a little dubious about its accuracy. Even if the kid says the sounds right but emphasizes the wrong syllable (they all said a-PAR-ratus instead of apparatus, for example) it counts as an error. Every single kid I tested except one said "sun dry" instead of "sundry," which seemed to me to be a reasonable guess if you've never heard the word before. I'm not sure of the grade level at which the fluency passage was written. We asked each kid to read aloud for one minute, marked the words they didn't say correctly, then calculated the number of words per minute they were able to read successfully. Nearly all of them did better on the passage than the San Diego Test, which makes sense because it's easier to read words in context. Jill and I gave the test at the beginning of the year as well, and most freshmen we tested were reading at about a 5th - 6th grade level. For the most part they read at a 6th - 7th grade level this time around. Progress is always a good thing, but I'd have liked to see more than a year's worth, since they're all enrolled in a specialized reading course. They're supposed to make a year's worth of progress without intervention.

I was given the awesome responsibility of detangling the bunch of ballons (seriously) so that they could be dispersed amongst the display tables. This was my reward for showing up at the appointed time when no one else did.

The showcase was interesting. There was a nice assortment of refreshments, which was perhaps my favorite part. I glanced at the other projects that people had spent the year doing, but for the most part Jill and I stayed near our board, which we had glued together in the library the day before. It's been too long since I got to use construction paper. A fellow TC student, who also spent time at Heritage this year, invited a small group of students to come to the showcase. At the last minute, he wasn't able to come but encouraged the students to show up anyway. They went straight to the refreshments table, piled as much food on their plates as possible, and staggered off to a table in the corner balancing piles of cookies and chips and two sodas each. They did not get up except to replenish their provisions. I'm not sure why they were there, but I can guess it wasn't to gorge on free food and look surly. I knew only one of them.

Jill and I were photographed and interviewed by women hired by the university to report to the Zankel family. The idea was to show them how their family's contribution helps TC students and the community. They asked us if we had any stories to share. Jill and I opted not to tell about the fights, suspensions, drunkenness, gang involvement, sexual misconduct, and general hopelessness we'd witnessed at Heritage. I came up with a sappy story that I'd heard from Mrs. Portnoy secondhand, and the lady seemed happy enough to jot it down and be on her way.

I'm absolutely glad I was a Zankel fellow and that I spent part of my year at Heritage. I'm just as glad that it's over.

Disclaimer

First, apologies. Not only have I been busy moving into my new place, I only just got my Internet hooked up two days ago. To those of you who live for my latest postings (it's a short list) I say: Rejoice! I'm settled, hooked up, and ready to roll.

My posts for the next few weeks will likely be a bit anachronous, as I'll be writing about things that are happening as well as things that happened but that I didn't yet write about. For example, my next post will be about the Teachers College Service Showcase, which happened on May 6th. Well, better late than never, I suppose.

More on Meaghan

I'm getting settled in my new apartment, and while I hope to post pictures soon, it's in no state to be photographed at the moment. Until then:

I learned more about Meagan's hearing loss recently. She and a partner gave a presentation on deaf reading education, and it was quite interesting. As her partner, Shelley, pointed out, deaf kids who are learning how to read need to know how to identify all the different sounds represented by letters when they learn to read, even though they can't hear them, which is obviously a major challenge. Their presentation focused on kids like Meagan, who have some hearing or have aids to help them hear; these are the kinds of kids that we will be able to instruct as hearing teachers who know no sign language. Methods helpful to kids with hearing loss involve using lots of visual clues to help them differentiate between sounds they can't hear the same way that hearing kids can.

Meagan has a cochlear implant. For some reason, we learned a lot about cochlear implants in my high school physics class. When I was at Vanderbilt, we learned about them in my special education class, too, so I have a fair bit of background knowledge about them. Unlike hearing aides, which amplify sounds so that they hit the eardrum at a higher volume, cochlear implants act as ears, essentially hearing for a deaf person. Sounds are translated into electrical impulses which travel straight to the areas of the brain that interpret sounds. Meagan's implant isn't perfect, and even with it she's unable to hear sounds with high frequencies. The younger a child is when s/he is implanted, the more successful they'll be in acquiring speech and being a successful member of the hearing world. Meagan's obviously very smart, and her parents were very involved in her development, so although she wasn't implanted until she was six, her language skills are about as good as anyone's.

In the deaf community, cochlear implants are very controversial. Many deaf people are fiercely proud of who they are and what they can do without hearing, and they don't want their children implanted for fear that they'll become more involved in the hearing world than in the deaf community. In Meagan's case, because both of her parents are hearing, getting the implant wasn't really a choice; as a member of her family and community, it was unquestionably beneficial for her to communicate through speech rather than sign language. It gets sticky when both parents are deaf though, because young children clearly cannot make the decision to be implanted or not, and if a person decides later in life that they want the implant after all, they're probably not going to benefit much because they'll have spent so many years of their lives developing without one. Once one is past adolescence, the chances of acquiring a new language on the level of a native are pretty much zero, and that's for able-bodied learners who can hear with perfect clarity. Implanted adults are still missing a lot of the sounds in spoken English and acquire it even more slowly.

New York times

I find myself really busy lately, although luckily most of the things I'm trying to squeeze into my days are things I want to do. There are end-of-year parties to attend, endless loads of stuff to cart over to the new apartment (how did I acquire all of these things?), loose ends to tie up with school, summer jobs to search/hope/pray for, laundry to do, training to dread... Here's a breakdown of how I spent Friday:

-7:45 A.M. - Hit snooze

-7:50 A.M. - Hit snooze

-7:55 A.M. - Hit snooze

-8:00 A.M. - Gave self stern talking to about importance of getting up early enough to allow time to run 13 miles. Hit snooze.

-8:05 A.M. - Staggered into bathroom, dressed, etc.

-8:25 A.M. - Began run

-8:20 - 10:05 A.M. - Ran around Central Park's big loop and tacked on a smaller loop for a total of 10 miles. Listened to NPR podcasts.

-10:10 A.M. - Gulped down water and tangerine. Showered, dressed, packed tote bag of books.

-11:00 A.M. - Dashed into library to photocopy teaching license.

-11:15 A.M. - Purchased unlimited-use day pass for subway. Got on downtown 1 train.

-11:30 A.M. - Got off train at 72nd Street. Admired $700 handbag and $25 sandals. Purchased neither.

-11:45 A.M. - Purchased coffee at Aroma, met with owner of tutoring company on upstairs patio.

-11:50 - 12:20 - Successful interview and consumption of coffee, also successful.

-12:25 P.M. - Took train back uptown to 103rd St.

-12:40 P.M. - Dropped off books at apartment. Rubbed shoulder. Winced.

-12:50 P.M. - 1 train back to Columbia

-1:00 P.M. - Picked up books at nearby New York Public Library

-1:20 P.M. - Made, ate peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Listened to more NPR.

-1:50 P.M. - Printed letters to St. Paul's graduating 8th graders in TC computer lab.

-2:30 P.M. - Packed backpack and tote bag for second trip to apartment.

-3:00 P.M. - Headed back to 1 train.

-3:20 P.M. - Sweated profusely.

-3:30 P.M. - Dropped still-packed backpack and tote bag in apartment. Sweated, rubbed, winced again.

-3:45 P.M. - Headed downtown on 1 train

-4:35 P.M. - Got off at 14th Street. Began walking towards White Horse Tavern. Appreciated uptown's grid system. Reflected that I should come to the Village more often. Reflected on number of times I have had this reflection.

-4:50 P.M. - Happy Hour beers, unusually refreshing, at patio table with Vandy friend Chris. Waxed philosophical.

-6:45 P.M. - Back uptown on 1 train. Noted total departure of caffeine's effects from system.

-7:30 P.M. - Arrived at apartment. Unpacked backpack, tote bag, shouldered both. Rubbed, winced out of habit.

-7:40 P.M. - Back on uptown 1 train. Commended self for wisdom of unlimited subway pass purchase.

-8:20 P.M. - Arrived home. Peanut butter out of jar and Trader Joe's lentil soup for dinner. Began movie.

-9:30 P.M. - Met friends Sarah, Jill, Molly, and others in TC dining hall for End-of-Year bash. Exchanged comments with at least four people about resemblance of event to middle school dance. Drank sangria. Yelled over music.

-12:00 A.M. - Back to dorm room, changed to club-appropriate attire.

-12:15 A.M. - Cab to midtown. Met friend Jeremy, cohort, for birthday celebration.

-12:20 A.M. - Purchased vodka tonic.

-12:25 A.M. - Sipped vodka tonic. Rejected romantic advances of short i-banker.

-12:35 A.M. - Sipped vodka tonic. Rejected romantic advances of guy "in advertising."

-12:45 A.M. - Encouraged Jeremy to keep his shirt on.

-1:00 A.M. - Danced with Natasha to "Build Me Up, Buttercup."

-1:20 A.M. - Headed for cab. Admired city at night. Congratulated self on day well spent.

Drawing conclusions

I was walking through East Harlem this morning with my computer bag over my shoulder, reading a sheet of interview tips the sainted Dr. Masullo handed out to us during our last class, when I passed by two middle-aged Black men leaning against a railing. We all smiled at each other and said "Good morning," and I continued walking. After I'd taken a few more steps, one of them called after me, "You doing the Census?" I told them that I was looking over some school notes, and they both smiled and nodded and told me to have a good day.

While I have almost never felt uncomfortable in Harlem, I'm always keenly aware that I stick out there like... well, like a blonde white girl in Harlem. Personally, I like it there; the kids hanging around on the stoops braiding each other's hair and riding scooters, the men playing dominoes on folding tables, and the general, laid-back sense of camaraderie (even though it is rarely extended to me) give it a friendlier feel than other parts of Manhattan. I've heard of graffiti that promotes "keeping Harlem Black" and "getting the whites out of Harlem," and once, while walking with a group of about 12 friends to a subway station in Harlem, we heard a 12-year-old Black kid whistle and comment, "Damn! That's a LOT of white people!" (Never mind that our party included three Asians and two Indian girls.)

I'm not sure that I would call it tension, even though I'm sure many Harlem residents assume that I'm on my way home when they see me in "their" streets and lament the gentrification that they're powerless to stop. Part of me agrees. Now that parts of Harlem are chic, high end apartments and townhouses are cropping up, as are grocery stores, restaurants, and boutiques that longtime residents can't afford to shop in. Many times they've bought out the family businesses that used to be there. On the other hand, I bristle when I think that anyone would want to keep any part of town Black (or white, or Jewish, or Chinese...), and I resent those who glower at me, make assumptions about my intentions in Harlem, and wish that I wasn't there because I don't look like they do.

It's interesting that the two men I spoke with this morning assumed that because I was walking along that street, the only logical reason must be that I'd been sent by the government.