Shannon Phillips

Robin graduated from preschool today. There’s actually another month of school left to go, but at the Peter Pan preschool the graduation ceremony is held in mid-June—I think because a lot of folks start leaving for summer vacation. It’s called Key Day, and each graduating child is awarded a big wooden key adorned with lots of sparkly bits, to symbolize that they can always come back to visit. After the kids get their keys they run across a “bridge” set up in the playground, which represents them “crossing over into the wider world of learning.” It’s a nice ceremony, with a generous, individualistic feel—it kind of captures the spirit of the co-op.

And as it happens, yesterday, we got a call from the Oakland Unified School District. After learning that we’d been wait-listed for our top-choice school (Urban Montessori Charter School), we kind of started scrambling around for a back-up plan. One of the things we did was to put in the paperwork for late admissions to various public schools in the city, knowing that Robin would only be offered a place in ones that happened to be under-enrolled. Since competition is fierce for spots in the district’s top-performing schools, I kind of figured that this whole process was a long shot at best. For whatever reason, though, it seems that Kaiser Elementary had a space open, and they’ve offered it to Robin.

A little OUSD inside baseball: There are three Oakland public schools that have test scores rivaling what you see at private schools. Those three are Hillcrest, Montclair, and Thornhill—not coincidentally located in the most prosperous sections of Oakland, up in the hills—and we did not even bother applying to any of these, as neighborhood kids get preference and those schools are considered so desirable that even living in the right zip code isn’t a guarantee of admission. We don’t live in the right zip code, needless to say, and anyway I’m pretty sure that there’s a wonky feedback loop going on involving: 1) the kind of parents who care about test scores more than anything else; 2) the kind of kids who have private tutors and get good scores on standardized tests; and 3) the kind of test scores that kids who go to Hillcrest, Montclair, or Thornhill tend to get. In other words, I am pretty darn sure that the quality of the schools has only a loose relationship to the strength of the test scores.

Be that as it may, there’s also a satellite constellation of schools located in neighboring areas—collectively known as the “hills schools”—that get decent test scores but aren’t quite so insanely difficult to get into, and as a result attract a more diverse set of kids. The hills schools include those already mentioned as well as Chabot, Joaquin Miller, and Kaiser. I did not expect to be offered a place at any of them, but we applied to Chabot and Kaiser anyway, because they honestly seemed like they might be good fits for Robin. What I want from a school is, basically, an extension of Peter Pan—a school that recognizes the value of creativity, freedom, and play. I want a school that Robin will love in the same way that he loves going to Peter Pan. I am convinced that kids have an innate drive to learn and that they do best when given the freedom to pursue their own interests along with the materials, support, and structured challenges they need to progress. I think worksheets are the mind-killer and that if school is boring, that means it’s broken. (School can be hard without being boring.)

The bottom line is—I’m pretty skeptical of America’s public school system in general and Oakland’s in particular, but I’ve heard good things about Kaiser and I’m willing to give it a chance. It’s kind of a miracle that we were offered a spot at all. It’s a fair distance from our house so transportation will be an issue, but there’s a number of former Peter Pan families that have kids there now, so we might be able to get a carpool going.

I think if Urban Montessori finds a space for Robin, we’ll probably still take it. But Kaiser is our default plan now.

He’s only two years old for another few weeks!

Ages ago, I bought this cloche. It was on sale because it had lost its trim. I thought it would look sweet with a simple, thin, dark band. This was maybe fifteen years ago.

For some reason the stars aligned and I finally fixed it up. I bought the bunch of cherries from Judith M Millinery Supply House, and the grosgrain ribbon from The Ribbonerie, and I sewed one onto the other and voilà, now I have a fetching hat. Not too bad for a bumbling amateur!

So, we have a little blessing that we say before eating dinner. We’re not a religious family—Sam and I both tend toward a vague kind of pantheism, a sense that we are all small pieces of something incredibly vast, and that the pattern in its wholeness is sacred and divine. But we reject the notion of a personal God or Hell or any of that jazz. I have more of an urge toward ritual than Sam does: there are plenty of things about the universe that inspire in me a deep sense of awe and wonder, and I like to make whatever small gestures I can toward participating in the holiness I perceive. For a while I thought we might even find a church to go to, like a Unitarian or a Friends group, something very liberal and individualistic. But Sam’s not really a “joiner” and, frankly, it’s nicer to sleep in on Sundays.

Our compromise is that we have some invented rituals we carry out as a family, and one of those is saying “grace.” I had to hunt around for one that was suitably vague, invoking no particular God, and I found it included in a little book called Bless This Food: Ancient and Contemporary Graces from Around the World. It’s a prayer composed by Father John Giuliani, director of the Benedictine Grange in Redding, Connecticut. Our very slightly modified version goes like this:

Bless our hearts
that we may hear
in the breaking of bread
the song of the universe.

We say it all together, holding hands. I do feel that there is something sacred about coming together as a family for the evening meal, and I wanted a small ritual to underscore that, a little moment of mindfulness and gratitude. And it’s worked out really well, it’s become a piece of our family identity. Children are innately ritualistic, I think, and the boys have embraced “saying the blessing” every night—to the point that they will protest if for some reason we try to skip it.

At the same time, though, Robin likes to play around with the words. Sometimes instead of invoking “the song of the universe” it will be “the song of the Power Rangers” or some such. And the other night he gave us:

Bless our hearts
I love you
You can eat noodles
Whenever you want
I love you

Which I thought was so sweet and hilarious that it deserves to be documented for posterity. “You can eat noodles / Whenever you want!”

Cross-posted from my Goodreads account

I’ve had really good luck with books lately! I found two new series that I enjoy very much, both in genres that are clogged with mediocrity. One’s urban fantasy (set in the modern world) and the other traditional fantasy featuring a medieval-type setting. I really like both of these when done well, but the vast majority of new releases in both genres consist of derivative, formulaic drek, so finding a fun new fantasy series kind of feels like winning the lottery.

Midnight Riot

The Peter Grant books are directly comparable to the Harry Dresden series by Jim Butcher (another urban fantasy series that I quite like). Except that where Harry Dresden is a wizard P.I. in Chicago, Peter Grant is a wizard cop in London. I really enjoyed the British flavor in these books, and I found the main characters (Peter, his partner Lesley, and his wizardly mentor Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale) all compelling and well-rounded. The writing is workmanlike, nothing fancy, but perfectly serviceable. I plowed through Midnight Riot (which was originally published in the U.K. under the title Rivers of London) and its two sequels, Moon Over Soho and Whispers Under Ground, and I’m impatiently awaiting the next installment.

The Lies of Locke Lamora

The Lies of Locke Lamora is the first in what looks to be a trilogy, though only the first two books are out so far. It follows the adventures of a master thief (the titular Locke Lamora) through a gritty medieval world. Author Scott Lynch made a little bit of a splash when he responded to a reader who accused him of “political correctness” for writing a female, non-white pirate captain into the series as a supporting character:

You know what? Yeah, Zamira Drakasha, middle-aged pirate mother of two, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy. I realized this as she was evolving on the page, and you know what? I fucking embrace it.

Why shouldn’t middle-aged mothers get a wish-fulfillment character, you sad little bigot? Everyone else does. H.L. Mencken once wrote that “Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” I can’t think of anyone to whom that applies more than my own mom, and the mothers on my friends list, with the incredible demands on time and spirit they face in their efforts to raise their kids, preserve their families, and save their own identity/sanity into the bargain.

Shit yes, Zamira Drakasha, leaping across the gap between burning ships with twin sabers in hand to kick in some fucking heads and sail off into the sunset with her toddlers in her arms and a hold full of plundered goods, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy from hell. I offer her up on a silver platter with a fucking bow on top; I hope she amuses and delights.

I read that, and in the minute that followed I went to Amazon and I bought The Lies of Locke Lamora. And if I have a criticism, it’s that Zamira doesn’t show up until halfway through the second book in the series (Red Seas Under Red Skies). But, you know, she’s worth the wait. I am grateful for Zamira Drakasha. I was, in fact, amused and delighted.

Frost Burned

On the other hand, I was disappointed by the latest entry in a different series I’ve been following. The Mercy Thompson books follow the adventures of a woman who can take the shape of a coyote, and the pack of werewolves that she runs with. It’s a wildly successful series and one that has (unfortunately) spawned a vast number of imitators. This is because the books are great fun.

Frost Burned, though, is the seventh entry in the series, and this one feels like treading water. It could’ve used better editing, too. Dialogue is clunky and characters do really stupid things just to push the plot along. I still like Mercy, but it felt like she wasn’t really there in this one. I half suspect Briggs of relying on an uncredited co-writer. Or maybe it’s just that she’s lost her passion for this series, but keeps writing Mercy Thompson books because they sell so well.

I think Briggs should branch out a bit, and come back to Mercy when she’s feeling inspired. Surely at this point they’ve both earned a break.

It’s my birthday! In honor of the occasion my bff Nina has gotten me the bestest present—she’s flown across the country for a visit! I have planned out a meticulous itinerary of feasting, spa-tripping, and sitting around in loose-fitting clothes admiring our pedicured toes and talking about all the delicious food we have just eaten.

To kick things off, last night I made a dinner of raw oysters in mignonette sauce as a first course, a main dish of salmon with lavender-fennel salt and pan-seared asparagus with shaved parmesan, and a fruit and cheese course consisting of fresh peaches, blueberries, and a wedge of St. Pat cheese from Cowgirl Creamery.

Nina said she wanted the salmon recipe so here it is!

You start with four wild salmon fillets, skin-on, about six ounces each. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees and line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.

Check your salmon for little bones and pull them all out. Then combine a teaspoon of black peppercorns, a teaspoon of coarse sea salt, a teaspoon of fennel seeds, and a teaspoon of fresh lavender blossoms. Grind it all up using a spice grinder or a mortar and pestle. (Keep grinding until the peppercorns have all been turned into pepper.)

Brush your salmon fillets with olive oil on both sides and lay them, flesh side up, on the baking sheet. Season them evenly with the lavender-fennel salt, pressing it firmly into the salmon. Bake for about thirty minutes or until a food thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the salmon reads 140 degrees.

(Recipe adapted from The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market Cookbook.)

Cross-posted from my Goodreads account

Below Stairs

I loved this book. I picked it up because I’m going through a bit of Downton Abbey withdrawal, and it supplied exactly what I feel like that show is sometimes missing: a realistic view of the inequalities of the old aristocratic class system. But I didn’t expect that the book would be so fun.

Margaret Powell was born in 1904, took her first job in a laundry at the age of thirteen, and went into service as a kitchen maid a year later. She stayed in service for many years, eventually working her way up to the position of cook. So she’s kind of the “Daisy” of the house, except incredibly bright and incredibly funny. Her memoir is written in a breezy, conversational style peppered with fascinating anecdotes and witty commentary. It’s snappy, smart, and utterly engaging from start to finish.

Murphy’s Law

Mystery’s not my genre, for the most part, but my mom recommended Rhys Bowen to me on the grounds that I adore Dorothy Sayers. (Actually, she recommended a different series, but I got confused and picked this one up by mistake.) The thing is, Sayers was writing her own time period: her books have a marvelous period texture that’s utterly authentic. Below Stairs is wonderful for the same reason. By contrast, Bowen has obviously done some research, but the sensibility of her characters is very modern, and ultimately the historical setting feels thin and unpersuasive, at least to me. Mystery fans might find more to enjoy.

American Savage

And pivoting quite abruptly to the modern day: Dan Savage’s new book is largely a rehash—or a summation—of the themes he deals with in his column and his in blogging for the The Stranger. There are chapters here that cover sexual politics (ethical non-monogamy, the science and activism of bisexuality, sex-ed in schools) and politics-politics (Obamacare, the It Gets Better project, the fight for marriage equality) as well as a few personal essays. The personal material is the freshest, and I found it enormously sympathetic, especially Dan’s account of being at his mother’s bedside during her final moments. Still, there’s not a lot here that will be new to his regular readers.

There’s no getting around it. This kid looks a lot like my grandfather, the late Ned Fritz of Texas. I hope he inherits the hair! The razor-sharp mind, the passion for environmental justice, and the playful love of kids and songs and poetry…that would be nice, too.

So, I’ve been doing some formal reading lessons with Robin. The impetus was learning that if he gets into the Urban Montessori Charter School next year, he’ll be placed in first grade—I don’t want him to start first grade not knowing how to read. I sort of had this idea that if you read to kids, they naturally pick it up, but although Robin knew his ABC’s and letter sounds really early on, and had a handful of sight words (“cat,” “dog,” et cetera), he hadn’t moved much past that stage. He wasn’t able to pick up a book and read it.

It turns out that the pedagogy of teaching kids to read is a real minefield. The reading wars, as they are called, essentially consist of the “phonics” camp pitted against the “whole-language” camp in a tribal deathmatch. And it is tribal: the debate has become entirely bound up in identity politics, with conservatives flying the phonics flag and liberals marching with the whole-language brigade. I’m a liberal, so my instincts aligned rather neatly with the whole-language side, and I probably never would have thought to challenge those instincts except that Robin wasn’t making much progress towards true literacy.

But after reading more on the subject, I learned (to my own dismay) that, nice as it is, the whole language idea has not yielded good results anywhere that it’s been put into exclusive implementation. Most educators currently endorse a “balanced” approach that includes at least some phonics instruction.

So, I bit my lip hard and ordered a phonics-based workbook for Robin. I got the one that had the best Amazon scores: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.

And I hated that book. Everything in my nature rebelled against its didatic, joyless, prescriptivist approach. Nontheless, it had really great reviews, and Robin was quite happily up for the idea of “doing lessons” with Mama. (Davy was muuuuuuch less thrilled with the concept of a thing Robin and I would do together without him…and I suspect that his opposition was part of the draw for Robin. Oh, the joys of siblings.)

By lesson eight, something had clicked for Robin. He got the central idea of “sounding things out.” He wanted to page ahead and look at the new words in lessons further along. So I quite gleefully ditched the boring workbook and went back to reading real books with Robin—except now, I stop every now and then and have him identify a word before we go on. Sometimes he can do it because it’s one of the ever-growing number of words he recognizes on sight; sometimes he can guess the word from context; and sometimes I help him sound it out.

Today, for the first time, I had the experience of sitting down with a picture book Robin hadn’t seen before (it was actually a workbook my mom sent, First Words Sticker Workbook) and realizing that Robin can read every word on the page, by himself. The pictures are great context clues, of course, but he’s also identifying the starting sounds of the words and using that information to guess the word correctly. He is, in other words, using all of the tools at his disposal to truly read. He can pick up unfamiliar material and read it. He is in the early stages of actual literacy. I was so impressed that I texted Sam and demanded to know whether he’d read that book with Robin already! (Answer: No.)

So, it all makes me feel a bit more confident about homeschooling for kindergarten, if that’s the path we end up taking. I can teach him things, even with the distractions of a new baby and a demanding two-year-old. I can teach him reading and writing and ‘rithmatic. I have, to some degree, already done it.

Cross-posted from my Goodreads account

Unnatural Creatures

I really like short stories. Conventional wisdom in publishing has it that short story collections don’t sell, but personally I seek them out: there are some ideas that aren’t really meant to be novels, and a well-crafted short story can pack a huge depth of emotion and resonance into just a few pages. A short story is just the right length to meet a character, explore an idea, or pay off a simple plot twist. And a short story collection can either show off an author’s versatility, or it can showcase variations on a single theme.

Unnatural Creatures does the latter. It’s an anthology featuring stories by some of the biggest names in fantasy—along with some new-to-me authors—and each story features a different fantastic beast. There are unicorns, dragons, werewolves, and a bunch of less-standard creatures (the dimension-hopping carnivorous plant was rather memorable). The stories were selected by Neil Gaiman and are almost all excellent. In fact, Gaiman’s own contribution (which has been published before in his own short-story collections), while amusing enough, was one of the weakest of the bunch. Taken as a whole Unnatural Creatures is everything a satisfying anthology should be: both broad and deep, and full of characters that are interesting to meet and don’t outlast their welcomes.

The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories

This collection, on the other hand, failed from my perspective. I surprised myself by disliking it as much as I did, since I thought Carroll’s novel Bones of the Moon was haunting and masterful. But these stories were choppy—one ended so abruptly, and with such pointlessness, that I actually wonder if the Kindle edition might not have dropped some pages—and were mostly unpleasant even when they felt complete. I don’t need all my stories to have happy endings, but me to there’s a distinction between fiction that looks at the struggles and sorrows of human existence and finds some kind of meaning or redemption or catharsis there, and nihilistic fiction that simply wallows in unhappiness. These stories felt like wallowing, to me.

Practical Magic

As guilty-pleasure books go, this one is aces: it’s written in a breezy, catchy style that keeps the pages turning, and the plot is loaded with magic and romance. I say it’s a “guilty” pleasure because it’s really a chick lit book at heart—there’s nothing the least bit challenging here, and the male characters especially come across less like believable human beings and more like Love Interest-shaped tokens dropped into the narrative at the appropriate points. But it’s a great beach or airplane read.