Finding my own voice

Chicago Public Schools' independent fact finder report was released this week, and as all news outlets are reporting, both sides rejected the report's recommendations.

At yoga with a group of moms yesterday morning, the pre-pranayama chatter was all about whether CPS teachers are going to strike. On Facebook, everyone is asking the same question. The fear of the unknown is palpable. Working parents everywhere feel the shadow over what remains of the kids' summer vacation.

Although I follow CPS closely, I have no idea whether a strike is imminent or avoidable. My reaction to public issues is often so far outside of popular opinion that I cannot trust that my gut reaction to any particular issue is in any way predictive of outcome. 

Oddly enough, I feel fairly calm about the whole thing. The Dad is worried about a possible strike interfering with the kids' schooling, but I think a labor dispute could provide a standalone education lesson that The Boy, at least, would find interesting. I mean, this is the kid who found WBEZ's recent On Point story so riveting that he asked if we could continue to listen to it in the house. 

I came to my own interest in civics a bit later than the age of 9: although I studied Political Science in college, I pursued a (corporate) writing career. When I left UIUC in 1997, I also left late-night discussions about Nietzsche, Machiavelli, and the future of the EU to wither in my memory of Urbana's Espresso Royale.

Raising children in the city of Chicago--with its long history of both the good (architecture, arts, social work) and the bad (crime, graft, greed, corruption) in society--has been my political reawakening.  Don't tell my father-in-law, who is fond of quoting Winston Churchill, but as I get older, I've become more of a social democrat.

That said, I've been rather wishy-washy on the issue of the CTU, and of unions in general. I've yet to meet a white-collar professional/manager with something positive to say about union labor. But as I've read the news reports, and the editorials, and the public rants about the CTU's greed, I've come to an interesting realization about how I feel about the union versus free-market debate. 

And that is: I believe fundamentally in the unions. As a Chicago resident, I often find Karen Lewis's public statements to be irritating. But even with the CTU's bad (or nonexistent) PR, I don't think the usefulness of union labor has ended.  Without unions, we wouldn't have (had) a fair wage, a reasonable work week, and decent working conditions -- all things that helped to create a middle class, even as that middle class rapidly disappears. Even when I worked full-time, I often wondered why my field was not unionized. After all, in some ways, unionization is codification of an industry. Codification is really information. And information is power.  

I do not actually believe that the CTU wants or expects a 23% pay raise, but thanks to SB7, the CTU cannot negotiate on anything else unless/until CPS brings it to the table. So the teachers end up looking like greedy assholes in the press/public opinion. And the mayor wants this negotiation played out in the press; Karen Lewis isn't the only one who can play that game.

As an employee, the most important things to me were time, time, and culture (whether I felt respected by my co-workers and boss, and felt like I was contributing)--not pay. Of course "a day's pay for a day's work" is important, but no one in his right mind would argue that teachers in the United States go into the field for the money. 

As discussion of the fact-finders report and next steps continues, the online discussion invariably turns to what happens in the private sector (lack of raises, job security, etc.). In the private sector, we negotiate one-on-one with our employers about vacation time and benefits as well as about salary. To me, the CTU-CPS negotiations are no different. 

Food That Rolls

A million years ago (it seems), I introduced The Tot (Who's Not) and The Girl to the world of crêpes. Vella Cafe has long since shuttered, but we've been to Crêpes à Latte a fair number of times since then. However, I'm kind of a purist when it comes to crêpes--or at least to my memory of them. A billion years ago, when I lived in France, crêpes were mostly a street food. We ate them hot, with jam or sugar, in a paper cone on the side of the street. None of this egg-cheese-avocado stuff. 

At one point in time, I had the recipe for crêpes memorized--in French. A liter of milk, 8 eggs and 500g of flour. Or something like that. But, I never really had the occasion to make them. If I were to make them now, I'd certainly check and double check the recipe before dumping all that together. I know just enough about baking and cooking to sense that my 18-year-old self has forgotten the butter as she committed the recipe to memory.

Recently, however, in a fit of gumption, boredom, or both, I decided to make flour tortillas from scratch. The recipe called for a comal, a Mexican griddle. Instead of investing in yet more kitchen equipment for which there is little space in my tiny Chicago kitchen, I pulled out the crêpe pan. The one that had been languishing in my kitchen cupboards since July 2009 when I bought it.  It worked beautifully.  

And thus we started our family love affair with "food that rolls." Given an hour of time, a 1/4 cup of butter, some flour, and a dearth of anything good to eat in the house, I'll happily make a batch of flour tortillas, and fry them up on the crêpe pan. They are best straight off the griddle, plain or with a bit of quesadilla cheese melted in the middle. I'm hungry just thinking about it. 


My success with flour tortillas quickly expanded to Swedish pancakes, the Scandinavian version of the crêpe (or tortilla). Unlike American flapjacks, Swedish pancakes have a rapid cook time, making them an easier choice for this not-a-morning-person mama on a busy weekday morning, for a snack that feeds a crowd of kids, or a Daddy-is-out-of-town dinner. I made a double batch of Swedish pancakes again at mid-morning, feeding The Boy, The Girl, The Kindy (The Tot), and three of their friends, in an unscripted school's-out-for-the-summer celebration. Served with three kinds of jam, chocolate sauce, maple syrup, powdered sugar, and (untouched) Greek yogurt, Swedish pancakes are more of a dessert than a savory meal, but what is more fun that food that rolls up for easy consumption? After they were done, I sat down at the table of sticky to eat some with Greek yogurt and sour cherry jam.

And so summer begins...

Domesticity

My friend Melissa is my hero in the world of SAHMdom. She cooks, bakes, paints, and mothers calmly, which she manages to convey both in-person and through her blog.

As the school year winds down, and with it, my various school-related activities, I've had time to read--and be inspired by--more homekeeping-themed bloggers in the blogosphere. Like Melissa, or Marisa of Food in Jars, or Liesl of Oliver + S, or the folks at Sew, Mama, Sew, or occasionally, Young House Love, and everyone on Pinterest. Thank goodness for them.

Without meetings and action items to occupy the space not taken up by homework and kid emotions, I retreat back into my own head. And what I do to occupy my hands while I am thinking is engage in all forms of domestic arts. I'll likely never share step-by-step tutorials or photos of a project on this blog, but I'm incredibly grateful for bloggers who do, keeping the nearly forgotten arts of sewing, knitting, needlework, baking, cooking, and furniture restoration alive.

It is surprising even to me, but I do feel a sense of satisfaction in completing tasks around the house. After buying a flat of organic strawberries at the farmers market on Sunday, I've spent the week thinking up ways to use them. I've made two batches of cobbler, two batches of jam, one tarte aux fraises one batch of ice cream, and froze many individually.

Last week, I completed a twin-sized bed for The Boy, made from a set of Design Confidential plans, and refinished a side chair that I found on the street a couple of years ago. I cooked dinner. I cleaned areas that are part of the regular cycle and areas that are not. I pulled out toys and put them in the garage sale bin. I made dinner every night, and on some mornings, I actually made my children a hot breakfast (something I almost never do on weekdays). When The Girl asked me to do laundry, I complied.

I cannot really explain this flurry of domestic activity. On the surface, the explanation is that I did / do these things because they need to be done. But part of me wonders if it's my brain's way of letting go of this school year. Perhaps, in the same way that my children will use the time off from school this summer to play video games, run around outside, stay up late, and generally recharge their psyches, all this introspection and domestic activity is restorative for me.

Listening Tour, Part 3

This is old news in the world of Chicago education politics, but I wanted to finish the series for those who have been following along at home. I became intensely interested in CPS goings-on because of the funding piece and I would be remiss if I didn't mention money in my "reporting" of my meeting with Brizard.

Certainly, funding remains an issue within CPS. Everyone acknowledges this.

But in not sure the blame lies entirely on the shoulders of CPS Central fiscal mismanagement. In my opinion, funding remains an issue due to
1) TIF runoffs
2) state budget
3) federal funds shortage

I'll say right now that I haven't fact-checked the numbers Brizard gave us. I'm not a journalist, school ends in 3 days; I don't have time to do so at the moment.

A parent asked Brizard where she was really supposed to go to get more information or help when the programs--specifically, a summer orientation program for Von Steuben freshmen--that she and her daughters relied on have disappeared, often without warning. She noted that community schools don't have money.

While not addressing the nitty-gritty details of her question, Brizard responded by laying it out: the district does have money. It just doesn't have enough (me: and Von Steuben made the priority to cut the freshman orientation?). And that is a "structural" problem within the district. Brizard said that what they "advertised" with the 7-hour day assumed flat funding from the state. In fact, Illinois just cut $60 million from what they're providing to CPS for FY2013.

Illinois is funding education at the worst level in the country. That ranking is based on percentage of budget spent on education, not pure numbers. In New York, he said, the per-pupil spending was just under $18,000. In Chicago, it's half of that. According to the Illinois State Board of Education, other districts spend less than that per-pupil, but I find that hard to believe given the funding formula in Illinois. I suspect that Chicago has the highest per-pupil amount of state funds; other IL districts have a larger portion of local monies to make up the difference.

It's also difficult to compare per-pupil funding across states, as the funding formulas may or may not be calculated the same, as a quick online survey of other states' per-pupil funding shows (Michigan=$12,000, Houston=$5600).

Brizard said that just to replace the boilers in every school would cost the district $4 billion. So life at CPS quickly becomes an ongoing exercise in setting priorities and letting non-priorities fall by the wayside. And who best to do that but the principal and LSC at individual schools--not some bureaucrat downtown, Brizard said.

Another parent raised the issue of overcrowding and the use of mobile classrooms, and how they both affect socialization within a school population. It is a real issue at her child's school (Canty). What to do if your school doesn't even have a playground or green space, as is true for so many schools within Chicago? As Monica Lee reported on her talk at the PTA Advisory Council, there are some supports in place to flag and correct that. But Brizard, they know it's a problem. I got the sense that he hopes individual school communities can come up with creative solutions.

Mostly, at this point in the meeting, I felt relieved. We are so fortunate at Disney II. And we are fortunate because of a group effort. This is not to say that our school is not without problems and foibles (I'd love for my kids to have gym, art, music, technology on a daily basis, but at least they get it at all. In an ideal world, there'd be no lead paint in a building my children use daily, but at least it's covered and maintained.) Certainly, it's about priority setting and funding to those priorities and only those priorities. As an active parent volunteers I've been irritated in the past by the singlemindedness of funding to the priorities.

...Where You Always Save More Money

TimeOut Kids Chicago didn't exist in 2006, when I started this blog. These days, I'm rarely looking for fun things to do on the weekend, but when I am, I'm so glad that TimeOut Kids has already compiled a happenings list for me.

This morning, The Girl woke up in a mood. I tell you, some days I am not sure that both of us are going to make it to the angsty tween/teen years. Which everyone seems to think are summarily awful. As I wrote another day, I think The Girl has been caught in friendship flux this year. And, unfortunately, with her personality, this means that she is fine at school or elsewhere, but bubbles into a seething cauldron of rage when at home, or with her family. I'm trying my best to soothe her emotions, but it's mentally exhausting. In fact, I'm relaxing with a glass of white wine right now.

Part of The Girl's mood was that she wanted to do something with the day. My initial suggestions (neighborhood garage sales, Wells Street Art Fair) were met with thumbs pointed down. Enter the TimeOut Chicago list!

Among the contenders were the Scandinavian Jam at the Swedish American Museum, the Chicago: You Are Here exhibit at the CAF, and my top pick: the BH&G Chill & Grill Fest with Stephanie Izard at Waveland Bowl. The winner, however, fit in with our "Saturday Sweets tradition" (gakked from our Norwegian friends): the Elmhurst Historical Museum's Sweet Home Chicago: History of America's Candy Capital.

The museum, free to the public, is in the Glos House near the center of Elmhurst. It's open on weekends from 1-5 p.m.

I grew up in the south suburbs, so I can't recall ever having been to Elmhurst before. I seriously cannot say the word Elmhurst without repeating the Celozzi-Ettleson Chevrolet dealers' tag line: where you always save more money! None of my children understand commercials, so the joke was lost on them. (Did anyone else watch copious amounts of bad non-cable TV in he 1980s in Chicagoland? When I queried The Dad as to his association with Elmhurst, his response was the word "tree.")

I even looked for mention of the slogan in the museum's other exhibit, a history of the town from the 1800s to the present. Sadly, there was no mention of it. I did learn, however, that Elmhurst started the second ever Boy Scout Troop in the early 20th century, and had GSA and Camp Fire Girls troops as well.

But back to the candy exhibit.

It was nicely done. We stopped in the gift shop/welcome desk on the way in to get a brief intro and a "treasure hunt" worksheet of sorts for The Boy and The Girl to fill out as we went. The Boy is a solid reader and could read the exhibit placards himself, but I found myself orating to a crowd as I read a brief history of the candy business in Chicago, as well as individual business histories--Cracker Jack, Williamson's Oh Henry! bar, Mars' Snickers, Ferrara-Pan (did you know the pan is the type of kettle used to make the candy?), Fannie May, Brach's, Tootsie Roll, Wrigley, Blommer's (so that's the wonderful chocolate smell drifting over River North most days!), Willy Wonka, Frango Mints, DeMet's, Bunte, and lots of others. They covered Keeler's, an Elmhurst fixture that has since shuttered. The Boy and The Girl might remember Mitchell's, the candy store and fountain that was popular in my hometown. The Boy completed his worksheet. The Girl was more interested in finding out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop ("three!") to fill out the sheet, which is just as well. Going through the museum was an hour of relative peace and air-conditioned comfort for us all.

Upstairs, the exhibit continued with a hands-on "candy twisting" timed test exhibit (I was rotten!), a guess-that-bar station, and a couple of shorts of Lucille Ball on the candy line.

We drive through what I'd guess is the main drag of Elmhurst on our way back to the highway, stopping at a cute, yet esoteric, store called "Fit for a King" or something like that, which sold chess sets, army men, and doll clothes. We rounded off the afternoon with a pair of size-gigantic iced teas from Starbucks.