Contemplating Superman

We know what works, proclaims Waiting for Superman, the new documentary about one way to reform the public school system so that all kids have an equal shot at success. The Answer, it turns out, happens to be exactly what my colleagues and I do every day, as teachers at a high-performing charter school. According to filmmaker Davis “An Inconvenient Truth” Guggenheim, teachers unions, the practice of tenure and the bloated bureaucracy of school districts are keeping principals from stocking their schools with passionate educators committed to closing the achievement gap through high expectations, longer school days, Saturday classes and mandatory summer school. Sound familiar? The charter network I work for is especially lauded in the movie as a model of the kind of schools that work. We see five adorable Everykids try—and heart-breakingly fail, in most cases—to be accepted to these educational havens. Demand is great. Space is so limited. If we know this model works, the movie proclaims, why aren’t all schools like this?

It is a crime of epic proportions that public education in this country is so savagely unequal. I borrow the word savage from the title of Jonathan Kozol's groundbreaking book, Savage Inequalities, which came out in the early 1990s and takes on much the same issues as Waiting for Superman, albeit with a slightly different emphasis. In Kozol's book, the lavish public schools of suburban Chicago are compared to their practically derelict inner-city counterparts. The word savage is as appropriate then as it is now to describe the brutal consequences of a failed school, a failed education. The next generation is made up of children, after all; children who depend on every single one of us, whether we are their parents, relatives and teachers, or simply taxpayers and voters. We cannot fail them.

This belief put me on my current career path and takes up a great deal of my mind, heart and blog, as you all know. So, I’m the last one to argue with the need to reform public education, along with a lot of other institutions that truly aim to serve the People in all our messy complexity. But sitting in the theater watching Waiting for Superman, my feelings were decidedly mixed. Not about the movie’s ultimate message, but about the way the work I do every day was being sold to the general public. Mainstream documentaries by nature need to be punchy and overly general to stir folks up. I get that. But I’m here to propose a sequel to Waiting for Superman. Because if turning every school in America into one like mine is really The Answer, then the public also needs to be equally agitated to support the excellent, dedicated teachers we need to make this happen.

I’ll call my sequel We Are Still Standing. As the title implies, it would be about perseverance in the face of the constant onslaught that is teaching those longer hours, of never relaxing those high expectations, of insisting that you aren’t going to give up on even one kid and meaning every single word. There is a saying in our network, "The secret is, there is no secret." Meaning, all it takes is time. Lots and lots of time, given repeatedly and consistently day after day. The teacher parking lot at my school is full by 6:15 a.m. Most cars are still there at 6:30 p.m. and later. Working on the weekends--working most of the weekend-- is the norm, even if we didn’t have Saturday School nine times a year. I’m not complaining. This is the life I've chosen, and I love. I’m simply stating the reality. The movie didn’t really touch on that part. In fact, no teachers were interviewed at all. Instead, it was taken as a given that most teachers are standing by ready to throw themselves bodily across the achievement gap if only those dastardly bureaucratic, anti-kid unions and district offices weren’t holding them back. I think that’s what made me the most uncomfortable. Not the image of teachers as remarkably dedicated but the assumption that this happens in a vacuum, or that it should. The president of the biggest teachers' union has said that the movie makes it "cool" to blame teachers for all of our problems. I disagree. Waiting for Superman doesn't blame the vast majority of teachers. Instead, it puts them up on a very high pedestal by assuming that they will--and should--stand alone in the fight to improve our classrooms. The movie pooh-poohed the need for more funding (don't we spend enough already?) and, while it interviewed several dedicated parents, suggested over and over that the saviors, the "supermans" of the film were the reform-minded teachers who were ready to swoop into the rescue. Problem is, there isn't much room at the top of a pedestal, hardly any room for things like families, friends, hobbies, the ups and downs of life. Without changing the current staffing models of most high-performing charter schools, there simply isn’t a whole lot of time for teachers in schools that work to be anything other than teachers. Everyone in Waiting for Superman seems OK with that. I'm not sure how many of the 1 million teachers in this country would say the same. And I wouldn't call them "anti-child" or selfish for thinking so.

Not that I'm throwing up my hands or joining the ranks of the naysayers who say it's impossible to reform something as entrenched as unequal public education. Where such inequity is concerned, there are very few hills I'm not willing to die on. I'm saying, though, is that before we completely dismantle the organizations designed to advocate for teachers, we think about what else it will take (besides the worthy goals of ending antiquated and destructive hiring/firing practices and streamlining district offices) to make sure all of our schools can become the educational success stories we see in Waiting for Superman. We have to face the issues that high-performing charter systems are already addressing that the movie didn't mention. Issues like keeping teachers in the building for more than two years (about 40-45% of all teachers in my charter network have been teaching for under two years. The next big group has less than five years under their belts). And, related to this, supporting all the students who enter our doors to see the program through.

We won't ever have to give up our high expectations, longer hours and zeal for achievement, but if we're going to ask teachers to work the hours of CEOs and high-powered lawyers, we might have to start paying them accordingly, or figure out ways to job share and drum up community support. Even as they are being hailed for their long hours, some schools in my charter network are actually shortening their school days (from 5:00 to 4:30) and rumor has it that Saturday School may be on its way out. These are changes are meant to make the work more sustainable for the people doing it. No one could accuse us of being adult-centric bureaucrats (cause, wow, we really aren't) but it turns out that even the most committed teachers don't want to be Superman. We just want to be able to remain teachers, and we can't do it alone.

This need for balance (in more ways than one) reminds me of a low-ropes course challenge called All Aboard. It asks a group to stand up on a large springboard that wobbles from side to side. The only way to get the whole group up is to step on board one by one and then carefully balance the spring as others climb up. It doesn't take Superman; it takes teamwork and patience and not letting go. Three superheroic qualities that, if put into action, will save a lot more children than the Man of Steel ever could.

We already have so many pieces of the educational reform puzzle. Waiting for Superman is right (good teachers are vital, and every kid deserves one). My charter network is right (every single student can learn). The politicians are right (money isn't going to solve all of our problems). Parents are right (we need more schools that work). Even the president of the teachers' union is right about a few things (teachers do need to be supported rather than pitted against each other). Instead of using our favorite pieces to tilt the springboard our way (and shove everyone else off), we need to step up together to find the equilibrium we claim to want. Sound impossibly naive? Or maybe just impossible? Now who's throwing up their hands. Despite everything that's wrong, we are blessed at this time in history to have a great number of passionate and tireless reformers on the educational scene; reformers who stand unmoving behind slogans like "No Excuses" and "Whatever It Takes." If there was ever a time to move public education toward the ideal, it's now. Our kids shouldn't have to wait any longer.

Leading and leaning

I spent the weekend at a camp in the piney woods outside of Huntsville, Texas, with about 200 students and teachers from schools like mine all over the country. The annual student leadership summit (there's that word again, and, no, we weren't signing peace treaties) brings together 6th graders and 10th, 11th or 12th graders, two from each school, hand-picked for their ability to lead other kids. They spend time completing a series of team-building activities, games and reflections meant to further stimulate this potential.

The students certainly were stimulated. Like most things related to this particular charter system, the day started early and ended late. My kids spent the first 15 hours or so moving from an in-depth discussion about leadership traits to a kickball game followed by an intricate school-improvement process, low-ropes challenges, canoeing, archery and the infamously fun gaga ball (an intense dodgeball played in a circular pit the size of a taco stand). On the second day, they climbed telephone poles and walked across wires suspended 25-feet in the air as part of a high ropes course. There was also a zip line (too fun!) and a climbing wall.

Needless to say, the kids had a blast. I, too, enjoyed the mellow of an absurdly low teacher-to-student ratio. Each duo was accompanied by one teacher. (Usually, even on field trips, we are easily at 25-to-1 if not higher). This changed my typical vibe quite a bit. I dropped what I like to think of as fond-efficient, a sort of smiling Mr. Von-Trapp-pre-Maria-sans whistle. Instead, I went into what I can only imagine is Mom mode, keeping track of comings and goings, taking a ton of pictures, urging them to go off and have fun with their new friends, stopping just short of tucking them in at night. The other teachers and I sat around, talking about our schools and stopping every so often to cheer on the kids or check in. Though we run our classrooms with a clockwork efficiency worthy of any Rodgers and Hammerstein Austrian, we in this charter system are in the habit of doting on our students a fairly ridiculous amount. Like most teachers, we love them to pieces. Unlike many teachers, we are encouraged by our schools to get to know our students in and out of the classroom in a big way (see "Home Visit Bridge" from last month). Trips like this are just icing on the cake.

It is also the only time (to my knowledge) that students are invited to a nationwide gathering of other students. You would think, in this charter system, that people would bend over backwards to fund and plan events like this that gather students from all over the country. It was incredibly powerful to see the ties that bind kids--the common chants, hand motions, slogans, extended metaphors and brightly colored t-shirts. The highlight of the weekend (other than the zip line) was the t-shirt exchange (mad trading of school shirts) followed by a campfire led by the high school students. Seventeen years olds who had been in the system since 5th grade stood up and told the 6th graders (hanging rapt on every word) how important it was to keep going, keep leading and keep striving. Kids who will be the first in their families to go to college next year stood face to face with 11 year olds who are trying to do the same thing. The adults hung out in the back and said exactly nothing. In fact, nothing I say for the rest of the year will have such an impact.

We finished with a stirring rendition of the song "Lean on Me" led by a teacher with a gorgeous voice and a huddle of high school students with a lot of heart. The middle schoolers stood up and threw their arms around each others' shoulders (unless they were, eek, standing next to someone of the opposite sex....) Swaying to the beat and singing with all their might, they walked away from the campfire and back into their lives that much stronger, knowing they had a whole country full of fellow travelers to lean on. More kids should be able to feel the same.

The likes that bind

I haven't yet seen "The Social Network," though I've heard and read many a rave review. Whether you love to hate (or just plain hate) Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook and apparent heartless egomaniac, you have to admit that his invention (or, his ripping off of a series of other people's inventions, depending on your point of view) has changed the way we socialize. Facebook has now reached the point of saturation in our culture where its merits and pitfalls are being debated in the vast public forum of the mainstream. About one in 14 people worldwide are on Facebook, exchanging information, posting pictures, liking each others' statuses and turning the word "friend" into a verb that will likely make its way into upcoming editions of the dictionary. Though some shudder and bemoan the loss of person-to-person contact, it's hard to argue with 500 million people who use it as a way (or another way) to keep in touch.

I'm one of them. This week I've felt powerful fondness for Facebook as a web that connects us rather than an impersonal algorithm that disrupts meaningful interaction. I don't know about you, but I like reading my friends' statuses. I like scrolling through the pre-game, during-game and post-game agonies of the sports fans; I like hearing about the meals people have cooked, their kids' latest adventures, their vacations, moods, workouts, gardens, pets and how glad they are when it's Friday. I dig reading recommended articles and watching favorite videos. I love the commonalities among friends from the same region who don't know each other, but write similar posts. For example, whenever it is over about 80 degrees in the Bay Area, everyone writes about it. It's charming. My sister's best friend from college has an uncanny knack for spotting celebrities. He posts every one of his encounters. It's cool--and has gotten to be hilarious. When would I ever talk to my sister's best friend from college, a guy I like a lot, but am never going to call? But reading about who he sat next to at a Manhattan restaurant is a bright spot in the day.

And that's the thing about Facebook. It's not a long, wonderful conversation with an old friend and never will be. It's a thousand conversations in passing, daily connections with people who we don't see daily. Just like cell phones have allowed us to bring our conversation partners with us wherever we are (again, for better or worse), Facebook allows us to stand around the proverbial water cooler with people who are miles away, who we'd never see or hear from otherwise. Do I need to know that my friend from elementary school closed down a bar on her 37th birthday, or that my former colleague finished four grad school assignments? Of course not. But I want to. This kind of information brings us together in ways that strengthen our connections, as daily interaction always does. It might not move mountains, but it adds up, pulls us closer, gives us a common frame of reference, a thread to follow through the complexity of daily life. When my friend attached to the US Embassy in Mauritania posts running commentary on the fashion choices of African First Ladies, I'm that much more connected to him and the world. When a friend in Abu Dhabi cheers on her Aussie rules football team (the Collingwood Magpies, dontcha know), I smile at her enthusiasm for the sport, even though I no longer see her every day. When my former students complain about homework or broadcast their latest likes, I understand them in ways I never did as their teacher.

Do I really know them any better? Probably not. That's another thing about Facebook critics are quick to point out. It's a very public forum. What you see is what people choose to present to the world. It may or may not be the real story. To which I say, who cares? Why is this different than any other casual interaction? The difference is the interaction itself, the privilege of being able to keep connected, in whatever way works.

When I was little, my mom would come in to my sisters' and my room and, as a bedtime ritual, list all of the people (mostly faraway relatives) who loved us. It was very sweet, a reminder of the ties that rooted us in our family and community. Today, Facebook does the same thing, albeit on a less intimate scale. It makes our bonds visible and updates them constantly. It shows us the web we have spun and sit in the middle of, the web of family and friends, colleagues, neighbors and eras of life.

What's there not to like?

Enough

Enough is such a fascinating little word. In its adjective and adverb forms, it describes an amount or action that is adequate to satisfy a desire or need. As in: I bought five pounds of red, seedless grapes at the store today because one 2-lb. bag has not been enough. (True story, and I've eaten at least a pound of them since getting back from the store.) As an interjection, enough denotes impatience or exasperation. As in: "Enough of this talk about renewing the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest among us. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life!" Both usages of the word are remarkably subjective. What is enough? When have you had enough and in what situations would you shout 'enough!' to bring an end to whatever was going on?

I've had a lot of encounters with the concept of enough recently, and not just in the produce aisle. In fact, in my professional life, enough is not a measure of mere adequacy but a constant clamor of competing agendas all looking to be satisfied. Because urban education is all about trying to bridge the gap between not enough and enough. We teachers deal with enough on a daily basis: how much teaching is enough? How much writing? How much homework? How much reading? How much test-prep? To fall short of enough is to keep my students from achieving parity with their more privileged peers. Anything less is not good enough. It can't be. There is too much at stake, starting with the 105 students in my class this year and extending out to the big, abiding, complex questions of justice, equality and the value of a child's mind, regardless of their background or circumstance. It's enough to make my head explode, but not enough to stop thinking about for very long.

And then these questions bump up against the other enoughs. Enough time. Enough balance. Enough support. Enough encouragement. When everything you give still doesn't feel like enough. I have had conversations with three different friends this week about when to say 'enough!' and how to carve a space away from the din of enough-issues at school. I spent two years in the desert trying to figure this out, and I feel better about it than I ever have before. The only real 'answer' I have doesn't silence the clamor, though. It simply allows me to hear it in a different way.

Which brings me to church. Not to religious faith in general, which is all fine and good, but to church today in Austin. Because what I heard today made me think even more about enough, and the way I'm trying to deal with it.

The New Testament reading was from 1 Timothy, chapter 6, the Bible at its social justice best. It's the passage about money being the root of all kinds of evil (see reference to renewing the tax cuts above), but there's more to it than that.

"But as for you, man [or woman] of God, shun all this [wealth]; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. ¹²Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called..."

This is a rallying cry if I've ever heard one. And at first glance it might sound as though a person should throw themselves into whatever they are doing, consequences be damned. Fight the good fight--and don't whine about it! Pursue righteousness--cause evil don't take a holiday! But sitting in the pew this morning, I felt the peace of these words in the phrase "take hold of eternal life." And that, of course, is what you do to save yourself from enough while still hearing its call. You take hold of life. You recognize the need of those you serve, and you find a way to build a wall with a gate that opens both ways. And you make a plan to put yourself on the far side of that gate on a regular basis. Believe me, it does take planning. It takes setting very concrete goals and then working as hard to reach them as you do with everything else. You don't wait until you're not needed. You will be waiting forever. You don't hope that someone will drag you away from the clamor, or build your wall for you, or design a cute gate with flexible hinges and give you permission to open it. You take hold of life, to which you were called.

For me, I have committed to going to Bikram yoga four days a week. I also have an advisee this year who doesn't do his homework pretty much ever. I keep him after school twice a week. I go to yoga twice a week (and twice on the weekend). The old me would have kept him after every day. The new me might have, too, except I already had this commitment in place, and, well, that commitment built my wall. The knowledge of what will happen to me if I ignore the wall is what built my gate. The reading from 1 Timothy reminded me today of why it makes sense. Even 2,000 years ago, they knew.

Fight the good fight and take hold of life. Anything less just won't be enough.

A lexicographical moment (in Spanish class)

I felt a little like Hermione Granger today, but I'm sorry. Linguistics really gets me going in that eyes shiny, face-lighting-up kind of way. It happened during my first Spanish class here in Austin, at a branch of the local community college. I was there with my principal and a colleague; we'd registered together because so many of our students and their parents are native Spanish speakers. Plus, Texas is one of the most unabashedly bilingual places I've ever experienced, up to and including Southern California, which, frankly, doesn't hold a candle to the Lone Star State's surprisingly non-strident approach to dual language issues. In public education and everywhere else. More on that another time.

My Hermione moment came during a mini-lecture on Spanish dictionaries. The professor mentioned, in passing, the Real Academia Espanola, the official body based in Madrid that guides and administers the Spanish language. Many languages, especially in Europe, have a similar group of intellectuals and linguists whose job it is to guard and protect a language against all invaders. The French academy, for example, is notorious for throwing a fit at the mere mention of borrowed words like "le weekend" or "le laptop." My fellow Spanish students figured that English has the same set up, so one of them asked about it.

"Oh no," the teacher said. "English doesn't have an academy."

"So, we just go to the dictionary to find out what words to use?" said the student. Cause, certainly, there had to be a central authority somewhere. Right?

And this is where my hand shot up and started waving in the air. My principal looked at me funny. My colleague muttered "teacher's pet" under her breath. But I couldn't help it. My heart started beating faster; my cheeks flushed with excitement. I had to share with my classmates one of the coolest things about the English language.

Because, in English, we don't go to the dictionary to find out what words to use and how. The dictionary comes to us. Yes, us. All of us speakers of English from the northern tip of Alaska to the heart of London, from the streets of New Delhi to the malls of the San Fernando Valley. We define the language we speak, literally. And the dictionary follows behind like a bloodhound on a trail, picking up the pronunciations, definitions and parts of speech and filing them away between its red leather covers. Though it is a handy reference and a big help when confronted with, say, pococurante or syllepsis, a dictionary is really just a snapshot of a language in constant motion.

If you don't believe me, read The Lexicographer's Dilemma by Jack Lynch. Books about English are a nerdy nonfiction sub-genre favorite of mine, and this is the best of the lot. In this book, Lynch explains how dictionaries are made, starting with the mother of them all, the Oxford English dictionary. The story of the OED is the story of English writ large, that crazy hodge podge generational undertaking for a crazy hodge podge language.

Because when the OED folks started to codify English (make lists of words and definitions) what they did was conduct massive and meticulous research into the way the words had been used throughout the ages. And they used those examples to construct their definitions. They didn't decide to define opalescent as 'having a milky iridescence.' They discovered that whenever opalescent was used, that's what it meant. And if we ever start using opalescent in a different sense and keep using it that way, the dictionary will re-write the definition. It won't redefine the word--English speakers would have already done that. The dictionary will merely record the change. That's its job.

Now, I love words a ridiculous amount, from those SAT monstrosities to the newest middle school slang. I love grammar. I love teaching writing. At the end of the day, I love meaning, and how it is constructed. It's one of those endlessly complex and fascinating aspects of the human experience. I can't get enough. So, when the aforementioned Spanish teacher, who was scoring mad points with her linguistics acumen, used irregardless instead of regardless later on in class, I shuddered. I'll admit. But, while I appreciate an excellent vocabulary and have pretty much dedicated my professional life to promoting the well-written sentence, I would not change a single thing about English. If irregardless comes into standard usage (it is currently listed as non-standard and dates back to the 1930s), I will not be one of the (many) people throwing my body between it and Websters. There are those who long for more rigidity in our mother tongue. As much as I love it, I'm not one of them. To try to fit English into a sturdier frame would be to rob it of its greatest strengths: it's responsiveness, its dizzying array of synonyms, its viral slang, its expansive, fascinating messiness.

So I told my Spanish class about the dictionary and why we don't have an academy. I stopped short of the OED, but just barely. I was a blaze of enthusiasm and a possible embarrassment to my friends. But I couldn't stop myself. It's why I'm writing to you now, perhaps a more receptive audience, before I tuck my inner Hermione back inside my head and wait for the next nerdy nonfiction book on English to make the rounds.

A chicken in every...

The keeping of chickens in this day and age, especially if one is not historically from farm stock or living in Iowa, is legitimate cause for comment. In truth, the three people I've met who keep chickens find endless opportunities to bring up the hilarious antics of their useful, eco-friendly pets (no one keeps them for meat, after all). And upon being introduced to the chickens of one's friends, it's easy to jump on the bandwagon (band coop?). Chickens are hysterically funny in their bobbing, strutting, pea-brained way. They might not snuggle up to you like a kitten, but they, like all domesticated animals, certainly know how to capture the fond attention of The One With The Food.

A friend in Austin has roommates who keep chickens, three of the standard orange-y/red feathered sort (though one apparently lays blue eggs). I discovered last night how these roommates come to be chicken owners, and it's a story I had to pass on because it says so much about the world these days (plus, it's the funniest chicken story I've ever heard, and that's saying something...)

Apparently Roommate #1 was driving down a fairly busy Austin street about three months ago when he saw a woman with a cell phone following a rooster down the sidewalk. R. #1 decided to pull over and chivalrously ask if she needed help. Wherein the woman explained that she'd come across the rooster (still heading east toward downtown) and was following it while dialing through her contact list on the hunt for a chicken savior. R. #1 offered to take the rooster. (I thought it'd be cool. And I have a backyard.)

Woman (concerned): Do you know anything about chickens?

R. #1 (totally lying): Of course!

Woman (who didn't own the rooster but somehow felt responsible for it according to the Societal Rules of Engagement circa 2010): Well...as long as you know what to do I guess it's OK.

Thus given permission, R #1 grabbed the rooster and tossed him in the backseat. Instant urban chicken owner.

Enter Roommate #2, girlfriend of R #1. Upon hearing that her boyfriend had picked up a rooster on the side of the road, she requested, calmly from all reports, that he build a coop, which he did. She then purchased three hens for company.

And if it all ended there, that'd be enough. But there's a coda to this story. A month later, after endless 4:30 a.m. wake-up calls, R #1 and #2 got rid of the rooster, but kept the chickens.

Me (eying their enormous lab/Great Dane mix): Umm...what did you do with the rooster?

R #1: I put him on craiglist for $5. He sold in about an hour to some lady who wanted him for breeding.

I love this story so much. In addition to the truly priceless images it evokes (rooster bobbing along the street, concerned citizen playing the part of mother hen at five paces back), it is such a charming example of freedom in action. Not the red-white-and-blue bluster we hear about from the bombasts, but daily-life freedom, the kind we don't usually think about but maybe should.

A widespread (often legit) criticism of American culture is that we have no culture at all. Instead, we are a collection of fragments: fragmented families where once extended clans lived in the same house; fragmented neighborhoods where we once knew everyone around us; fragmented values in this salad bowl of peoples and backgrounds; fragmented friendships conducted over Facebook rather than face to face. But this independence has also made us more flexible and open to the world around us. Rather than worrying what grandma or the Joneses will think (since grandma lives in Florida and we don't even know the name of the family next door), we can do things like follow a rooster down the public street or decide, in the amount of time it takes to pull over, that we'd maybe like to give that rooster a home. There's plenty of room in the backyard, after all, and no one around but a girlfriend, a roommate and a huge dog. It also makes it possible, even preferable, to interact with a cell-phone-toting stranger and negotiate the transfer of a rooster among equals, united only by their concern for the bird and uncomplicated by rigid class barriers, clan affiliation, ethnic strife or gender issues. For instance, in much of the world, this kind of interaction between a man and woman who were strangers would never happen.

Now, you can't market this story. You can't say, God bless America where a man can pick up a rooster off the street, claim him for a time, then sell him on craigslist. I'm cracking myself up just writing it. But it is still an "only in America" story, not just for its ridiculousness, but for the social fluidity of the whole thing, from the first SOS phone call from the rescue lady to R. #1's entree into chicken ownership to the craigslist-surfing new owner driving the rooster into the sunset.

Or maybe its just me...

The intellectual bling of Terry Castle

So, I'm not an intellectual. There are some people who read with interest and awe-inspiring enjoyment academic tomes on their favorite topic or Greek tragedy or Proust. Not me. The bustling literary marketplace always seems to hold something just a bit more compelling, like the latest in an ever-growing list of favorite mystery series, or some nerdy nonfiction (I recently read an ode to librarians called This Book is Overdue. Cool!) You know, something entertaining. Something mainstream. Something written with a general audience in mind. For a bibliophile, I can't claim to have delved very deeply or esoterically into my hobby of choice. A nice, broad survey of the literary landscape is more my speed. Any cred I get only comes from reading fast enough, and often enough, to cover a lot of ground.

But every once in awhile, a gem of a book comes along that is both ridiculously fun and smart (and not science fiction, which is regularly both). Intellectual smart. And I remember that, while I might not be a real intellectual, I love hanging around them, literarily speaking. To me, these authors are like glassblowers or acrobats. They possess a rare, special gift worthy of being ooohed and ahhed by the general public, or at least their adoring fans. This is not to detract for the workaday writers I can't do without. After all, watching glassblowing or high-wire daredevilry would get tiresome eventually. But there is something absolutely rapturous in the combination of true braininess and excellent, lucid writing. As anyone who's been to college knows, the two do not frequently go hand in hand.

The latest jewel in this rarefied collection is The Professor and Other Writings by Terry Castle, humanities professor at Stanford and apparently hugely well-known literary critic in intellectual circles (hence, not to most of us...). Sure, she's an expert in 18th century literature (ghost stories, according to Wikipedia!), but her command of the English language regularly transforms the page from a literary work (words adding up to something beautiful) into what can only be described as an artistic portrait of word usage. So that you could take the page, frame it and put it in the Louvre titled "The word 'adumbrate' in context." Terry Castle (b. 1953), and everyone would know exactly why it was there. I throw around the word 'page' loosely here. I'm reading the book on my Kindle, and thank God, given the number of times I've had to use the built-in dictionary. I haven't seen some of these words in print since the SAT, if ever. This just adds to the deep affection for, say, the casual use of 'tyro' in the first essay. I remember learning that word around the same time my 11th grade English class was reading The Tempest, and I always thought it'd make a great name for a Shakespeare character: Prospero, Benvolio, Horatio, Tyro. Castle, of course, uses it correctly to mean a beginner or newbie. And she just drops it in, no muss, no fuss. It's thrilling.

There's also the actual content of the essays, all of which are highly personal, even blog-like, reflections on various passions (World War I, music, interior design, rubber stamps, just to name a few) with plenty of family drama, relational angst and pop culture references thrown in. You don't have to be particularly interested in the topic to get sucked in. In fact, it might be better to start without strong feelings either way because Castle, like all good writers, has enough enthusiasm (and opinions) for all of us. I read with fascination her deconstruction of home decor magazines through the lens of the post-9/11 world, where both her love of interior design and her unease with its inherent, perhaps morally questionable, middle-class escapism, come through in equal measure. Maybe I like her writing so much because no matter how refined (or not) the topic, there is always a noticeable dose of heart and self-reflective (even self-deprecating) humor woven in.

Though I can connect with almost none of the topics (not that it matters), who Castle is is very appealing, as are some of her less-explored asides. I'm actually super psyched to find a intellectual woman writer from California who is not Joan Didion (I know some of you are fans, but her writing doesn't have enough heart for me.) Castle's parents are British, but she was born in San Diego and spent all but three years of her childhood in Southern California. She writes about the state with the fondness and honesty of a native, using it as more than a backdrop, but not quite a character in several essays. I love how she captures that "more than just scenery" aspect of living and traveling in California. It makes my own native heart smile.

She also has a (to me) refreshingly and unashamedly post-Freudian view of being a lesbian. She examines head-on some of her more gendered, even 'masculine' ideas without (in my opinion) once suggesting that being a lesbian somehow involves wanting to be a man. She writes (too briefly) about the affection between straight men and lesbians in a way that suggests feminist scholars would swoon dead away at the thought. (She even calls it "the real love that dare not speak its name.") The friendship between gay men and straight women has been examined, even televised (hello Will & Grace), but that a similar fondness could grow between lesbians and straight guys is somehow beyond the pale? I look forward to hearing more from Castle about this, especially since I don't get what the big deal is, despite all those women's studies classes under my belt.

In fact, I want to hear more from Castle about pretty much everything, which is why I'll be looking up her oeuvre and digging in over the next few months. I recommend you do the same, starting with this book. If you do, let me know! We can trade our favorite word-usage portraits and admire the trove of sparkling sentences and shiny insights. Intellectual bling at its finest, even for those of us who aren't intellectuals.