We'll Always Have Whatchamacallit

Last Updated: Tuesday, May 10, 2011, 9am

There are advantages to getting old and having brain cells abandoning the sinking ship in droves. When you travel to places you've been to in the past, it feels like the first time. We returned from a week in Paris May 3, our 6th time there over 43 years, a celebration of our 40th anniversary. Of course our actual anniversary is June 6 - the invasion of Norman - but we often don't do things in ways that make sense.We wanted to be here for the heavy part of the gardening season, so we went to Paris at a perfect weather time.

We like urban trips and we pretty much stay in one city for a week. We swore before we left that this time we would take some day trips outside the city. But we just couldn't leave Paris, even for a few hours. I can't even say what we did every day, other than make sure to eat three meals. Or more.

Now I am more of a two-a-day meal guy while my wife is committed to three meals, so as usual there was a tug of war going on. I want to walk all day, everywhere - if you use the Paris diagonal streets properly, you can cover large distances and pretty much walk the entire city.

Some highlights: great food at every meal, an awesome Metro system where every station had timers letting you know wait times – we never waited for a train for more than 3 minutes – shame on the NY MTA, almost perfect weather, a city in bloom, a short walk on the Paris version of the High Line (one of the only rainy days), a serendipitous visit to the awesome Petit Palais which was closed for renovation on our last trip in 2001.

I won't bore you with a travelogue but there were some other highlights. And lowlights. On our first day my wife wanted to go to the Musee Marmottan-Monet, not far from the Bois de Bologne, a massive park on the western edge of the city.  With our hotel being centrally located on Blvd Raspail just off Blvd St. Germain, I suggested a route - walk to Pl. de la Concorde, then up the Champs Elysee, follow a direct line to the Bois along one of the 12 spokes coming out of the Arc de Triomphe. (Talk about traffic circles.)

Almost three hours later we got to the museum. Someone did more than a bit of bitching - and it wasn't me. After an hour there, I suggested a walk into the Bois where we could find the well-known Garden Bagatelle. Well, the walk became endless - they certainly don't spend much on signs or directions. We stopped for coffee at a roadside stand. A couple of  ladies sitting at a nearby table certainly stood out. A truck pulled up with a couple of young working guys. One of them sidled up to me and pointed to the ladies and winked. Oh, I was starting to get it. Let me digress for a second.

We had been driven though the Bois one night on our 1983 trip to Paris by friends who were living there. They pointed out the well-known action as our headlights picked up the under dressed prostitutes on the side of the roads - and the traffic jam of Johns.

It seems the action also takes place during the day. As we walked deeper into the park, we saw more and more ladies of the day, scantily dressed, some with their own vans.

Yes, we finally found the Garden Bagatelle. which while having a spectacular display of roses (interesting how roses were blooming all over Paris, a month earlier than NYC), was so much less of a garden than we have here at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. But the overriding theme of our first day in Paris – my wife branded it:  The Whore Tour.

The rest of the trip was more conventional. Out of the way museums - we avoided the lines at the Musee d'Dorsay - maybe the best museum in the world - and the Louvre where you could spend the entire vacation. Besides, since our last trip in 2001 was packed with rainy days, we wanted to be outside. So we hit the famous Paris Pere-Lachaise cemetary where so many famous people are buried - the Ghoul Tour - check below the fold for some pics – you will not see the conventional Eiffel Tower. But don't expect pics of the "Whore Tour" - though we were sorely tempted to get that show documented.

We had free tickets for the Seine tour on the Bateaux Mouches, which I always avoided because it is such a touristy thing to do. But our family motto is "free is better than anything" so we headed over on Sunday morning and ended up waiting an hour. But it was worth it. I had argued for the nighttime cruise but the time frame didn't work. Funny, but when we got home and my wife checked her notes from our 1978 trip, it turned out we had done the evening cruise that year. Oh, those dying brain cells.

We stopped at the famous cafe Les Deux Magots on our last night - you know, one of the thousands of cafes that Hemingway, Picasso, etc. supposedly hung out at. That gives them the right to charge $15 for two cafe au laits. I was afraid to order a cookie. And yes, my wife's notes from our 1978 trip shows that we stopped there on our last night. We really are stuck in our own version of Groundhog Day.

Well, I'm not quite back to normal - if that word can ever be used in reference to me. I fell asleep the other night at 8PM and woke at 4AM.

Oh, and the dollar vs. the Euro really sucks. The trip ended up costing way more than we expected as at the end of the week it hit $1.48.

But as Humphrey Bogart said to Ingrid Bergman in that famous Casablanca scene - exactly what did he say again?

A small selection out of 300 pictures- mostly grave sites-  below the fold

$15 Cafe Au laits at Les Deux Maggots

Self portrait - happy before seeing the check

Oscar Wilde gets the prize for best monument - the only one with grafitti

Yes, we found something other than prostitutes in the Bois de Belogne

London Blitzed...

...or, how I managed to gain weight on British food.

Just got back last night from a week in London. We went last year in March but in 5 days never got to see enough. There's lots more to see and do and we'll be back. And they actually speak English there, sort of, so navigating that aspect of traveling abroad is one thing off the table. And after last year's horrible dollar to pound 2 for 1 deal, the drop in the pound to about $1.50 made things much more reasonable.

And the food really was good and the beer was even cold - sometimes. We finished the week with a fish 'n chips dinner at Rock 'n Sole Plaice in the West End. (Our young Albanian waiter was not easy to understand, but he thinks it will be the next in place to go in a few years.) Despite miles of walking every day, I am a blimp. We didn't realize the London marathon was taking place on Sunday, the biggest marathon in the world. But as crazy gardeners and with rain expected the next few days, we opted for Kew Gardens on a beautiful day. But if I thought I could lose some blimpiness just by watching, I would have been there.

A rainy Monday was spent indoors, first at the Imperial War Museum and then at the Tate Britain. The Holocaust exhibit at the War Museum is spectacular. I almost hate to go there, but the films of Nazi propaganda and how effective they were in developing those tools, with the big lie as a major operative, I was reminded of certain things back home, like the BloomKlein mayoral control blitz. But I won't go there – for now.

A day trip to Stonehenge and Salisbury on a beautiful day, was fabulous. No one seems to know what Stonehenge was really all about. I think they were used to hold straw polls for school Community Education Councils.*

We loved the Oyster card for transit and The Tube puts NYC transit to shame. We used it many times a day and never waited more than 2-3 minutes for a train and even late in the evening, on the fringes of the city, the longest wait was 5 minutes. There's lots more to talk about, but that's for another time and another blog.

And yes, we caught another Zombies concert like we did in London last March and in NYC in July. One of their most famous songs, She's Not There, was clearly written with Randi Weingarten in mind. I discovered the original lyrics in a dusty Zombie archive in the British Museum.

Well, no one told me about her
The way she lied [about the 2005 contract]
Well, no one told me about her
How many people [ATRs, in the rubber room, and in Washington DC] cried
Well, it’s too late to say you’re sorry [for agreeing to merit pay, longer days and year, potty duty, etc.]
How would I know, why should I care [hell, I'm retired]
Please don’t bother trying to find her
She’s not there [and we don't mean physically]....

We'll post later about Randi missing in action in Washington DC as reported by Washington Teacher Candi Peterson. NYC Educator has a guest column today by Peterson, who closes with:

While it pains me to post negative information about my union local, I am more pained about the inaction from the American Federation of Teachers especially given that our parent organization has a contract with us. Several members of the Washington Teachers’ Union recently appealed to AFT President Randi Weingarten for assistance in getting our general vice president back to work representing teachers. Several members even recommended that mediation was necessary in a series of emails. Randi did report that while she did inquire about what was happening with Saunders leave of absence, presently she is preoccupied dealing with cases involving the swine flu virus.

Let's see now, there are exactly how many cases in NYC involving swine flu? Randi is probably working on a cure.

While in England, I never got to check out our anti-testing colleagues in Britain Chanting teachers welcome vote to boycott primary tests

I had a loaner Blackberry from Verizon so I could keep up with email but the Morgan Hotel (great location with reasonable price near the British Museum) computer barely crawled, so I couldn't do any updating on the blog. And there was so much to update. My inbox is loaded and the only way to get all of it out is to post the materials on Norms Notes over the next few days and put up links on Ed Notes.

Off to the gym to try to get less blimpy.

*Related:
Some NYC School Officials Are NOT Happy Campers

Nearly one-third of “grassroots” organizations for mayoral control received no-bid contracts

Tokyo Bound

Well, I'm heading over to Tokyo for the Asian Open FIRST LEGO League tournament so I will be posting sporadically for a few days. Updates on the robotics aspect at the Norms Robotics blog. I'll post any interesting ed news I come across on this blog. I wonder if they are addressing issues such as school choice, teacher quality, achievement gaps, etc over there? Think they have rubber rooms? Probably, but not where you think.

I registered for the Ed Bloggers Summit in Washington May 14/15. The keynote speaker is Newt Gingrich - now you know all you need to know what this is all about. I'm going disguised as Eduwonkette.

Puerto Rico, My Heart's Devotion

I was singing "America" from West Side Story all week while on my first trip to Puerto Rico, most of the time spent at a resort lounging at the beach, snorkeling, reading book after book and eating (a lot). One of the great things about retirement is the ability to travel whenever.

Color War
There were many corporate groups meeting there and we got to see first hand the "business" model of team building - expensive retreats and competitions with loud speakers and annoying noisemaking. One group wore tee-shirts that said their goal this year was $75,000,000.
This is the aspect that has been missing from BloomKlein's attempt to bring the business model to the schools (except maybe at KIPP where spending $70,000 on retreats to the Caribbean is acceptable.) It looked like one of those old camp Color War games where learned all about competition. I was such a lousy hitter when I was 10 years old, my teammates told me to go into the woods and pee when my turn at bat came. (My hitting didn't get much better over the years but I can pee on demand now.)

Coming soon:
Get those scores and grad rates up trips and tee-shirts with logos - 80% grad rates or bust.

I felt real comfortable in PR - lots of good feelings connected to working with mostly Puerto Rican kids in Williamsburg - and we hope to return. Maybe drive around the entire island stopping at beaches.

Next trip is to London in March for the 40th anniversary concert of The Zombies - (INSIDE JOKE FOR ZOMBIE FANS - I hope they're there. Or not there. Or maybe she won't be there.) And then on to Japan in April for the Asian Invitational FIRST LEGO League tournament. And maybe Iceland in June. Phew! I'm tired already.

In the meantime, I haven't been too active in local ed politics recently, with the Privatization Forum the week before last and the big FLL tournament coming up next Saturday (check the norms robotics blog for robotics in NYC for news) and my working for the past month on the FLL program guide (modeled on the old Ed Notes format - see, they were worth more than just using as ballast under the tires when it snowed) which, thank goodness, was just sent to the printer (a pdf is available for those interested, here.)

Last week's Delegate Assembly was the first I missed in a long time and I hear my buddies from ICE actually got something passed. We had a pretty good ICE meeting on Jan. 11 with a lot of people attending and discussed some strategy behind making amendments to a UFT resolution on school leadership teams.

I wouldn't attach too much significance to the fact that Leo Casey supported it, but you can read all about it at the ICE blog. I'll have some comments on the Hillary call later.

Ellen Raider from ICOPE did a presentation at the ICE meeting on their governance plan and we had a rousing discussion that ranged from "Their bottom-up governance plan is just pie in the sky" to "We need to start somewhere and work from that place." I personally support the bottom up concept where the school is the basic unit of power and urge people to take a look at the ICOPE model.

No one other than ICOPE seems to have come up with much of an alternative. Leonie Haimson always points to the "Who controls the money" argument whenever we talk about decentralized plans. But in reality, I feel we will still have some form of mayoral control because the UFT and just about every politician supports it. The UFT is doing its phony baloney Governance road show (tomorrow, Tuesday, at Martin Luther King HS in Manhattan at 6 if you are interested) to make it look like they don't really know what they'll do. They will issue a report to give venting to what people have to say and then do what's in the best interests of the leadership - which guess what, is mayoral control with a few tweaks since they are expecting to get Bill Thompson (who also called into the DA to show Blacks support Hillary) as the next mayor.

Smoke on your pipe and put that in.

When in Rome....

Just back from a week in a city where buildings were extensively renovated - in 100 AD when they were already a couple of hundred years old. And here, we can't even keep Shea Stadium after only a little over 40 years. They managed to do all that building thousands of years ago most likely using slave labor. Or maybe Joelus Kleinus had negotiated a sweetheart contract with labor boss Randius Weingartenus.

And no, that wasn't me trying to jump into the Popemobile. We were in the Vatican on Monday just a few days before and missed out on seeing that event. The Pope was making a guest appearance at the Santa Maria Maggiore across from our hotel this past Thurs. evening and our rooftop had a bird's eye view. Supposedly we missed having 50,000 people outside our hotel, but we had to get on a plane earlier in the day, which was the late lamented Brooklyn-Queens Day, so eloquently laid to rest by NYC Educator. I try not to fly on that day and usually fast in lament but it couldn't be helped.

Just catching up with stuff and I see I missed a lot of goodies while I was gone. Maybe that was a good thing. Nausea and jet lag don't go well together.

The view from the roof before we left. They're setting up for the Pope's visit that evening.

Praha Go Bragh-ha

Prague (Praha in Czech) and Budapest have developed reputations as hot places to go. So I went. Since the late 80’s, Eastern Europe is in the midst of massive redevelopment. The idea is to get there and see a touch of old Europe as it was before the entire continent gets turned into a giant strip mall.... My favorite Czech expression: “Strc prst skrz krk.” Translation: “Stick your finger through your throat.”


Read about my recent trip to Prague at the LostWriters web site in the Wanderlust section. If you are over 30, bring your passport. While there, check out the weekly (Saturday) postings of Holly Hagen, one of my fiction writing group buddies, who is also the editor of the travel section.


Prague building after drinking a few tons of beer, the Czech national drink.