Wednesday, March 03, 2004

The ballad of Leonardo Balada

Lacking yoga (see post below) to calm my inner turmoil, I decided, instead, to google some of my elementary school teachers to see if they attained any greatness, something more significant than simply shepherding me through 2nd, 3rd, etc grades.

By far the most impressive of the lot is Leonardo Balada, experiencing quite the meteoric rise from elementary and middle school music teacher to renowned composer and professor at the Carnegie Mellon School of Music. He taught me music during 5th through 7th grades, and I remember thinking him then to be rather odd, what with a string (it was always a string) of blond hair falling over half his face, and a slumped posture of a genius in the making.

He let me sing in the ‘special’ solo at the closing school ceremonies before I left for Poland and so I decided to love him right then and there. But when he shortly after traveled to Poland and called my family home, I pretended that I didn’t exist and hung up on him. That was to be my last contact with the incomparable Mr. Balada (see his site here). Unless… unless… what if I were to send him an email explaining that his googled accomplishments have boosted my spirits on a quiet March evening in Madison? What if I apologized for hanging up on him that day in Warsaw, in the summer of 1966? No, some images are best left alone. If he didn’t remember ever having taught the spunky and not altogether compliant kid in his music and choral works classes, I’d be crushed, and then googling his name would never be a calming force again.

A Democrat in search of New Balance

Tonight I should have by-passed the local press. Not only did I have to lose my evening tranquility by reading a nonsensical story blasting divorce attorneys (see post below), but then a well-intentioned reader directed me to the article, also in the Cap Times, indicating that Senator Feingold, for reasons known only to himself (the stated reasons are not entirely comprehensible), was one of just a handful of democrats voting against the extension of the ban on military-style assault weapons.

I know that Feingold and I share the same birth month/year, I know that I could heretofore trust him on representing the democratic platform in the Senate, and I can’t really say that I am a single-issue voter. However, this is just too disturbing. Can anyone explain what credible reasons Feingold would have for voting in the way that he did?

I will go into a political shut-down mode for a while. Reading the paper is too harsh on the system. I wish I were the type who could do two hours of yoga every time I read something disconcerting in the press. Maybe it’s time I found some distractions. My colleagues (see blogs here and here) are all into TiVo. I don’t even know what TiVo is. Sounds like sneakers you would wear for jogging. Personally, I like the style of New Balance – both as footwear and as a slogan favoring the tranquility I am currently missing.

How many distortions can one story have?

Reading today’s Cap Times (local paper) on the subject of divorce through lawyerless mediation, I felt like canceling my subscription right then and there. In a calmer mode I decided that too many papers were being discontinued by me because of an emotional reaction to a poorly written story; reason prevailed and the paper will continue to grace my doorstep in the late afternoon.

When a newspaper article takes one or two missteps, it is not inappropriate to write a quick note clarifying the inaccuracy. The story on divorce, however, had, when last I counted, twenty one inaccuracies, some of them verging on blatant misstatements of fact.

It is so easy to argue that lawyers milk their clients at the time of divorce; that parents are encouraged to pursue their own interest instead of the child’s best interest in custody disputes; that if you would only take the lawyers out, some other less money-grubbing professional could step in and do a better job. The fact is, most courts have built-in mandatory mediation sessions, many appoint a separate lawyer to represent the child’s best interest, and very very few cases ever go to trial, because the pressure to settle a dispute is enormous. Judges hate divorce and custody battles, and do not look favorably upon lawyers who do not resolve the issues prior to a court appearance.

I always worry that the push toward mediation – so fine-sounding in its simplicity – will undermine the interests of the weaker party, the one that hasn’t the emotional strength to persevere. I admit that I am not a fan of divorce proceedings – I find them flawed in any number of ways. You need only attend my Family Law lectures to hear my concerns on how couples and children are treated at the time of dissolution. I spend almost the entire semester on this. But running this article which praises the services of some company offering a “better way” to a divorce, is grounds for mandating a retraction. It’s just too horribly written to belong in even the local paper.

A true resident

Last week I was spending a long afternoon listening to students appeal their denials of residency status for tuition purposes here at UW (I am on a university committee that hears these). A young woman came in with her husband. They moved here from Colorado because of her studies (in law, of all things). She had appealed once before and had been denied, and now she was back. I asked her what had changed since the last hearing. She responded that she and her husband had received a bill for sidewalk maintenance in front of their home this last December (they bought a small house in Madison when they moved here for her schooling) – a hefty sum of $1000 was owed by them to the city of Madison. Surely, said she, this now makes her a full-fledged member of this community and, therefore, a true resident of Wisconsin.

She was wrong and I spent a while explaining why. But I think the woman has connections high up. Today in the mail I received a white envelope with threatening words on the front of the envelope: OFFICIAL NOTICE it read. Inside was a letter from the City Engineering Division informing me that my sidewalk was going to be inspected imminently, with the strong possibility of major repairs down the pike. A bill for this city service would follow.

Coincidence? I can hardly think so. Our sidewalk was repaired just two years ago, and we paid THAT bill shortly thereafter. There is, to my uninformed eye, nothing wrong with the sidewalk – it is as smooth as an ocean pebble. It is beautifully straight, not a tear nor a dent to be seen along its long, well-tended stretch.

I fear that our non-resident has set the city against us. I can only expect now an annual repaving of the sidewalk. With the huge bill, of course.

Numbing beauty

One of the odder email subscriptions that I receive (on a very irregular basis) is a newsletter on Florence doings. Yes, that would be Florence, Italy. I think it must be targeting expats because it is in English, and it speaks of things that would be of interest to a foreigner spending long periods of time there.

This morning, I read in it the following: “When he visited Florence, the French writer Stendhal, after a few days spent admiring the architectural and artistic wonders he encountered at every step, was stricken by a sort of blackout, a prostration brought on by the sight of such highly-concentrated beauty.”

I read this with a sort of early March longing to be overwhelmed by something so piercingly flawless that it would make me numb. It would be best if this would coincide with Spring Break so that my own prostration would not hinder any teaching effort. It is hard to find that kind of stunning visual perfection in a landscape that always looks dirty during this month, and a town that is more on the pleasant and attractive end of things rather than fetchingly stupefying. It is easier to be a Florentine in March than it is to be a Madisonian.

Uniquely Vermontian

I am sure I could eventually come to understand why the state of Vermont voted overwhelmingly to support Dean today. But this other piece of news (here) – about the town of Killington wanting to secede from Vermont to become a part of New Hampshire (a mere 25 miles away) is a bit much. Though, it would be interesting to give cities and towns the choice of state affiliation. Madison would probably opt for Massachusetts. And where would Berkeley go? No state quite matches its idiosyncratic disposition. A fascinating idea, all the more remarkable since I am sure that the laws of the chosen state (in today’s case, those of NH) were not thoroughly examined to determine if they were compatible with the mood of the town.

Perhaps the one conclusion one can walk away with today is that Vermont can’t quite shake that now fading glory of being in the public eye.