Clowns at the Wedding

One day after my wedding and I was back at it again, this time attending the connubial events of a young Orthodox woman whose family I met through a website called shabbat.com. I won’t go into all of the details regarding this, other than to say it’s research for my book.

Regardless, this was the first time I’d been to a wedding of religiously observant Jews, and there lots of things that I didn’t entirely understand or recognize. I’ll figure most of them out on my own, but there’s one I thought was worth putting out for everyone’s consideration.

The wedding was segregated by gender, with the reception held in a large hall that had been divided with white partitions, men on one side, women on the other. My intent was to be respectful of the ritual practice of my hosts, and for the most part, I was. But I couldn’t help but do a little peeking.

Mostly the goings-on on the other side were the same as with the men: dancing, eating, singing, a bit of praying. We got booze, the ladies didn’t. The men’s dancing included rather impressive feats of strength (one bearded fellow balanced a partition–which had to weight at least 20 or 30 pounds–on his chin and danced with it), and the women’s didn’t.

But we men didn’t have clowns! Not even one, and the women, dressed in lovely, shiny, full-body-covering dresses, wigs in full flower, head wraps a-plenty–they had three. Yes, three colorful clowns and not the crying on the inside kind, as far as I could tell via my surreptitious glances through the partitions. And there was another woman dressed up as a native American, with feathers in her headdress but no axe!

Can someone tell me what the heck that was all about, please?

Why Are they Killing Public Schools?

These days, they'll be going to different schools and won't have to meet anyway. Thanks, GOP

For all New York families who calved in 2006–and therefore have a kindergarten-aged child–this is notification week for public kindergarten.

This is not as easy as just signing up for your local, zoned school. Either the school down the block has been totally abandoned and fallen into disgrace, or there are lotteries and waiting lists and other barriers to entry. There doesn’t seem to be much in between.

We live in a zone where the school is actually pretty good. Therefore, they have waiting lists. And although those waiting lists usually thin out by mid-summer (way past the point when everyone else has found a school), we still had no guarantees. There is no right to be served by your local kindergarten in New York.

That is why we were a little freaked with a thin letter arrived from the Kindergarten–we’d been subconsciously in college admissions mode, where thin envelopes mean rejection, fat ones mean acceptance. But it turns out the one simple thing about Kindergarten admissions in New York is the acceptance letter: “Your child has been offered a Kindergarten placement in our school, for the 2011-2012 school year.”

Phew.

That means that, regardless of what happens with Gifted or Talented, or with PS333, where we lost the lottery and are on a waitlist for a second lottery, Dalia has a school to go to next year. And it is, miracle of miracles, the school down the street.

But then again: what kind of school will it be? What kind of schools will any of them be? Budget cuts and public scorn are slashing schools in NYC and elsewhere and salting the wounds. The enemies of public education are on the march, and winning battle after battle. As Sam Dillon reported in the Times today:

School authorities across the nation are warning thousands of teachers that they could lose their jobs in June, raising the possibility that America’s public schools may see the most extensive layoffs of their teaching staffs in decades.

I don’t believe in private education. I don’t believe in Biblical education. I don’t believe in home schooling or in boarding schools. I don’t believe in the Upper West Side Success Academy, or whatever the hell that charter school with the endless marketing budget is called.

I believe in the school on your street being the best possible school it can be. I believe it should have the support and love and money of the community. That they should take pride in the place and send their kids there instead of this gutless retreating from public school at the first signs of complications.

The nostalgia wing of the conservative movement has a point: there was a simpler time in this country, and (some) things were simply better. Our resolve to support our community’s public schools was one of those things. So why is that same movement trying to dismantle everything Norman Rockwell ever knew about Americans, community, and schooling?

They Got That B-Roll!

First, congratulations are in high order for our now-hitched DadWagoner Theodore. He’s a better man that he pretends to be, and we think Tomoko is getting a pretty good deal here too. What better way to celebrate than with some viral video? This one is about B-Roll, and comes from our friend Steve from the heartland of bracket-busting, Richmond, Virginia. Why B-roll? Because the blushing groom and his bride were, at the courthouse, B-roll themselves:

The TV reporter approached us, showed us photos of her kids–adorable–and asked if we would mind having our wedding filmed for her piece (no implication of identity theft–she just needed some images from the marriage bureau). I asked Tomoko (I’ve been married before, so I know how these things are done), she agreed, but I couldn’t help laughing.

“We’re B-roll!”

They got that B-roll!

Done and Done: Theodore gets hitched

As I have written about earlier, Tomoko and I got engaged, following the decision by Harper’s Magazine that it was time for her to make an honest man of me. Yesterday, as it happens, was the day of the blessed event, and as is fitting, I immediately sat down to enshrine it in the annals of blogdom.

Ours was a simple affair, held at the Louis J. Lefkowitz building in lower Manhattan, home of the Marriage Bureau of the City Clerk’s Office. It is a briskly efficient (and yes, romantic) place. You come in, they check your ID, take your twenty-five smackers, and direct you into a small chapel where all knots are tied.

We arrived fairly early in the morning, Ellie, the baby, in tow (my son, JP, was in school) hoping to avoid the nuptial rush. By the time we left a longish line at the information desk snaked nearly to the door. Just as we stepped up to the info counter to present our identification Tomoko informed me that she had forgotten to bring the marriage license. I told the clerk, and he said, “Well, now, that’s a SHOW-stopper!” (Think of Senator Clay Davis, the corrupt pol on The Wire, intoning his famous catchphrase–sheeeitand you got this guy.)

“You forgot it?” he asked. I admitted we had. “Now, they aren’t even going to give you a duplicate for that. But…” he paused, considered some important documents on his desk, pushed a few things around, and looked up. “But if you, say, LOST the license, well, then, we can take care of it.” Again back to the papers, and then up to me, with a look of pure, blissful, innocence etched onto his hard-boiled bureaucrat’s eyes. “Now did you forget it, or lose it?”

What do you think I said?

We took our number, we waited on the nice green couches, we didn’t buy flowers, we didn’t take pictures at the City Hall backdrop, I wasn’t wearing a tie, Tomoko had no flowers in her hair, the baby was already born, the shotguns were nowhere in evidence.

A camera crew from one of the local TV stations happened to be there filming and I struck up a conversation with the reporter. She said she was there working on a story on identity theft (I don’t want to say more and scoop her), but she was also Asian, with a white husband, and two kids, so of course, she was inexorably drawn to us.

Eventually our number was called and we were ushered into a waiting room just outside of the chapel, which was a small, almost entirely empty room with friendly carpeting and a fair amount of natural light. They told us to sit, so we sat, and Tomoko began breastfeeding Ellie, and wasn’t done before it was our turn to wed. We let the nice Chinese couple next to us go first, even though they looked about six years old (husband and wife combined) and they probably could have used the delay. I killed time watching another Asian bride, this one with dyed blond hair and a white dress that covered only her pelvis and which had apparently been laminated onto her body, take horrifically staged photos with a Russian cameraman. Not entirely sure if she was there with a groom. I turned away when they began doing action shots with the bouquet.

The TV reporter approached us, showed us photos of her kids–adorable–and asked if we would mind having our wedding filmed for her piece (no implication of identity theft–she just needed some images from the marriage bureau). I asked Tomoko (I’ve been married before, so I know how these things are done), she agreed, but I couldn’t help laughing.

“We’re B-roll!”

The ceremony was quick, pleasant, Tomoko was lovely and smiling, the whole thing was caught on video, and I made the reporter pose with us in front of a glass case where they keep New York’s first marital record book on display.

I kissed the bride with great pleasure. I am a fantastically fortunate man.