An Infuriating Year

This has been one infuriating year.

Ten years past the fall of the Twin Towers, three years post-Lehman and the apocalypse of the financial system as we knew it, we stand hard-pressed to imagine anyone not touched in the last twelve months by some outlandish, ridiculous, mind-blowing, devastating, distressing, demoralizing, upending, brain-bending, off-putting, mouth-dropping, peculiar, uncharacteristic, wild, dramatic, off kilter shit. 

Certainly, Messrs. Gaddafi and Bin Laden would agree. Not a good year.

How about Arnold and Maria and his now-teenage Latino love-child? Chao bello!

How was that bed in a cage, Mr. Mubarak? I guess it might be better to sleep in your jammies through your trial than actually face it.  Gabrielle Giffords shot in the head.

SONY and so many in Japan—not a good time.

Arab spring, Muslim rage. Tahrir Square in Egypt. Syntagma Square in Athens.  

Wildfires in the South and E. Coli in our sprouts.

And even with her husband’s pants down, Madame Strauss-Kahn still can’t understand why the Americans are so provincial.

Elizabeth Taylor, Betty Ford, Steve Jobs, Andy Rooney, Amy Winehouse, Christopher Hitchens, my Mom, Nick’s Dad.  All renegades. All persuasively contrarian people. All gone this year.  Must be some party there with the Freshman Class of ’11.

Yup, 2011.

Started for us with a great adventure: the prospect of a move to Prague…again.  Michael was accepted at the International School. Toyota gladly took back our leased car. We hired movers. We found a lovely home in the heart of the old city. We gave up our home in South Pasadena. Then, just two weeks shy of packing, our move was abruptly cancelled. Seemed they needed Nick in the US more than in Europe.  “Would it be a hardship for you to stay?” they asked him.  No house, no car, no school…but “no hardship” we said. “SCCREEEEEEEECH” went our proverbial wheels.

With only weeks to find a house before the start of school, we landed in yet another area in Los Angeles—this time in Sherman Oaks. It’s our third California neighborhood in the five years we’ve been here. Beautiful home; least favorite community.

What a year.

And yet…the need to remember that the sun will set, the moon will rise and there will be a new tomorrow has never seemed more important. Oooohhhhmmmmmmm.

We need to think about those memorable moments that made us smile.  Two Royal weddings inspired us this year with ceremonial pomp and circumstance almost as much as the ubiquitous Kardashians repulsed us with their unnecessary opulence.

My husband celebrated his one-year anniversary with Kit Digital, which  (since so many of you ask) defines itself as a global company providing end-to-end software and service solutions to manage video assets for its clients. “What?” you ask.  Just suffice it to say it’s a “next generation” company using old generation software, media, sales and computer geeks to sell software programs and services to companies that want to get their videos on all those many, many different platforms people use today.

Quite a year.

I finished a screenplay that no one’s bought. Counted over 1000 rejections from companies that never even called back yet claim to need people with exactly my skill-set and experience.  And took the GRE test for entry into graduate school after studying from “Math for Morons” and the “Idiot’s Guide to Acing Exams” to little avail.  Do I feel depleted? Yes. Defeated, no way.

Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the launch of HBO in Hungary this year, along with nearly one hundred others, was a personal highlight. 

Now it's onward to a new beginning: this year I plan on entering a Master’s Program on the path to getting my PhD in Education. I’ve been spending more and more time in the classroom with Michael, guest lecturing at colleges in Multicultural Marketing and participating in various parent advocacy and activist groups.  I have not gotten so much out of anything in years as I do the gratification of teaching.

So what else is in store? Nick and I will celebrate 10 blissful (and at times not entirely blissful!) years on January 1. My son turns nine and we’re sure will continue getting the hang of piano and tennis. Logic and experience point to a move on the horizon. What can we say? We are, after all, Urban Nomads. Peripatetic entrepreneurs seeking our next game-changing opportunity, our next challenge.

With that in mind, we wish you a successful 2012 in which your dreams become your realities.  Don’t forget to smile and “Stay foolish!” (Thanks Steve Jobs …)

The Miracle That Changed My Life (and led to education...)

In 2002, I experienced a miracle.

It took place in an unlikely spot:  a doctor’s office.  While lying on a hard table, a physician rubbing a sticky paste on my belly, I heard the clomping sound of a heartbeat and saw something moving on a monitor. The doctor smiled and quietly said, “You’ve waited for this your whole life, haven’t you?”  Yes, I guess I had. I saw my child for the first time that day. Just shy of my 44^th birthday, my son was born.

That moment changed my life in countless ways; in fact, it has defined it. Besides all the other things I had been – a daughter, a wife, a marketer, a Managing Director, a writer – I became a mother, a parent, a role model for my son. What I didn’t realize that day was that I became a “teacher.”  And what has come to be true is that his education – and that of those around him – has became my overriding priority.

Being active in his education is what has propelled me to pursue the field of education and has afforded me a profound respect and gratitude for the role teachers play. In particular, I’ve come to realize how critical the teachings we learn in our formative years are and just how true Robert Fulghum was in his book “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”  I have been continuously encouraged by the enthusiastic support and thanks from the children, when I read them a book or assist in a project or simply help solve a math problem. Working with children has made me a better listener, more patient and more flexible. (Although my son complains that I am not such a great listener, as I don't always share his enthusiasm for aliens with guns or long-winded stories about inter-planetary wars!)
Since my son’s days in pre-K, I have spent hours assisting in the classroom, have been an active PTA member and Room Parent. I was voted onto the South Pasadena Educational Foundation in 2010, which has raised over $500,000 yearly to augment what the State has lacked in funding for our district. When I was asked to be an Art Docent for a school-wide program, I was thrilled to be able to develop a plan, teach and watch incredible talent unfold when our craft and video-based “Imagine Project” came to life.  When I brought my fictional series “The Jelly Bean Chronicles” to my child’s class, his teacher and I were so impressed by their enthusiasm and understanding of the concepts that she and I together developed a plan to use it as a pedagogical and fundraising tool.  

So, I have decided that my future is one in which education takes a front and center seat.

My goal is to help lead California to rise from the nation’s bottom in terms of student achievement, to be the beacon of educational success it once was.  I want to be at the “table” when decisions about what to cut and what to save are made. I want to help ensure that current events, global context and the arts are not lost on our children. I want to see a public school curriculum that includes second language study in the primary grades.  That is the kind of teacher and reformer I hope to be:  a globally minded leader, who can instill a can-do attitude and love of learning in her students and be a voice of reform and reason on a larger scale.