Kathryn Cramer

Chappaqua Tales #1

Yesterday, when picking my son up in Chappaqua, NY at middle school, I saw a girl about twelve drop an iPhone on a stone floor. Afterwards, she and a friend were marvelling, "It's even more cracked than before." So I asked my son if he'd seen many people with iPhones at school. He said he wasn't sure which cell phones were iPhones but reported that lots of kids had cell phones.

He did however volunteer that he'd seen an iPod Nano, complete with headphones, floating in a school toilet recently. I do wonder how many (hundreds of?) thousands of dollars of electronics are circulating in  that school on an average day. Should your iPod fall in a toilet, here is some helpful advice.

(My daughter made the Kindergarten newsletter for taking her big brother's iPod to school. We do not own an iPhone.)

This Year's Valentines

My kids are passionate about Valentines Day. Every year they spend a lot of time hand-making valentines. In years past it has seemed, when the valentines came home from school, that mine were among the few children around here who did this, in that most or all of the other valentines were store-bought.

This year, about three weeks ago, I bought a ream of red paper and since then the house has been awash in sheets of red paper with their hearts cut out. Usually, in the home stretch, I carefully shepherd the kids through organizing their creations so that everyone they intend to give to gets a valentine. This year, the flu has been circulating in the house in the five days before Valentines Day. (Apparently there's an epidemic.)

(Also, I should admit that last fall when I was trying to round up flu shots for me and the kids, I wasn't persistent enough. The only one in the family who had this season's shot is David.)

This morning began with tears. It seems that while both kids had spent a lot of time and paper making Valentines, in her exuberance, my five year-old had regarded the products of my ten year-old as raw material for her art. Most of his Valentines got recycled into hers. I was only vaguely aware of this until this morning when it was too late to do anything about.

Next year we'll all get flu shots. And next year, I will orchestrate the festivities more carefully. Oh, well.

(Above left: a Valentine Peter made for his father in art class at school; above right: one of Elizabeth's lavish creations.)

There's nothing like a Kindergarten play!

On Genetic Testing and Being a Patrilineal Jew

My mother has in the past decade taken up the hobby of genealogy, something which I thought of as an odd affectation of my Mormon friends when I was a kid, but which now via the Internet has become much more popular.

I grew up with the last name Cramer, which is one of those occupational last names: it means "shopkeeper" in German. From time to time as the question has arisen as to whether I am Jewish. Though my Grandma Cramer was Catholic, most of the Cramer ancestors I knew were Texan Hard Shell Baptists. Someone in Texas, at some point in my early life, told me that while "Kramer" was a Jewish name, "Cramer" with a "C" was not. Some of the same relatives were also known to fudge birth dates on tomb stones so as not to reveal the true ages of ladies who had shaved off a year or ten.

I learned a bit more about my heritage when doing Internet map work following Hurricane Katrina. I knew my grandfather had been born in New Orleans, but not much more about it. He took me there once, when I was about 9. It turns out I have quite a number of relatives buried in old New Orleans cemeteries, some of them in Jewish cemeteries. My Irish great grandmother, Agnes Gleason Cramer was buried in 1906 with the Michael Gleason family in St. Roch Cemetery in New Orleans. (I'm told they were under four feet of water during Katrina.) And I have other relatives in the Dispersed of Judah Cemetery in New Orleans.

My more recently deceased relatives are buried in Houston. My great grandfather, Louis A. Cramer (1868-1933) is buried in the Resthaven Cemetery in Houston as are my Cramer grandparents. My Cramer great-great grandmother, born Sarah Solomon in New Orleans in about 1842, is buried in Washington Cemetery under her last married name, "Sarah Williams (1845-1923)" with Louis’ daughter, Leah Cramer (1901 – 1920), and and Sarah’s daughter Clara (1879-1954) and Clara’s husband, Andrew Barry, and 50 yards or so from her her son Mordecai Henry Cramer (1867-1949). Washington Cemetery, Houston's old German cemetery, is adjacent to the more famous Glenwood Cemetry, where Sarah Solomon's daughter Hannah (1875-1920) is buried.

Sarah Solomon and my great-great grandfather Adolf Cramer (1835-1877) had their marriage "solemnized" the Rabbi of the Hebrew Congregation Beth Israel of Houston. She was the daughter of Levy Solomon and Hannah "Annie" Hyams, both of Charleston, South Carolina, and both, I find, listed in First American Jewish Families, by Malcolm H. Stern, 3rd edition, Ottenheimer Publishing Company,
1991.

But what of the name Cramer? Was it just an occupational name, or was Adolf Cramer really Jewish? This is not an issue that the historical record is going to settle easily.

Enter genetic testing: for just under 200 bucks, Ancestry.com will test a man's Y-chromosome and assign him a genetic haplogroup. My dad had his done. It came back G2c: an "extremely rare" haplotype most often possessed by Ashkenazi Jews.

Poof, I'm a patrilineal Jew. Except that Judiasm is a matrilineal religion, so in terms of religious tradition, as far as I know this is meaningless, since the last female identifiably Jewish ancestor I have is Sarah Solomon. Nor, so far as I know. was anyone in my branch of the family raised Jewish in the 20th century.

But it seems to me that because Jewish heritage is so much more genetically traceable than that of less self-contained (and ghettoized) cultural groups, there is are important issues of identity politics invoked by genetic testing.

The patrilineal Jew is a little bit of an oxymoron now. But how will this work itself out in a generation? I'm curious.

Houston snapshots

My grandmother's casket, Monday.

The house where my great-grandfather died on December 25, 1933, in as seen in urban Houston on Monday.

The Fate of Mice

Left to his own devices, my husband David Hartwell tends to create workspaces resembling those of the Wizard Merlin: towering, teetering piles of interesting things with narrow paths to walk through. His piles are legendary, though the really epic ones precede me: in the olden days when helping David clean up, at the bottom of one of his piles one might find a Medieval codex, or a first edition of Henry James's The Golden Bowl, or an uncashed $7,000 check. (I mostly run a tighter ship than that.)

I long since gave up on the idea of sharing an office space with him. My own Mission-Control/multiplex home office is in the dining room.

A few years back, David's mother was considering moving into an assisted living facility and we tried to convince her to come stay with us for an extended period of time. We put a bed in David's office, which is across the hall from the bathroom, and cleaned it almost all the way up. She died of a stroke that fall, but the bed remained in David's office, mostly unused, though I think someone slept there for one night thereafter.

Predictably, over time David gave that bed the Merlin treatment and so eventually it became hard to see that there was a bed there at all. I let him have his own space and he kept the cats out, and in the mean time we have edited another six or seven anthologies, and the materials involved in their production are still in his office.

So this afternoon, I was prowling through his office in search of something-or-other when I noticed little piles of cat food peeking out from beneath the books and papers. Mice. I investigated further and discovered the bed in the cat-free space of his office had become the scene of a Mouse Festival.

I peeled away the layers of books, papers, magazines, and discovered in the midst of the major mouse nest -- as though laid out for mousy bedtime reading -- a copy of our friend Susan Palwick's book The Fate of Mice; it has a cat on the cover. Apparently, the fate of certain mice in our household was to have their own utopia, well-stocked with catfood and breadcrusts, in their own bed in their own room, in David's offices where the cats are not allowed.

The mouse utopia is currently a pile of bedding out on the screened porch which I shall shake out in the morning. But mouse lives are short, and it appears that a few generations lead a very good life.

Lunch in Keene, NY

Lunch with my parents in Keene, NY.

Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas

Ten Years a Mom

Both kids had birthdays in the past weeks. One turned five, the other turned 10. So I've been a Mommy for ten years.

I think that's great.

My dad made Men's Journal

My dad, physicist John G. Cramer, is in the October issue of Men's Journal. Who knew that the fashion accesory he lacked was a Delorean?

Liz is off to Kindergarten!

Just before launch, she gives the thumbs up:

. . . then she climbs the stairs  . . .

. . . she waves goodbye  . . .

. . . and we have lift-off!

Test your level of Alienation online

I happened across an on-line questionnaire apparently by C. George Boeree, a professor in the Psychology Department at Shippensburg University, which claims to test your degree alienation. I score as only moderately alienated in most of the categories of alienation, but score very highly for "cultural alienation." Interestingly the term "cultural alienation" seems to be primarily used to study the effects of colonialism upon the indigenous population, like so:

The experience of colonial domination shows that, in the effort to perpetuate exploitation, the colonizers not only creates a system to repress the cultural life of the colonized people; he also provokes and develops the cultural alienation of a part of the population, either by so-called assimilation of indigenous people, or by creating a social gap between the indigenous elites and the popular masses.

(Amilcar Cabral, "National Liberation and Culture." Originally delivered on February 20, 1970 as part of the Eduardo Mondlane Memorial Lecture Series at Syracuse University.)

It is interesting to me that the incursion of million-dollar-house people into our corner of suburbia would provoke in me an alienation similar to that of the colonized. I tried the test on my son, and while he had no scores in the "high" range, most of his scores indicated moderate alienation, and one of his highest scores was cultural alientation.

Boeree's page on Conformity and Obediance is also interesting.

Same school district, same grade: a smoking gun found in The Case Against Homework

So The Case Against Homework by Sarah Bennett & Nancy Kalish arrived in the mail. And look what I've found on pp. 71-72:

Even Lisa Jacobson, the head of her own tutoring company, balked last year when her son's fourth-grade teacher at their public school in Chappaqua, New York, insisted that she help him through his three hours of homework each night. "I said, I don't want to tutor him," Lisa recalls. "But the teacher said, 'You have to be the tutor. In a town like this, where real estate values depend on how good the school are and test scores, I'm expected to teach kids at a certain level so that when they go to middle school next year, they are completely prepared. I can't do that by myself all day. So I need the parent to continue at home.'"

My son, on two medications to meet the demands of school, is in the same grade and district as the child discussed above. I've heard that speech, although it didn't get as far as real estate values. I cut the teacher off when she started to talk about the demands of standardized testing by saying that the testing was for the benefit of the state, not my son, who has already been tested up one side and down the other and that I didn't care how he scored on the standardized tests.

There are only three elementary schools in our district, so there is a 1/3rd chance my son attends the same school she was talking about. When he was in first grade, they moved the 5th graders out of the elementary school and into the middle school. The move has turned out to be more than symbolic. A number of times, when I have complained about the demands the school places on my son, the school psychologist has reminded me how soon he will be in middle school.

But what is most disturbing about the passage from the book is the remark about real estate values. There's something to that. One of the nasty bits of No Child Left Behind is that schools can be labeled "failing" if they don't show sufficient improvement. Our elementary school principal remarked on this in something sent to us by the school a while back.

So. If our kids are working to save our real estate values, how much should they be paid per hour for doing excessive homework?

Elizabeth's Picture of God

The schools have been closed for two days because of damage from Wednesday afternoon's violent storm, so today I took the kids to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time. Peter is such a science kid, we'd never been. Of course, I'd been there, but taking kids to museums is different.

We started with the Egyptian section, which was a big hit. Then we did the Chinese art on our way to the Balcony Cafe for lunch. After lunch, I tried to convince Elizabeth that she was interested in European painting by pointing out the Degas ballet dancers.

After hauling the kids through various sections in which they loudly declared their desire to go home, we eventually got to the suits of armor. The kids were very amused by the armor pieces designed to protect horses hindquarters.

We did the new Greek and Roman section last. The kids asked to sit and rest for a bit because their legs were tired. Elizabeth asked for a pen and paper because she had seen people sketching in the gallery. She drew a person.

I asked, "Who's that?" She said "That's a picture of God."

I started to put away the pen and she complained she wasn't done. So I gave the pen back because she said God needed a tutu.

So she added a tutu and wings. I asked what she had drawn. She explained, "That's an Egyptian ballet god."

(I promise I'll scan it in later.)

YouthCan 2007

Monday, I took my son Peter to YouthCan 2007, a conference for kids on helping the environment through technology held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Most of the people attending were part of school groups, some from as far away as Argentina, Russia, and Iran, though most from the US. In all, attendance was about a thousand.

A couple of years ago, I tried to arrange for a delegation from my son's school to attend, but in our district there were too many bureaucratic obstacles, and so I failed. This year, when I received a reminder of the event via email, on whim I decided that Peter and I would attend.

I decided to drive in rather than take MetroNorth from Pleasantville, since once you get off MetroNorth it is a bit cumbersome to get -- via public transportation -- from Grand Central Station to the museum. We left home about 8:30 AM and got a nice parking space in the museum parking garage (for which I later paid a hefty sum: $43).

(I had arranged for a babysitter for my daughter in in the afternoon [$30-something], and for the Mother Hen bus service [$30] to get her from pre-school and take her there, so Peter and I had as much time as we needed. Museum admission was free with the event, but I had already run up over a $100 tab as soon as I set the plan in motion. And Linda Hirshman wonders in a New York Times OpEd piece wonders at the struggle of moms rejoining the work-force, or meditates on our competing obligations; or something. It cost a hundred bucks to spend the day with one child in NYC without the other. In my utopia, this would be cheaper.)

We arrived before opening ceremonies began; opening and closing ceremonies were held in the Hall of Ocean Life -- with the full scale model of a blue whale hanging from the ceiling -- a great venue for any event. The room full of kids and chaperons was better behaved than one might have expected as we waited for the rest to arrive because there was so much to look at just in that one room.

Andrew Revkin, a science writer for The New York Times and author of the kids' book about global warming, The North Pole Was Here, gave what was essentially the keynote speech. He made the interesting point that he realized that after writing 300 NYT articles, the people he should have been writing to were kids, since the decisions affecting our current climate are already made and that the decisions made now and in the near future most affect those under 19. I would have liked to see his one-hour presentation on his trip to the North Pole, but I had Peter signed up for something else, and so just bought a copy of his book to read later.

There were three program slots to sign up for. Our first was EcoMedia, held by The Bronx River Art Center:

Become educated about the Bronx River environment through several student multimedia approaches with different tools involving ecoTV, ecoGames, ecoWeb, ecoSound, and ecoPhoto.  See an amazing project unravel before your eyes as students in this ecological workshop, translate ideas like invasive species or watershed physics.

This was my first exposure to 13-year-olds giving software demos. I suppressed the impulse to try to help. It made the biggest impression of all on my 9-year-old son, who had seen mommy do many or all of the things the kids were showing him how to do, but having kids show him was different.

The next session we went to was held by third graders from Miami Country Day School and consisted of a series of presentations by groups of third graders on solutions to the problem of world hunger.

How much land is actually useful for agricultural purposes? Find out and learn about a more effective way to grow crops in many of the poor regions of the world. Be ready to take home all you need to make your own container garden. Make up a recipe with organic herbs flown fresh from our school garden for your enjoyment! This workshop is hands-on, nose-on, and mouth-on.

The kids were doing a splendid job. But the room was hot and crowded (too small for the number of people there) so we slipped off for lunch before the end.

In the cafe, we found the group who had given the ecoMedia presentation, so we sat with them when we ate our lunch.

The third session we attended was Guerrilla Gardening, held by sixth graders from the Salk School of Science in New York City.

Save the plants and save the world! Learn how you and/or your school can create amazing indoor gardens while recycling and reusing your kitchen refuse. Plant beans, corn, potatoes, ginger, and much more. Leave with a head start on your own garden!

The students collectively taught a lesson that they might have had at school with their teacher. We drew sketches of various kinds of seeds found in many kitchens (kidney beans, bird seed, popping corn, etc.) then we made planters for them out of clear egg cartons and each came home set up to sprout the seeds on our windowsills.

After that, we attended the lively closing ceremonies in which there was some moderated discussion of what we had gotten out of the day. One of the teenagers attending had submitted a compelling short essay that was read out loud.

After the official conference was over, we paid a visit to the Discovery Room, one of Peter's favorite parts of the museum. He looked at live grubs and butterfly wings under the microscope. We also spent a while in the museum's enormous gift shop.

After a snack in the museum's main dining room, we went up to the top floor and saw the Audubon exhibit and the dinosaur skeletons. we saw a few more exhibits and then headed home.

For next year, when Peter will be in middle school, I think I'll try again to get a school delegation together to give a presentation.

Where to see the Geoff Hartwell Experience this weekend

Friday, April 27th, 2007
Kittle House 8pm
11 Kittle Rd, Chappaqua NY
(914)666-8044
Price: FREE!
Geoff and Rich Acoustic Duo!

Saturday, April 28th, 2007
*GEOFF HARTWELL BAND* @ Katonah Grill 10pm
128 Bedford Road Katonah NY
914-232-0946
Price: $5
The Geoff Hartwell Band's first gig at this local hot spot. Come on out and have a ball with us!

Last weekend they played our house for my birthday! It was great.

Halfway to 90!

(The towel under the cake covering the stove has to do with the fact that it's raining in the kitchen because of the storm. We apparently got about 8 inches of rain in a day.)

Our Hugo Nominations

I think I forgot to announce this household's Hugo nominations. David and I (with Kevin Maroney) are jointly nominated in the Semiprozine category for The New York Review of Science Fiction. David is nominated for Best Editor in both the Short Form and Long Form categories.

Happy Easter

Kitten Update: Victor Victoria

So the kitties had their first vet appointment today, and Viola turns out to be a He, so we've renamed him Vinson.

Geoff in the Journal News

My stepson, Geoff Hartwell was written up in The Journal News yesterday: Geoff Hartwell: A familiar ‘Stranger’

"It was very important to me that this album be a songwriter album rather than a shredded guitar album," says the musician. "I wanted this group of songs to really be groups of ideas and groups of emotional things that you, as a listener, can relate to."

Relating to music, as Hartwell phrases it, is exactly what he was raised to do.

Growing up in Pleasantville, music was a constant in his early years. Though his father worked in publishing, he was constantly bringing the sounds of such musicians as Chuck Berry into the home and often playing in local folk groups.

Because of his father's influence, Hartwell became not simply a student of music, but a devoted disciple before the age of 10.

"When he bought me my first electric, I was just gone," he says. "There was no turning back; there was no choice of what I could possibly do with my life."

Shortly after, by 11, Hartwell began playing locally with his father's folk ensemble. It was also around this time that he began to solidify his friendship with his lifelong friends and bandmates, J.J. Clark and Rich Kelly.

By his teenage years, Hartwell was playing every battle of the bands or open-mic night he could find. While still in high school, he gigged in renowned Manhattan clubs such as Kenny's Castaways, the Lion's Den and CBGB's.

"They didn't know how young I was, so we would get a gig at one of these places and they would be like, 'What the hell?' They would make me stand outside until it was time to play," he says.

Kittens, Day 5

The gray kitten is Viola, and the orange one is Frances. (They move really fast now so they are a little harder to photograph.)

Kittens, Day 2

New Kittens

The newest members of our household. Names TBA.

Time for new cats

Our last cat died in December following complications from cancer surgery. It is now nearly April and so we are really for one or more new cats. Our Best Cat Ever (who died of a stroke) in 2001 seemed to be a Maine Coon, so we have a mild preference for that breed because of disposition. Also we have a mild preference for fluffy cats with soft fur, since that's what we had for 15 years. Since it is easier to integrate a kitten into a household and modify its behavior, we have a preference for kittens. We have two kids in the house, one 9, one 4, both of whom have been raised with cats and love cats. Our cats have traditionally been indoor/outdoor cats, since we live away from main roads in an area with 1 acre+ zoning and lots of trees.

Peter & the Lorikeet

Henry Hudson's Voyages

Peter's school project:

By Peter Hartwell with the assistance of Kathryn Cramer & Elizabeth Hartwell.

(I haven't forgotten you. I'm just spending all my free moments helping my son with an elaborate school project.)

Happy Valentine's Day

We've had a day of snow, sleet, and freezing rain, so we've spent our Valentine's Day indoors together. Here are the valentnes my kids made for me:

Elizabeth's (the big heart is me and the little one is her, she said):

And Peter's:

For their valentines from previous years, see my Valentines category.

Geoff Hartwell's scheduled gigs for this week

From my stepson, Geoff Hartwell:

Howdy folks!

We got some great music coming up this week, with a SPECIAL ELECTRIC performance in New York City on Friday February 9th! (And some good news about Radio Play!)

Friday Feb 2nd 8pm
Geoff and Rich Acoustic at the Kittle House
(914)666-8044 www.kittlehouse.com
This is an awesome place!!! Really great food and atmosphere. CRAZY extensive wine list and reasonable drinks.

Sat Feb 3rd 9pm
Geoff Hartwell with Richie Castellano (from Blue Oyster Cult)
Opus 465 465 Main St Armonk, NY 10504
http://www.opus465.com
465 Main Street, Armonk, NY 10504
Phone (914) 273-4676

The Tuesday Blues Jam at Jackson & Wheeler, of course!

AND ESPECIALLY...

*THE GEOFF HARTWELL BAND* @ The Parkside Lounge NYC
8pm-10pm
317 E. Houston St. btw Ave B & C
Price: $5
Never seen the Band in New York City? HERE'S YOUR CHANCE!
This is our FAVORITE place to play in NYC. We'll be doing an EXTRA-LONG EXPLOSIVE ELECTRIC performance of new and old! A Funky east side hang that starts at 8 SHARP (get there early and have a drink!) and we're done by 10 and out on the town!

EXTRA! EXTRA!...
THE GEOFF HARTWELL BAND WILL BE FEATURED ON VASSAR
COLLEGE RADIO 93.1 WVKR!!! THEY HAVE BEEN PLAYING THE NEW CD AND THEY LOVE IT! ON *WEDNESDAY MARCH 14th at 7pm* THE GHB WILL PERFORM ON-AIR AND BE INTERVIEWED ON A PROGRAM CALLED "SCENE UNSEEN" !!! MARK YOUR CALENDARS!!!

HOPE TO SEE YOU AT THE PARKSIDE!!!

Be there or be square!

A 4-year-old talks about death.

My four year old daughter just gave a lovely little speech. We were talking about how her middle name, Constance, was her deceased grandmother's name and she said:

I figured out that when people die, they still live inside you. And you can talk to them because they live inside your body, so I can still talk to Nannie.

Wise child.

After her grandmother died in the fall of 2005, when we were leaving the funeral home following the funeral, she said:

I have an idea. Why don't we go to Disneyland and get daddy a new mother?

Luckily, when we took her to Disney last summer, she didn't remember to shop for a new grandmother.

Photo: Elizabeth with her grandmother, September 2005.

The Tooth Ferret

Peter did this great drawing of "the Tooth Ferret" last night. (I need to do a good scan of it. But I wanted to put it up right away.)

A Robot Loose in the House: We are definitely living in the future.

A post-Christmas line just heard from my son in the kitchen: Mommy! The robot is drawing on the kitchen cabinets!

Needless to say, I was a little confused by this, but when I investigated, I found that the red metallic robot was indeed in the kitchen scribbling on the cabinets with a large piece of yellow side-walk chalk. This is definitely the future.

Will the robot be asking for its own room next? An is this an example of algorithmic content creation?

The Robosapien before Peter freed it from its box to roam the house.

Christmas Morning

Peter, age 9, explains why it's time to open presents now:

It's getting light!

Meanwhile, Elizabeth, age 4, is astonished and delighted that Santa ate the chocolate she left out for him.

My kids meet WolframTones 9/28/05

I did this YouTube video, My Kids Meet WolframTones, about a year ago and it never occurred to me to blog it. But now that everyone is covering their blogs with YouTube videos, perhaps it's time.

               

Here's what I said about it last fall:

After dinner this evening, I sat my son Peter, who has just started 3rd grade, down at my computer and let him play with Wolfram Tones for the first time.  The first interesting thing that happened was that my daughter Elizabeth, who turns 3 in October, started jamming to the WolframTones soundtrack on the toy piano in the living room. (I had gotten the video camera out to film Peter, and she started while I was getting set up.)

After about 10 minutes of fiddling, Peter came up with something he really liked.

Household Surrealism

A photo taken by my four-year-old this afternoon:

Whatever the question is, the answer is fish.

(A Korean film crew was once sent to my house to interview me about one of my books for Korean television. I noticed that the cameraman made sure to take a shot of the fish decals on the sliding glass door. I never did find out if they made the final cut.)

Wednesday Cat Blogging

I wish I'd written a really insightful post today, but I spent my spare moments waiting on our 15-year-old cat who had three tumors removed yesterday. I lit her a fire in the fire place, made her a cozy nest with food and water near the fire etc. She's a good old cat.