Move, moving, moved

This blog will no longer be updated at this address, it has moved to a new address:
http://livingwithplanb.derieg.com

I originally set up "Living with Plan B" as a way to keep everyone who cares about Christopher informed about when he was in and out of the hospital in 2005/06, although Paddy said from the start that it should be about him too, and it has evolved from there.

Not very long after I set it up, Blogspot was bought by Google. I wasn't terribly happy about that at the time, but in the meantime I have become increasingly tired of Google. Reading through some of the comments on the blog, especially some of Amy's comments, I have decided that this blog has become too important to entrust to the keeping of a large corporation. Mainly for that reason, I have moved it now to our server.

I hope that the good people who have been reading this blog will follow us to the new address, where I look forward to reading your comments again.

Irrational Peace

I write this while I know I should be studying. In the past week I have been surrounded by events that have me built up incredibly and then shattered everything again. I don't quite know how to deal with all this, I feel it's important right now to concentrate on my exams but never forgetting that the world will always continue with or without me. That's the terrible thing essentially. The world will always keep on spinning even when everything around you tells you that it shouldn't, that things shouldn't be like this. I'm trying to think of three things at once and trying to push another bunch of things to the back of my mind and it seems it's working but I'm beginning to feel it shouldn't be. I don't seem to know anything any more, and I don't know why. I can tell you all about the Cuban revolution and about the Viet Nam War or about the end of détente but what difference does that make to what's going on right now?

It's been stormy outside on and off for the past few days and I'm beginning to think that that's what describes me best right now. Clouds banging together making noise, flashing light and rain pouring down that could be potentially destructive, though it's not a nice thought. Also I seem to be a void of words the past few days and today I wrote 23 pages all in all at 3 different exams and suddenly I feel the need to write, just write. I don't know where I'm going with this, the next word simply pops up in my head and goes straight to my fingers. That's probably not the best way to write but it's the only way now, here or in the exam room. Out.

The official name for the finishing exams in Austria is "Reifeprüfung" which means "exam of maturity", though it's extremely morbid I feel that that name describes this situation better now than it was ever intended to do.

School-Class-Struggle

I have now officially finished school. Yesterday was my last day so now I am officially accepted to do the finishing exams for which I have 36 chances all in all, and if I don't pass in 36 times I don't deserve it.

Shortly before we finished though the heated debate about the teachers having to work 2 hours more a week without any compensation went into its last round. Now it seems that they have come up with a phony compromise that doesn't achieve either what the government wanted or what the teacher's unions wanted, another brilliant example of how we're tricked into thinking we have achieved something when what was really done amounts to zilch.

In any case, the point was that last week, for the first time in my life the student representatives thought that they would go at organizing something democratically and called a meeting of the entire upper forms of our school. Meaning that there were a few hundred people sitting on the basketball field in school hoping to come to some conclusion. Unfortunately the head of our school representatives is best described as being spine-less and arrogant.

Sitting on a stage he explained to a large group of intelligent young people what his party told him to say whilst being very careful to stay completely ambiguous so that nobody can blame him for anything later. But the real fun started when the microphone was open for everyone to speak.

It all began by a college of mine explaining the economics of the situation to a room full of people that didn't really want to know about that aspect and our representative speaking in response but not replying. Then a discussion started about who is to blame. The first speaker saying "without a doubt the People's Party!", our wonderful representative (who is supported by the People's Party's student movement) denying that. The second speaker blaming the Socialist Democrats. Then I got so annoyed with the situation that I got up and took the microphone.

I completely understand why it is important to sit and talk about any action to be taken, however this was not the time to talk. Before was the time to talk, now was the time to act. The response either showed our representative's spine-less-ness extremely well, or he did not understand what I was getting at. He seriously responded by saying that there would be another meeting. Wow. More talk. Everywhere else in Austria students went on strike last Friday to protest government educational policy, our representative did not want to rattle his cage so he did not rally anyone, which would have resulted in maybe even our entire school going on strike which would have been over a thousand people more. Instead we signed a statement saying we don't agree with the government.

What people have failed to realize here is that now the government has seen that essentially they can pull something like this off, which means that now slowly but surely everyone will be targeted to work more and earn less, because the economic situation is so difficult and we have to make sure that those who caused the crisis don't have to deal with the consequences. Blatantly ignoring all the facts surrounding this world economic crisis while trying to patch up the system, which amounts more to putting a band-aid on cancer. This wasn't just an attack on the teachers, this situation just begun. Now this was an attack on the teachers and the students but tomorrow it will be on steel workers or on printers. This was the beginning of an attack on the entire working-class of Austria. So no, just because the teacher's union and government officials have come up with a phony compromise this situation is not over, far from it.

What people also have failed to realize is that we have more power than we think. Who is to say that if the ministry of education gets rid of 6 of our free days we go to school? We are not powerless we are only made to believe it.

People in my class say they don't care because they're finished now, another stunning example of Austrian solidarity. People don't care as long as they are not effected because they completely fail to see the big picture. Just because it was only the teachers and students now doesn't mean anything about what will happen next. So essentially everyone should be taken part in trying to stop the madness that was going on last week instead of saying "I don't care. I'm not a student."

Unfortunately I just know that this was the end of the involvement of students in the resistance to this crisis. Because time doesn't flow, if it doesn't effect students it doesn't matter to us because by the time we will have to deal with real life the situation will be different. Yes, because they have decided on everything while we were lying on the couch basking is life's splendours.

Pictures at an Exhibition

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Originally uploaded by aderieg

The beginning of the end of school started Thursday evening with the opening of an exhibition. Christopher, Paddy, Ernest (who belongs to our extended household) and five girls that I unfortunately don't know very well, presented the work they have been doing for two years for the Higher Level Visual Arts course for the International Baccalaureate. It was an impressive exhibition, and it was good to see the boys' work in that context.

For the formal opening of the exhibition there were speeches by a man from the community center where the exhibition was presented and by a philosopher, with whom I most vehemently (albeit silently) disagreed about the significance of this exhibition. I was appalled to hear such enthusiastic musings about how wonderful it is to see "young people expressing their personal creativity". This is the part where I think I am missing Amy again. I imagine that Amy might be able to explain to me from an educator's perspective that "expressions of creativity" might have some merit in certain contexts and situations, but from my own limited perspective, "expressions of creativity" immediately suggest to me the highly dubious pretext of "creativity" as a way to keep people busy with themselves, so that as they become increasingly self-absorbed, they also become docile and less likely to "cause trouble". That is most certainly not what art means to me.

Following the opening speeches, my first reaction was to move swiftly in the direction of the closest exit to go outside for a cigarette, but later it was very, very good to be able to talk with the boys' teachers. I have the greatest respect and admiration for these teachers, and I am deeply grateful to them for the way they have expanded the boys' horizons and encouraged them to explore important issues from different perspectives. I know I have benefited tremendously from their wonderful work in so many in-depth conversations with the boys, in the ways that I sense that the boys have a greater understanding of my work and what matters to me. I was seriously impressed that one of the teachers actually read Art and Revolution and talked about it with Christopher, equally impressed by how Christopher was moved to reflect on his conversations with her. This is not art as an instrument of pacification, this is what matters.

It is, of course, with some chagrin that I must admit now, at the end of school, that my lofty views of what I expected for my children's education proved unrealistic and perhaps even somewhat arrogant. Over the years I asserted again and again that as my sons are so very privileged in so many ways, it is not the school's job to enhance those privileges, but to provide a context, in which my sons might learn to make use of those privileges more wisely, not only for their own benefit, but to help make this a better world for all. I humbly concede now that my sons are not only privileged, they also have needs of their own. I think they have been incredibly fortunate in encountering wonderful teachers willing and able to accept and sometimes even appreciate their respective (not necessarily school system-appropriate) strengths and allow them enough scope to find their own ways of coping with their weaknesses within this system. Let's hear a round of applause for teachers with a sense of humor!

Following the opening of the exhibition Thursday evening, each of the exhibiting pupils was scheduled to spend 40 minutes on Friday with an examiner from the international IB committee talking about what they have learned over the past two years – essentially the first of their IB exams. When I heard that Paddy, who was the first in line, spent an hour and half talking with the examiner and was very happy about how much she knew, my first thought was that even now, at the end of his school career, Paddy has still not grasped the concept that exams are not meant to be an invitation to him to assess how much the teacher knows, but vice versa. That particular misunderstanding has been a source of tension and point of negotiation since he first started school and all the way through to the end. It was more reassuring to hear later from Christopher and Ernest that they also enjoyed talking with the examiner, who was very interested and well informed about their work and different approaches.

My second thought was that Christopher, waiting his turn outside for nearly an hour longer than expected, must have been wanting to strangle his dear brother by then. Paddy and Christopher were scheduled to go first, because they were to be in a performance of "Waiting for Godot" Friday evening. The production that they took part in last year, their friend Alexander's IB project for theater arts, was accepted as part of an international youth theater festival currently taking place in Linz. As much of an honor as this is, the timing is hardly ideal. They didn't have enough rehearsal time even in our living room, let alone the public hall where they were to perform. Christopher was very nervous about not knowing his lines well enough for the second half, they all had to get to the hall to see how things were set up and meet with the technician about lighting and sound, and Paddy didn't even have a costume for the additional role he plays this time. This was really not the best time for Paddy to end up spending over twice as much as his scheduled time slot blithely enjoying talking about art with the international examiner.

The show goes on. The performance last night turned out to be unexpectedly surprising in the end. There is another performance today in a few hours, and I believe all bets are off about how it might end this time. Next week we move on to the Crossing Europe Film Festival and Christopher's first appearance as a waiter, which is of course the first step to becoming an actor. Then there will be more exams, and then …

Bean

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, so people all over the world are writing blog posts about women in technology that have inspired them. Ever since I read the first announcement of this, I have been thinking of all the wonderful women I have enjoying reading and reading about, some that I have even have the pleasure of knowing personally, who have inspired and encouraged me. I am very fortunate to know so many talented and knowledgeable women, who share my interest in technology and share skills and insights too. For our family blog, however, it occurred to me that it might be appropriate to write about the first woman who encouraged me to be interested in taking things apart and understanding how they work: Bean.

My grandmother, Bernice Burke Derieg (1903 – 1995), was always just called Bean. When I was little, I sometimes felt disadvantaged, because I didn't have a real story-book grandmother, just Bean. She was never that kind of ideal grandmother – the way my own mother has been for all her grandchildren. Maybe Bean didn't actually like small children, and it may be that the feeling was mutual. As a teenager, though, I had many, many reasons to appreciate her, as willful, obstinate and uncooperative as she was all her life.

By the time I was about nine or ten, Bean decreed that I had to be able to disassemble my own sewing machine and put it back together again. I became quite keen on taking all kinds of things apart and understanding how they worked then, something that I still enjoy very much. As a teenager I spent much of what free time I had at Bean's apartment, crawling around on the floor with her trying to figure out how to cut pieces out of fabric without wasting any, but blithely ignoring instructions that came with sewing patterns. We used all of Bean's tableware to hold down the paper pattern pieces on the fabric, so that we could shift them more easily. It was much more satisfying to figure out better ways to put together whatever we were working on, than to simply follow instructions, although of course I first had to learn to understand the instructions before I could disregard them. Bean taught me how to do that.

Along the way I learned a number of important things from Bean: I learned that I didn't need to be pretty, that I didn't need to learn to cook, that I didn't need to find a boyfriend, but along with being able to disassemble and reassemble my sewing machine, I absolutely needed to learn to use a screwdriver and a hammer and a power drill. And I learned to look forward to the day when I would be an old lady myself, so that I could swear uninhibitedly and not care what other people think (yes, I'm working on that).

Instead of a story-book grandmother, in retrospect I'm glad I had Bean.

Mid-March, not yet spring

February / March is birthday season at our house. On February 19th we celebrated Paddy’s 17th birthday – as usual, in the middle of semester break. Somehow it seems much easier to grasp the idea of Christopher being nineteen (in May this year) than of Paddy being seventeen. Seventeen seems to sound almost grown up, and the combination of "my little guy" and "almost grown up" somehow just doesn't really seem to work for me – even though he really is almost grown up and I like very much the way the he can sometimes be quite mature.

At some point Paddy decided that he would like for me to bake a birthday cake for him. Since Paddy has made the best cakes for many years, a birthday cake for Paddy has always been something of a challenge, but I did my best. The hardest part was that trying to play "super mom", baking a cake, working, taking care of various other things at the same time, reminded me more than anything else of the many hilarious exchanges with Amy over the years about more or less futile attempts to play "super mom". Attempting to bake a cake without my sister laughing at my incompetence wasn't nearly as much fun, but I was very grateful that the process was accompanied by comments from some of my friends on Twitter. The final result was hardly inspiring, but at least it was finished, so that we could all have birthday cake with Paddy just before midnight, when we came home from the opera we went to see that evening. By the next day, Paddy had three birthday cakes, since a talented friend made one for him too, and Oma brought her famous walnut cake plus extra apple cake for Christopher. Let them eat cake – lots of cake.

Attempting to continue in "super mom" mode, when I was hanging up laundry a day or so later, I stupidly caught my finger between two laundry baskets. When the tiny wound started bleeding, I decided to stop hanging up laundry and finished doing the dishes instead. This was probably not an ideal choice. The tiny, insignificant wound became surprisingly painful over the next few days, and by the time I went to see our family doctor about it, I had a burning red line running all the way down my finger and starting to spread into my hand. This too is the kind of situation, where I have always relied on my sister to tell me that as stupid as this situation might be, it is a non-trivial matter that needs to be dealt with practically, not just theoretically, which would be my usual preference.

The doctor told me to start taking antibiotics immediately, dress the wound with antibiotic cream and try to keep my hand still, and he told me that if I didn't have a fever yet, I probably would soon. Since I didn't quite take all of this in immediately, as it seemed wholly disproportional to catching my finger between two laundry baskets, I went to the office and sat there trying to figure out how to type without moving my right hand. Sitting there looking at – and feeling – this painfully burning red line on my finger, slowly processing the concept of "blood poisoning" not just as a scary-sounding, abstract idea, it didn't take me long to convince myself that I really wasn't feeling very well at all. I gave up and went home then, wrapped myself in a blanket on the couch and just stayed there drinking large quantities of camomile tea and watching "Lord of the Rings", all three films one after another.

Somehow I suspect that while my immune system was busy dealing with the unexpected and disproportionally alarming situation of "blood poisoning", I also succumbed to whatever bug Peter has been fighting with for weeks and weeks – something like having a cold, not really sick, but not really feeling healthy either, just tired and drained with irritating cold symptoms. I wasn't able to get much work done the last week of February, I wasn't really feeling very well that Sunday, but I went to Amsterdam on March 2nd nonetheless, because I just couldn't face the thought of having to cancel the Wintercamp conference I had been looking forward to for months. I enjoyed the conference, even though the constant feeling of low energy was a bit disappointing and annoying. I've been working long hard hours to catch up again on translation work since then, despite the same feeling of low energy and wishing I could just go back to bed, so that I have the feeling I have earned a weekend of not working now.

Which brings us to mid-March. Everyone else I talk to or hear from seems to be longing for warmer weather, more sunshine and an end to winter, but I don't share that feeling. I don't feel ready to start shedding protective layers yet, to face the challenge of bright sunlight or people opening up in the warmth. I keep hoping it will snow again, because I just don't feel ready to face spring at all yet. I'm afraid that spring will mean that it is time to start letting go, to allow the acute pain of immediate loss to settle into a permanent emotional scar with only an occasional dull throb in response to changes or reminders. I'm afraid it will mean letting go of the boys as they finish school and set off, one way or another, into the big, wide world on their own, leaving their old parents behind and alone at home. Spring, especially this year, means letting go of the past and the now, to be able to grow into a new phase, a new situation of life.

So I am still hoping it will snow again, at least once more.

Queen Paddy

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Originally uploaded by aderieg

Last Friday was the school ball for this year’s graduating classes. Since Christopher, Paddy, Seth, Sascha and several other people we love will graduate this year (barring any major disasters), Peter and I wanted to go and celebrate with other parents. Despite the dissatisfaction with some of the ball committee’s decisions, which has been expressed for some months now by various members of our extended household, and despite Christopher’s objections that a graduation ball is a bourgeois and reactionary tradition, Peter and I were determined to go, even though none of the boys were terribly enthusiastic.

Then Paddy came up with a brilliant plan: he decided to go the ball as a girl and compete to be chosen Queen of the Ball.

He enlisted the help of several girls who enthusiastically lent him a ball dress and agreed to do his hair and make-up for him. I found a pair of sheer black stockings for him and a pair of black sandals with heels that he could at least get his feet into (they don’t make women’s dress shoes in size 46), also a pair of clip-on earrings that I wasn’t previously aware of owning. Since I am not particularly well furnished with ball clothes and accessories, we had some discussion about a silk jacket, because I wanted to wear that myself. In the end, a long silk scarf worked well for him over the dress.

The girls did a fantastic job, and he really was lovely that evening. I was pleased that he didn’t parody supposedly feminine behavior, as boys usually seem to do when playing girls. The way he moved wasn’t entirely authentic, but considering how little preparation time he had, it was quite reasonable, I think. He said later that at some point during the evening, two boys from another school came up to him and asked whether he was really a girl or a boy, because they had made a bet.

Throughout the evening people bought stars on string to hang around the neck of their preferred candidates for Ball Queen (and also Ball King). The enthusiastic support that Paddy got was impressive, and he collected a substantial number of stars, even from people he didn’t know. When the time came to tally up the stars, however, a girl from another school had far more. The rumor was that her proud father had bought enough stars (accounts of the number varied from one hundred to five hundred) to guarantee she would win. Nevertheless, Paddy had more stars than the candidate for Ball King, so Sascha, who was doing the moderation, said to Paddy, “Choose!” Paddy decided to remain a girl, so the other two were crowned King and Queen of the Ball and awarded their prizes, and then they danced a waltz. After the waltz, the new Queen of the Ball went to Paddy and wanted to give him the jewelry she had just received as a prize. At first Paddy refused, saying it was much too expensive and she couldn’t just give it to him, but she insisted, telling him that he was the real winner and he had “earned it”. In the end they agreed to share it, and she took the earrings and Paddy the necklace. Paddy felt that was even better than winning flat out.

An amusing discussion ensued the next morning on Facebook when Paddy complained that he couldn’t remove the rest of the make-up and various people offered advice. Paddy’s conclusion: “Being a girl is just impractical because you make it impractical. If you wore really baggy dresses and flat shoes and your hair just.. open and let your face speak for itself you'd still be just as pretty. I blame the media and evil scientists.”

When Paddy was little, he seemed to have a special talent for blurring boundaries and confounding gender stereotypes. I am happy to see that he can still do it. As “bourgeois and reactionary” as the tradition of a graduation ball might be, at least Paddy managed to add an extra layer of meaning to the title “Queen of the Ball”.

And Peter and I had a very good time together at the ball after all.