What it takes to restore the city...

A change from my negativity, here is 'something that works'. I particularly enjoy the comment that the "I feel the hand of the Lord here all the time", screw religious free schools, if this is what works, I'm cool with it!

In Bronx School, Culture Shock, Then Revival

James Estrin/The New York Times

Another school day starts: Shimon Waronker, the principal of Junior High School 22, on station outside school, which is overwhelmingly black and Hispanic. Attending to the details Mr. Waronker was greeted with near disbelief when he arrived in 2004 after his training in the Leadership Academy. In the classroom Mr. Waronker has helped attendance rise to 93 percent.

Published: February 8, 2008

Junior High School 22, in the South Bronx, had run through six principals in just over two years when Shimon Waronker was named the seventh.

A Bronx School Revives

On his first visit, in October 2004, he found a police officer arresting a student and calling for backup to handle the swelling crowd. Students roamed the hallways with abandon; in one class of 30, only 5 students had bothered to show up. “It was chaos,” Mr. Waronker recalled. “I was like, this can’t be real.”

Teachers, parents and students at the school, which is mostly Hispanic and black, were equally taken aback by the sight of their new leader: A member of the Chabad-Lubavitch sect of Hasidic Judaism with a beard, a black hat and a velvet yarmulke.

“The talk was, ‘You’re not going to believe who’s running the show,’ ” said Lisa DeBonis, now an assistant principal.

At a time when the Bloomberg administration has put principals at the center of its efforts to overhaul schools, making the search for great school leaders more pressing than ever, the tale of Mr. Waronker shows that sometimes, the most unlikely of candidates can produce surprising results.

Despite warnings from some in the school system that Mr. Waronker was a cultural mismatch for a predominantly minority school, he has outlasted his predecessors, and test scores have risen enough to earn J.H.S. 22 an A on its new school report card. The school, once on the city’s list of the 12 most dangerous, has since been removed.

Attendance among the 670 students is above 93 percent, and some of the offerings seem positively elite, like a new French dual-language program, one of only three in the city.

“It’s an entirely different place,” Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein said in a recent interview. “If I could clone Shimon Waronker, I would do that immediately.”

Not everyone would.

Mr. Waronker has replaced half the school’s teachers, and some of his fiercest critics are teachers who say he interprets healthy dissent as disloyalty and is more concerned with creating flashy new programs than with ensuring they survive. Critics note that the school is far from perfect; it is one of 32 in the city that the state lists as failing and at risk of closing. Even his critics, though, acknowledge the scope of his challenge.

“I don’t agree with a lot of what he’s done, but I actually recognize that he has a beast in front of him,” said Lauren Bassi, a teacher who has since left. “I’m not sure there’s enough money in the world you could pay me to tackle this job.”

Mr. Waronker, 39, a former public school teacher, was in the first graduating class of the New York City Leadership Academy, which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg created in 2003 to groom promising principal candidates. Considered one of the stars, he was among the last to get a job, as school officials deemed him “not a fit” in a city where the tensions between blacks and Hasidic Jews that erupted in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991 are not forgotten.

“They just said he may be terrific, but not the right person for that school,” Chancellor Klein said.

Some parents at J.H.S. 22, also called Jordan L. Mott, were suspicious, viewing Mr. Waronker as too much an outsider. In fact, one parent, Angie Vazquez, 37, acknowledged that her upbringing had led her to wonder: “Wow, we’re going to have a Jewish person, what’s going to happen? Are the kids going to have to pay for lunch?”

Ms. Vazquez was won over by Mr. Waronker’s swift response after her daughter was bullied, saying, “I never had no principal tell me, ‘Let’s file a report, let’s call the other student’s parent and have a meeting.’ ”

For many students and parents, the real surprise was that like them, Mr. Waronker speaks Spanish; he grew up in South America, the son of a Chilean mother and an American father, and when he moved to Maryland at age 11, he spoke no English.

“I was like, ‘You speak Spanish?’ ” recalled Nathalie Reyes, 12, dropping her jaw at the memory.

He also has a background in the military. Mr. Waronker joined R.O.T.C. during college and served on active duty for two years, including six months studying tactical intelligence. After becoming an increasingly observant Jew, he began studying at a yeshiva, thinking he was leaving his military training behind.

“You become a Hasid, you don’t think, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to suppress revolutions,’ ” Mr. Waronker said. But, he said, he drew on his military training as he tackled a school where a cluster of girls identifying themselves as Bloods stormed the main office one day looking for a classmate, calling, “We’re going to get you, you Crip.”

He focused relentlessly on hallway patrols, labeling one rowdy passageway the “fall of Saigon.” In an effort to eliminate gang colors, he instituted a student uniform policy.

He even tried to send home the students who flouted it, a violation of city policy that drew television news cameras. In his first year, he suspended so many students that a deputy chancellor whispered in his ear, “You’d better cool it.”

In trying times — when a seventh grader was beaten so badly that he nearly lost his eyesight, when another student’s arm was broken in an attack in the school gym, when the state listed J.H.S. 22 as a failing school — Mr. Waronker gathered his teachers and had them hold hands and pray. Some teachers winced with discomfort.

At first Mr. Waronker worked such long hours that his wife, a lawyer, gently suggested he get a cot at school to save himself the commute from their home in Crown Heights.

He also asked a lot from his teachers, and often they delivered. One longtime teacher, Roy Naraine, said, “I like people who are visionaries.”

Sometimes teachers balked, as when Mr. Waronker asked them to take to rooftops with walkie-talkies before Halloween in 2006. He wanted to avoid a repetition of the previous year’s troubles, when students had been pelted with potatoes and frozen eggs.

“You control the heights, you control the terrain,” he explained.

“I said, if you go on a roof, you’re not covered,” said Jacqueline Williams, the leader of the teachers’ union chapter, referring to teachers’ insurance coverage.

Mr. Waronker has also courted his teachers; one of his first acts as principal was to meet with each individually, inviting them to discuss their perspective and goals. He says he was inspired by a story of how the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitch spiritual leader, met with an Army general, then inquired after his driver.

“That’s leadership,” he said, “when you’re sensitive about the driver.”

Lynne Bourke-Johnson, now an assistant principal, said: “His first question was, ‘Well, how can I help you, Lynne?’ I’m like, ‘Excuse me?’ No principal had ever asked me that.”

The principal enlisted teachers in an effort to “take back the hallways” from students who seemed to have no fear of authority. He enlisted the students, too, by creating a democratically elected student congress.

“It’s just textbook counterinsurgency,” he said. “The first thing you have to do is you have to invite the insurgents into the government.” He added, “I wanted to have influence over the popular kids.”

These days, the congress gathers in Mr. Waronker’s office for leadership lessons. One recent afternoon, two dozen students listened intently as Mr. Waronker played President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s address after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, then opened a discussion on leadership and responsibility.

When an etiquette expert, Lyudmila Bloch, first approached principals about training sessions she runs at a Manhattan restaurant, most declined to send students. Mr. Waronker, who happened to be reading her book, “The Golden Rules of Etiquette at the Plaza,” to his own children (he has six), has since dispatched most of the school for training at a cost of $40 a head.

Flipper Bautista, 10, loved the trip, saying, “It’s this place where you go and eat, and they teach you how to be first-class.”

In a school where many children lack basic reading and math skills, though, such programs are not universally applauded. When Mr. Waronker spent $8,000 in school money to give students a copy of “The Code: The 5 Secrets of Teen Success” and to invite the writer to give a motivational speech, it outraged Marietta Synodis, a teacher who has since left.

“My kids could much better benefit from math workbooks,” Ms. Synodis said.

Mr. Waronker counters that key elements of his leadership are dreaming big and offering children a taste of worlds beyond their own. “Those experiences can be life-transforming,” he said.

So when Emmanuel Bruntson, 14, a cut-up in whom Mr. Waronker saw potential, started getting into fights, he met with him daily and gave him a copy of Jane Austen’s “Emma.”

“I wanted to get him out of his environment so he could see a different world,” Mr. Waronker said.

Mr. Waronker has divided the school into eight academies, a process that has led to some venomous staff meetings, as teachers sparred over who got what resources and which students. The new system has allowed for more personalized environments and pockets of excellence, like an honors program that one parent, Nadine Rosado, whose daughter graduated last year, called “wonderful.”

“It was always said that the children are the ones that run that school,” she said, “so it was very shocking all the changes he put in place, that they actually went along with it.” Students agree, if sometimes grudgingly, that the school is now a different place.

“It’s like they figured out our game,” groused Brian Roman, 15, an eighth grader with a ponytail.

Back in Crown Heights, Mr. Waronker says he occasionally finds himself on the other side of a quizzical look, with his Hasidic neighbors wondering why he is devoting himself to a Bronx public school instead of a Brooklyn yeshiva.

“We’re all connected,” he responds.

Gesturing in his school at a class full of students, he said, “I feel the hand of the Lord here all the time.”

last night a dj saved my life

Yes, once again (look at March 07) I was 'saved' by the much maligned reggaeton. Instead of a dance floor I was driving from Pittsburgh to Milwaukee. During some point of boredom and exhaustion and just plain not paying attention I missed not only the toll road through Gary, but also 94 through downtown Chicago! So I was stuck trawling around the city on the slow and costly 294. This is a boring route through 'hillbilly hell'-like suburbs as well as the usual strip malls, airports, and nowheresville that Chicagoland is to me. This was the final leg of my trip and that extra hour through the suburbs just sucked.

I was also sick of my music and growing tired of the stale stuff I heard on Chicago-area Quiet Storm shows, though I do like the fact that there are around 3 or 4 R&B stations to choose from in Chi-town. I happened to come across a good reggaeton cut and just stayed on the station out of curiosity. To my luck it was a nationwide broadcast of a reggaeton mix spliced w/house, techno, and some merengue. Some dj bloggers think that famous DJ Kazzanova on 103.1FM sucks, but hey, to my Anglo ears it was nice, and it did a heck of a job keeping me awake to the Wisconsin border. I almost crashed a few times paying the ever-changing toll rates, 80cents, to $1 to $1.50. Just when I narrowly avoided crashing into a barrier counting out my 80cents for the toll, the rate changed! But hey, the music was still good.

And what intrigued me was the periodic between tune shout-outs in Spanglish. Granted, I missed half of em, but could at least hear the names and cities. What is interesting about reggaeton is that it really is a 'pan-Latin' thing and you get the props going to Mexicans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Salvadorians, etc. And then it got me thinking about the intense immigration networks going on here that exist 'below the surface' to most of our eyes. Those of us not somehow connected to the Latino community can live our lives wholly oblivious to this huge part of our country, though just below 'the surface' of our lives exists a huge sub-culture, if it is even sub. And then you have these migration networks scattering families all over the place with kids in Arizona shouting out their friends in Oregon, girls in Chi-town giving big-ups to the crew in Jersey City and Atlanta, and on and on. Someone should probably walk a couple miles with these kids. It is a trip some cultural anthropologist or sociologist should undertake, though they'd probably render fascinating cultural insights into academic babble that makes me want to burn the book and fire all the professors. Why is that when dealing with something as fascinating and relatively accessible as Latino youth culture, academics have to make the entire study entirely unreadable to anyone without a PhD in Sociology. Oh well, I'll go look for this treatise on reggaeton, probably published by University of California Press or worse yet, some tiny East Coast liberal arts school. We'll see and I'll let you know. Interesting stuff happening in this country, interesting stuff.

The gods will not save you

I'm going to go against all my 'positivity' from Monday's post. I hope you heeded my advice.

At any rate, I found an interesting story from another person trying to fix up my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. This is another example of an artist working to save his or her hometown. I love the arts, I really do, despite my deconstructionist tendencies which say that art is 'decadent' and self-serving. I think the arts, in particular the public arts, are valuable resources of any healthy democracy. So in one sense I commend the gentleman in this article who is working to change Pittsburgh through the arts. Yet at the same time, I caution those who think that ART will change a city in decline. It is as weak of an argument as the one claiming that stadiums and convention centers will 'revitalize' a city. The arts are cool and even necessary, but will not save us. People in dead-end neighborhoods with high unemployment and the other associated problems need one thing, jobs! You can have all the art in the world, but it is worthless without gainfully employed individuals to enjoy it.

Please tell me a city that is defined by art? Perhaps in the distant past a city or 3 could eek out an existence as manufacturers of a particular craft or form of artwork. Maybe an city in the Renaissance existed solely to produce violins or something. But this was a niche and used for export. The problem with America is that we don't make anything, and you can fill as many offices as you want with 'high-tech' workers and coffee shop programmers and boutique clothing store operators and what not, but you will never replace manufacturing jobs. People say our economy 'advanced'. Did it? Or did those jobs just move elsewhere and people were left behind? It isn't like our world isn't manufacturing things anymore, we still buy cars and clothes and tvs, but that stuff is made in China or Mexico or wherever else the cheapest wages and environmental standards are at the moment.

So back to art. If a city isn't making anything (which few American cities are) then it is successful by at least managing the money used to make stuff. This is one reason artists are in NYC or LA or SF. Those cities are big into the arts because they are huge population centers because they once MADE STUFF (yes, even LA!--it beat out Detroit's manufacturing prowess in the 50s!) and those cities now have enough money to manage investments elsewhere, and the money made can then be used to buy art.

My long winded point is this, good luck to you who try and save the city through art or nightclubs, or a dining scene. Unfortunately, that is all window dressing. If you don't have good jobs to employ people who will waste their leisure time and money on those things, then the city falls. And fall it will. I love vibrant cities with entertainment and clean streets, but I also like places with an employed population. I would rather we all have jobs in some boring city than 10% of us living it up in the artist district while the rest of the city sinks in poverty. Enjoy America as it crumbles and becomes irrelevant and I guess use art to save someone because the other options (drugs, gangs, boredom) are far worse. But remember, you can't save your city, though you might be able to save each other.

BTW, if I haven't destroyed all your hope, here is the article that started this
http://americancity.org/article.php?id_article=318

America Must Change

It's winter and I'm super cold-my coat was stealthily removed from me at a bar last nite as the temperature hovered 'round -10. The Packers lost, New England will win the Super Bowl, and I'm starting to think this whole thing is as staged as WWF or as fixed as boxing. But www-wwait it gets worse! There is a presidential race!! A race w/a bunch of morons talking about nothing. Hmmm, have we heard ANYTHING about the massive trade deficit? No. About the dollar being worthless!? About our shitty infrastructure? Our debt and the looming recession? No. Our cities are shameful places ignored by everyone who can afford to. And we have no energy policy of value, no plan to deal with real issues facing our country. No, of course not. But there are plenty of poised and driven men and a woman who claim to have answers. Granted none of us know what the answers are, but they have them, if we only vote for them.

This presidential ignorance to our problems angers me, but negativity is of no use to me right now-I've had enough. Today is the day to celebrate Dr. King's life and work, however you do it. You might volunteer, listen to a speech, attend an event, or simply clean your kitchen on this day off (for the lucky). Frankly, I don't care what you do, but you really need to think about the state of this country and the direction it is in. Do more than bash the "other's" stupid and obtuse behaviors. You (and surely I) need to think about what we're doing and not doing and how we can actually try and impact this country in a positive way. Yeah this IS elementary school type stuff I'm suggesting, but to DO something different is much harder than the movies make it seem. So think long and hard, pray if your inclined, and look around and try to realize that if we keep going down this road as a nation things will only get worse. While China, Korea, Saudi Arabia and others build grand new cities, America continues to decay. This needs to stop.

I have no answer as to what you or I should do. But if we simply zone out into our computers, music, tv, and entertainment-maybe even laced w/a chemical additive, nothing will get better. Toss away the distracting amenities for a minute and think. I'll get back to you later.

For now and because this is a part-time music blog check out this old Raheem Devaughn track that speaks to this conundrum: "Who"-by Raheem Devaughn-'The Love Experience'
and asks us:
"Who's gonna really care? Who's gonna take us there?
Who's gonna change their life? Who's gonna pay the price?
Who's gonna take a stand? Who's gonna live for love?"

I wonder and I also think I know the answer.

If M.I.A. could only sing

If M.I.A. could sing we might be blessed with something amazing, but unfortunately she can't so we get a gimmicky mashing of styles with thin vocals and incoherent chants. But there is hope if you like the idea of M.I.A. but realize that the lps just aren't up to the hype (though I might still buy them both). The hope is in Santogold. Her music is something else huh? New Wave, dubby, electro-pop with 'real singing'!! Funny how that is a blessing these days, like, "Man you gotta check out this artist, she can actually sing!"

If you ever listened to the great cd How Do I? by Res, you might be surprised to know that Santogold, or Santi White, co-wrote most the the songs! She also put out a decent album fronting the punk group Stiffed, then hid out in Brooklyn or Micronesia or someplace and came out with this mad mix of sounds. Think MIA, Spank Rock, and the mashing up of genres we get b/c of djs like Diplo. Funny thing is this gal can sing, really well infact, and has the swagger and attitude and style and other BS you need to be popular for more than 5 weeks.

To scrap at the tip of another iceberg she might also be part of a large wave of emerging black artists who don't feel the need to be conformed by the contemporary trappings of hip-hop and R&B, as seen by other artists like J*Davey and what the NYTimes calls blipsters (sic).

Perhaps this post is just me pandering to hipsters instead of discussing useful matters such as the transportation nightmare our country is in, or the collapsing housing market, or even the depressing war. But we all like music and need a little something to keep ignoring reality. Though I think her music might force us to pay attention to the world outside of our smoky dive bars and facebook accounts at least once in a while.

Now the bad news. Santogold doesn't even having anything released yet! Which actually fits perfectly into today's underground hipster hype machine. Isn't everything better without an actual release? Then you don't have any material through which to pass judgement and shatter you musical hopes/hypes. As someone who loves new music, (but hates 98% of what is out there since 1990) I am truly hopeful about her 'impending' release. Though I said the same about Amy Winehouse and she is on the verge of an understandable self-destruction. It is that 'hope' in new artists like this that keeps me going.

Here is an old Stiffed video. If I'd been an A&R man this might have charted alongside the best of No Doubt, but instead vanished into the dustbins of music history.



Listen to her tracks now at the appropriately named site Hypemachine

Then support her by requesting the music on your local radio (like the fabulous 88.9MKE) or see a show or be on the lookout for a release.

Empanadas are the new cupcakes

Yes, I know, Youtube posts are the sign of extreme laziness. But this clip is just too hilarious to pass up. It is a little long, but worth it. Another sign that my generation's attempts at bucking the system are hyper-consumerism and selfishness. Oh well. Onward, to the Hipster Olympics!



If you enjoyed this, you may also want to hunt down the film Groove Tube for the hilarious "Sex Olympics" sketch.

Reluctant Gay Icon

Thanks to the kindness of a friend I was able to see Rufus Wainwright at the Pabst Theater Monday night. Strange thing is, until I was offered the tickets, I had no idea he was even playing. I also knew none of his new songs and hadn't heard anything of his since the Poses era stuff, 3 albums ago. Granted I'd seen Rufus at the 9:30 Club way back in 2002, but my have things changed. No longer was he the long haired youth playing the piano alone; now he confidently stood in front of a large band, occasionally tickled the keys, and played the guitar; along with 3 other guitarists, a bass player, drummer, and 2/3 horns. But his voice is still unique and powerful. I went with no expectations but the hope to hear "Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk".

Performing to a packed crowd at the Pabst, Milwaukee's gay community came out in full force. It is worth noting a few things: the band were in absurd designer costumes, there was less playful banter than before, and the whole event was being taped for a DVD. Therefore they redid songs and re-started songs a few times. I didn't realize how popular the guy was/is until the show, not only was the venue packed, but fans knew every song, stood, screamed, and were emotionally moved at every lyric. I enjoyed it, but have to admit I was yawning at points and often more interested in watching the roving filmmakers than the band. That isn't to say it was a dull show, just that I was tired, knew none of his music, and frankly preferred the mellow tunes to the slightly dance and rock oriented numbers being thumped about.

The early set consisted of mellow tracks with heavy acoustic guitars. My references are limited, so it reminded me of Dreamland era Aztec Camera and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Later there were straight up dark tracks, then a slew of Judy Garland covers, some Celtic ballads, and rocking stuff from the new cd.

I have nothing else to say about the show other than the random things it brought to my mind. For example, my brother had an idea that music fans are like sports fans and instead of talking about athletes we talk about this drummer from this band is moving to this band, instead of the linebacker is being traded from The Bears to The Falcons. I know it is a strange idea, but kinda true, especially with most music buffs not to athletic (not even into armchair athletics). Having missed 5 years of Rufus' music reminded me of my own inability to stay in touch with pro sports when I once knew minor league goalies who later went to the NHL All-Star team. Or I think that Mark Messier is still playing in Edmonton (FYI he retired after NYC). I feel the same way about music, that when I stopped listening, time stopped. Rufus Wainwright should still have long hair, smoke during the set (which he didn't do), be on dope, and sing "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk". Well, 5 busy years came and went and people did stuff, and changed, and well, that is life. I just can't be bothered.

What else, hmmm...Rufus dressed in Lederhosen for the Milwaukee crowd which was a nice touch. He also invited fans and his current lover on stage for some antics. At the end of the show (which approached 2 hours!) the guitarist played a banjo to two swooning girls up front and I looked back at the mad crowed cheering for an encore and thought of the Joe Strummer show I saw 5 years ago and how the fans still cheered and wouldn't budge after 2 encores and the bouncers commenting that they'd never seen such devotion. I remember that show and almost cried remembering the acoustic version of "Island Hopping" Joe did as his 2nd encour . Anyway, enough indulgence. I left the show with my friend without seeing the encore. I guess I'll get a 2nd chance in 2012. Dag.

After arriving at home tired and bleary eyed, I couldn't go to bed because the perfect weather and full moon just demanded my attention!

FYI: I later read that the show went 3 hours, he dressed in drag, and did a choreographed dance with the band! Maybe we shoulda stayed a little while longer.