His Own Medicine

Image by esti- via Flickr

Nearly all of the holiday decorations are deployed at the home of the Parent Imperfect. Ms. Connie is sitting on the couch pounding out her own version of “O Come All Ye Faithful.” Can the holiday be far away?

There is no snow on the ground yet, but the signs of winter are all around the PI. Last week came the assigned evening for Vince and Connie to pick up the ski equipment that will make possible their participation in the YES Program this year. Since the PI had not gotten around to returning last year’s equipment yet, that had to happen, as well.

The PI had the audacity to go to a meeting at The Boston Foundation about the ongoing crisis in Haiti, so Liz would have the special joy of navigating the chaos that overtakes YES on these evenings.

The PI expected to hear from a reconstruction official of the Haitian government, but there was no official to be found. Perhaps he had to stay home because of the political crisis resulting from the very questionable elections that had just happened in his country. Instead, the Haiti representative of Action Aid gave his view of the situation, which was probably more interesting than what any government official could have said.

The wonders of SMS text allowed the PI to send Dear Vince a message to be sure that all was well at YES. It took at least 15 minutes, but Vince’s response finally popped up on the PI’s Blackberry.

“They wouldn’t give us anything because you were so late returning our equipment from last year.”

“But Will told me not to bother making an extra trip to return equipment,” thought the PI. “I knew I should have gone there! Why hadn’t Liz called him?” Because there is no cell service in the friendly confines of the Boston Foundation, of course!

Unable to get Vince on the phone, no matter where he stood, he tried texting again. The text seemed to go through, but there was never any guarantee. “I can’t believe that we’re going to have to make another trip down there for skis.”

Seeing no alternative, he put on his coat and headed to the elevator, missing the conclusion reminding people how they could help in Haiti. He was completely outside the building lobby before he had a decent cell signal. As always, Vince didn’t answer, but at least Liz had her phone with her.

“Did you remind Will that he had said that we didn’t need to return the equipment until tonight?,” he asked Liz, without bothering to say hello or ask how she was doing after a harried visit to YES.

“Uhhhhh…did you talk to Vince?”

“No. Of course he didn’t answer his phone. He texted me saying that they didn’t give you the equipment.” His question hung in the cellosphere as Liz let out a long sigh.

“They did give us the equipment. He was just playing your own game with you.”

The PI could feel the smug teenager smiling in the seat next to his mother.

“You’re kidding. I couldn’t contact him, so I ran out of the meeting to make sure you knew to talk to Will. I’m all the way out on the street.”

“I can’t believe he texted you…” The PI could hear Vince in the background, “Tell him it was your idea.”

“Oh…so you were involved in the big joke, too?”

“Yes, but I thought he was going to call you and then, of course, tell you he was kidding. You know it’s exactly the kind of thing you would do…”

The PI quickly got off the phone, not knowing if he should laugh or shout. He thought about going back through security to the elevator and then to the tenth floor, but the meeting was probably over, anyway. Instead, he turned toward Back Bay Station and the return subway to Stony Brook. The subway ride was good, calming his own frustrations with Vince for leading him on a wild good chase. He had, after all, only been giving him the early Christmas present of some of his own medicine.

When the PI arrived home, Vince was hard at work on Math, hoping to avoid the worst of the PI’s wrath. When he saw that there was no wrath, the Math quickly gave way to the cell phone. Between texts, Vince apologized for causing the PI to run out of his meeting, but he had a very difficult time doing it with a straight face.

“We don’t believe in grades around here…”

A nasty cold and a very big work project have kept the Parent Imperfect away for too long. The work project will be on his mind every day for the next month. He’ll be in vacation envy soon!

The Same Old Place has returned to being just that, sort of. The families of those who died there have had to find a way to keep on keepin’ on. The week of the shootings, the PI and Connie went to a community lunch at the SOP sponsored by a neighborhood social network. The place was busier than the PI had even seen it, with more cops that the Halloween party at the station. Connie wasn’t sure she wanted to be there. “This place just feels different now. It’s just not the same.” What is the Same Old Place when it’s not the same?

On a very cold Friday night, the PI joined a small, shivering group at a “vigil” in front of the First Baptist Church of Jamaica Plain. Unlike the community lunch, the PI knew almost everyone at the vigil. After walking, together, past the windows of the pizza place and waving to the guy making pizza, they stood with candles on the lawn of the church and talked about community peace and everything else. The PI could only wonder about all of the people were who had walked in the March for Peace that he and Connie had done a couple of weeks before. It occurred to him that he was probably the only person to be at both events. Maybe there really are two Jamaica Plains…or three…or sixteen!

And now, Christmas approaches. Against all odds, the spirit of the holiday is starting to creep into the house. At this moment, a CD with Christmas music is on the stereo. The next thing you know, someone will bring in a tree from the outdoors to dry out in the living room. While they try to keep it alive for a few days, they’ll put all sorts of trinkets on it and string electric lights through its branches. What would someone think if they did this in August?

For the first time in a long while, Vince had an answer yesterday to the eternal question of whether or not anything of note happened at the nation’s oldest public school.

Oh, yeah…Dad. Someone set a fire in the computer lab this morning. The fire alarm went off and we had to get out of the school. L’s locker is right there, so he had to go to the office to be questioned. They have their suspects.”

“Ah…so it was arson,?” chimed in Liz.

“What grade is he in?,” asked Connie, curious, as always, and they all had a good laugh.

As if on cue, Vince’s Math grades have moved steadily, if not dramatically upward since he dropped off Facebook and turned off the phone while studying. He, of course, insists that these things are all coincidental.

Perhaps it is all coincidence. After all, Liz did spend eight hours working with him on Math over the weekend. “It’s a good  thing we don’t care about grades around here…” mused the PI, happy, for once, to be shut out of the homework helper role.

In the last week, Ms. Connie has auditioned for two plays. that will show in the spring, Cinderella and Aladdin. The PI hopes to spend another April vacation in the theatrical frame of mind.

Not Exactly the Same Old Place

For once, on Sunday night Liz was the first one to get the e-mail. “There’s been a shooting at The Same Old Place. Boston.com says that one person was killed and several people were injured.”

The mild euphoria resulting from the Patriots’ dramatic victory over the Colts drained quickly out of the Parent Imperfect. “Who? How? Why???”

“According to Chuck, an argument inside turned into a gunfight, but no one knows what really happens.”

The Same Old Place is just that. It is one of the few eating establishments (as opposed to bars that serve food) that has survived the waves of commercial gentrification that have turned Jamaica Plain center into a trendy shopping area. It was there when the PI moved to the neighborhood in the mid-1970’s, and nothing much has changed. The food is still OK, the workers are still friendly and the owner, Fred, remains as ornery as they come.

Fred apparently wasn’t in his shop when the shooting started and was probably still in shock when the newspaper asked him for a comment. “Nothing like that ever happened before.” Miraculously, although the place was riddled with bullet holes, none of Fred’s employees or any of the other Sunday evening patrons were hit.

It wasn’t until the next evening that the PI found out that three young men were dead and a female passerby was wounded, Three stories that could have gone so many different ways ended in a moment. Police sources immediately suggested that this was a gang-related conflict, but no one could know that quickly what really happened. With his mouth open to inhale his breakfast quesadilla, Vince paused at the Metro section on his way to the comics.  Attracted by the headline, “Man held after 4 shot in pizzeria,” he carefully read the entire article about the pizza place he passes every day on his way to school and, again, on his way back home. The article didn’t mention any fatalities.

Waiting for some deep reaction, all the PI got was, “That’s crazy. They even shot a lady that was walking by on the street.” And then he was on to the comics.

“So what do you think about all these people getting shot in a place we go all the time?”

“I said…it’s crazy. What do you think about it?”

The PI would up for a long one about “the two Jamaica Plains” and “no jobs” and “the homicide rate among young African-American men,” but he could see that Vince was already onto the the next thing.

“It means that no matter where you are you need to pay attention to what’s going on around you.”

As if to comment on the profundity of his father’s comment, Vince let go a massive yawn (it was, after all, 6:15AM. The PI pulled himself off the stool and headed back to Vince’s turkey sandwich for lunch.

To no one but the cat, he said, “Are we really so used to living in the middle of all this that four people get shot down the street and we barely pay attention?”

That night, the PI took Vince to soccer practice just before 7:30PM, almost exactly 24 hours after the shootings. As they approached the Same Old Place, the PI noticed that the sign was turned off.

“Wow…he’s closed. He never closes.”

But when they got to the store, they saw that someone had just forgotten to turn on the sign. The place was open and quite busy.

After remarking that they had replaced the front window that had been shattered by bullets, Vince had the explanation for the decision to not miss a beat. “He probably knows he’s going to get more business now.”

A Tale of Two Numbers

Numbers populate the world of the Parent Imperfect.

4370–This is, of course, the total number of pages in the seven books of the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Connie decided to discover this number right after she finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. She had completed the series just in time for the opening of the much-awaited film of the same name. She will join the throngs viewing the film today, along with a group of cousins and friends from school.

The Parent Imperfect can wish it wasn’t so, but the fact is that this unmatched example of global mass culture has played an important role in the development of Ms. Connie and her brother. The series took hold of Vince’s imagination at a moment in third grade when the challenges of reading were becoming a big issue for him. Over time, his immersion into the world of Harry, Hagrid, Hermione, hoarcruxes  and Hogwarts certainly helped him overcome whatever obstacle to reading had inhabited his brain. It wasn’ t just Rowling’s ravings (his excellent third-grade teachers also had a lot to do with it), but the power of the spell cast by these books was at least as powerful as “Expeliaramus!”

The books languished in a dusty pile for years as Connie showed no interest in them. But something motivated her to pick up the first one, and she was hooked. She made it through all 4370 in less than 8 months and at the end of it she created “A Hogwarts Halloween” for her ninth birthday party.

6781–This number, not unlike the number of Potter pages, represents the number of SMS text messages that passed into or out of Vince’s phone during the month of October. How much his world has changed since he put down the last of the Harry Potter books!

Text messages and Facebook define communication among Vince and his peers. Many of his friends most certainly reach a higher number of messages each month than Vince does.

For Vince, this number represents 6871 times that he broke with his immediate spatial reality to connect with someone outside of it. He is often much more focused on the next message than the thing that the person in front of him is about to say (especially when that someone is the PI). More than a few of these messages carry an after-midnight time stamp, so they interrupt sleep, as well.

Many of his friends seem to have the executive functions to multi-task in this way quite easily. The PI can’t imagine how this works. For Vince, howevcer, these are 6871 distractions from the here and now that can be hard to recover from. In many cases, the here and now becomes the SMS interchange.

The arrival of the first grade report from the nation’s oldest public school provided the perfect occasion for the frustrated parents to remove the phone during homework periods and at bedtime. By coincidence, a serious Facebook incident among his friends prompted Vince to suspend his account, as well (“I can’t deal with the drama”). The positive results of the partial fast have appeared almost immediately, but the text disturbance is far from over.

Dream Pirates

By far the best thing about Daylight Savings Time is that daybreak is now underway when the Parent Imperfect begins the elaborate process involved in getting Vince out of bed each morning. There is something about getting up in the dark that makes morning that much more onerous.

Today, when the PI made his first pass, the large creature in the small bed was already awake.

“Dad.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Last night I had my first really freaky dream in a long time.”

“That’s strange. I had a really bad dream, too,” said the PI.

“What was yours about?”

“Too crazy… What was so scary about your dream?”

“Our family was pirates, and you got killed.”

“Nice. Are you sure that’s not wishful thinking?”

“Very funny.”

Given the relative monotony of the consulting trade, a part-time gig as a pirate might do the PI some good, but it would be hard to work it so that he could be at the bus at 3PM each afternoon.

The PI couldn’t help but wonder about he and Vince both waking up with memorable dreams on their minds, but it was time to make breakfasts and lunches.

Just about 2.5 hours after waking Mr. Vince, the PI and Connie moved through the drizzle to her school. After dropping Connie at her classroom, the PI exited via the middle school, which seems to be a different place this year.

One of the teachers had recently posted poems by sixth graders. A short poem, written by a boy that the PI knows, caught his eye on this morning of memorable dreams.

Dreams

Figures of the imagination

Paintings from the mind…

What are they made of?

Every day, every minute, every second of your life.

Darkness and negative energy fuel nightmares.

What gives birth to darknessand negativity?

Fear.

Family Ties

The Parent Imperfect is back into another traveling season, having  just completed a four-day work trip to Washington, DC. He spent most of that time confined a charming little boutique hotel in Georgetown, leaving the parenting and the shuttling to Ms. Liz. Travel costs.

When he absolutely had to get some air, he walked down 25th St. to the Kennedy Center for a chilly peek at the Potomac. Now, he knows why they call that historic eyesore the Watergate!

He separated himself from the meetings for one evening to share an appetizer and dessert with Jane, the oldest of his three nieces and Kathy, Jane’s daughter. Jane and the PI had not spoken together in this way for years, and it was his very first real conversation with Kathy. Few would mistake the PI’s ties to his extended family as close-knit.

Since cancer took her husband this past summer, Jane has been trying to adjust to single parenting two teenagers. One suffocating day in August, Jane and Kathy left Washington with Jane’s son, Jacob, as he headed to Florida to begin his freshman year in college. The ailing father, Jon, had insisted that Jake’s school plans go forward without interruption, and he probably took comfort in the granting of his wish. Before they could even get Jacob’s bags unpacked, Jane’s cellphone tingled with the news of Jon’s passing.

Barely two months later, she sat next to the PI at the trendy Dish, eating mussels and drinking a glass of wine she recognized. Jane is back to work, cooking supper for two instead of four, and trying to make each day follow the previous one.

As if the tectonic shifts in family life had not been enough, the company where Jane works had been sold while she was on family leave, making for a challenging return to her senior management role there. Why would anything be easy? And then there was everyday life, like the apparent leak in the roof that had kept her awake during the previous evening’s downpour.

Not all in Jane’s life is grief and adjustment. She laughed easily as she reported that she and Kathy had attended the Stewart-Colbert rally on the Mall, and had taken some sort of hope from it. Jane knows the PI as the somewhat eccentric activist of the family who would welcome that news. Where has he gone?

Too quickly, it was time to pay the bill and walk Jane and Kathy back to their car at the corner of Pennsylvania and 26th. The PI, hoping to offer Jane some support, had probably gotten more than he gave by moving a bit closer to two family members whose story helps put imperfect parenthood in needed perspective.

Peace Walk

It was about 10AM on a beautiful Sunday morning when the Mom of one of Connie’s friends called to see what the girl was doing that afternoon. Would C. like to accompany her friend (also a C.) on a “Walk for Peace” that was to begin at 1PM, very near the Hernández School? This Mom obviously wanted to attend the walk, herself, and knew that it would be a much more pleasant event if her daughter had a friend along for the walk.

The Parent Imperfect had heard about this effort to show the community’s commitment to end violence in the neighborhood, and had thought about attending. Sundays being what they are, he never would have made it had it not been for the call.

The temperature had risen above 65 when the PI and Connie arrived at St. Mary of the Angels Catholic Church for the beginning of the march. There was no sign of C.’s friend or her mother, but over a hundred others had gathered to make a statement about peace. Lots of kids were among those present, but C. didn’t recognize any of them and was immediately ready to leave. Just as the PI was ready to relent and head back to the car, C’s friend and both of her parents showed up and this had magically become a place that C. was very happy to be.

Minutes later, the group left the church and headed down Seaver St. toward Egleston Square. Within two minutes of moving into the street, the march passed Connie’s school. What does a fourth grader think when a march for peace passes right by her school? For the PI, it felt great to be in the street, a place where he had spent much more time at another point not SO long ago.

The march felt like a real representation of the community, both racially and age-wise. Those wearing the bright yellow T-shirts given out to organizers of the event were not exactly the same group usually seen leading street marches in Jamaica Plain.

Asked by a reporter from the The Boston Bulletin what made this march different than other like it, one marcher from a community safety group called Beantown Security said, “It’s coming from the folks who used to be, as they described it, the ‘knuckleheads,’ the people causing the problem…they used to be the folks we were chanting to, but now they are chanting with us.”

Maybe. The marchers were definitely a diverse group of people, led by many young people from the community. Among those providing security for the march were members of a predominantly African-American motorcycle club, all wearing black leather vests with a white “B” emblazoned across the back.

As the group headed into Egleston Square, Connie greeted a man she knew from the Youth Enrichment Services program that takes her skiing during the winter months. As she greeted this man, who seems to know every YESKID by name, she saw that his young son was carrying a sign that said, “I never knew my uncle because of violence…Hector Morales ‘Hec’ 1971-1990”. She read the sign and said nothing, but was clearly coming to her own conclusions.

The march became noisier as it turned onto a busy Washington Street and people began blowing their horns and joining in from the sidewalks. The first corner it passed was the same one that Connie and the PI cross every morning as she heads to school. They turned down Boylston Street (not to be confused with the main street in the Back Bay), and walked past The Brewery, the nonprofit complex housing both Grassroots International, where the PI had worked for six years and City Life/Vida Urbana, a community organization that been at the center of the PI’s life for all of the 1980s. The neighborhood felt as much like home as anyplace could.

As the heat sent drops of sweat down the PI’s spine, he hoped that the boisterous group was going to be taking a quick turn back to the church, but the organizers had other ideas. Having gotten this group together, they wanted maximum visibility, marching past Academy Homes, into Jackson Square and up Centre St. alongside Bromley-Heath Housing Project and right past Mozart Park. The route was carefully chosen to bring the walkers past thousands of people who needed to hear the message. All along the way, people in cars and on the street continued to show support for the idea of ending violence in the community. The PI’s knees were protesting more than he was as the walk (finally) came to a stop on a bridge over the MBTA’s Orange Line. There would be more music and speeches there, but Ms. Connie had to head home to prepare for a piano lesson.

On the way back to Roslindale, Connie was tired and already nervous about the piano lesson for which she had not prepared. She was hoping that their participation in the march might lead the PI to say that she didn’t need to go to piano, but no such luck….As her life so often insisted, she was definitely on to the next thing in some way, but the Walk for Peace was sure to be the topic of many future questions.

The Furry Obstacle

In this house, even playing the piano implies overcoming obstacles.

The Parent Imperfect will definitely go crazy if he hears those Halloween dirges one more time. Ms. Connie is in the frantic final stages of practice for her upcoming Halloween piano recital.Worse than the PI’s reaction is that of the sweet feline, Sheba, who goes into a frenzy whenever Connie tickles the keys. We can’t tell if the music bothers her, or she’s angry because she wants to be playing.

Connie is taking a fourth year of lessons with Mrs. R. in Jamaica Plain. She continues to struggle to find time to practice, so her improvement seems slow. She seems to enjoy playing, though, so the lessons continue. Piano is one of the things (along with gymnastics and theater) that might be harder for Connie to keep up with if she was going to a more demanding school. Liz, who took lessons for years, herself, helps Connie when moods allow it. The PI just sits back and gets great enjoyment from seeing the one of his children do another thing that he might have wanted to do, but never did.

Every time the PI thinks of playing the piano, he gets a flashback to Sister Cecilia Marie, whacking him on the fingers with the wooden pointer when he made mistakes. He believes that memory comes from an incident in fourth grade, Connie’s current grade.

Last weekend, her teacher organized a special practice workshop for Connie and another student. Since she had not prepared, as required, Connie had a complete meltdown on the way to the class. Always in control, the PI was definitely ready to turn around and go home, but he eventually got her to the workshop and it seemed to go just fine. Luckily, Mrs. R. is going through a period of being understanding about the limitations faced by her young students. Connie returned from the workshop with a previously unseen sense of motivation

As a sign of her zeal, Connie was up practicing before school this morning, while the PI prepared her lunch. After playing both of her recital pieces almost flawlessly (according to a true philistine), Connie burst into the kitchen.

“Did you hear??? I even kept playing when Sheba crawled across my lap. That one little stop was when she dug her nails into my thigh.”

Balance and Harmony

 

Image by mirsasha via Flickr

 

The Parent Imperfect is not quite ready for it, but the first term of the school year at the nation’s oldest public school is almost over. He and Liz have given Vince much more freedom to organize his own schoolwork this year, on the condition that all would be up for reconsideration when the first official results are in. Given all of the PI’s historical pontificating about the uselessness of grades, this is just one more irony of imperfect parenthood.

Unlike last year, Vince seems to like all of his teachers this time around, and is even guardedly enthusiastic about a couple of his classes. None of this year’s teachers seems to be consciously humiliating him on a regular basis, which makes it much easier for him to drag himself out of bed each day at 6AM. That said, Math and Latin continue to give him a very hard time. By all accounts, this is true for a good part of his cohort, especially the boys.

In response to pressure to provide a more supportive learning community, the school now offers a couple of different options for students to receive extra help with their studies. There are after school help sessions offered by older students and the school also runs a Saturday Success School on Saturday mornings, beginning each November. In addition to these options, many people opt for pricey private tutoring, especially in Math and Latin.

Last year, Liz and the PI thought about these options all year and talked a lot with Vince about them. For all of the talking, extra help never really happened, except at home. This took a toll on both parents and on their relationships with Mr. Vince. This year, they really want to pursue another option, but Vince shows no real interest in anything that requires him to put more time into his studies. This conversation will come to a head in the next couple of weeks as the drum roll builds to the release of the first report cards.

As the puzzled parents go round and round about this with each other and their son, a discussion appeared on the school’s community list-serv suggesting that they are not alone. A new parent sparked the debate by innocently asking, “Why do so many students at the school need outside tutoring?”

What followed was a fascinating set of responses that suggest what parents think of themselves and their child’s school. Some parents want to believe that students at the nation’s oldest public school don’t require any more tutoring than at any other school in the city, but most know better.

Selection for the school is based on the student’s grades in grades 5 & 6, as well as their performance on the standardized test used for admissions to the nation’s private schools. A teacher at the school suggests that this admissions process does not measure “intelligence” and is, therefore, not a good predictor of who will do well at the school. As a result, many gain admission who are not prepared to do well there.

The PI agrees, in part, but it seems a little odd to say that those who don’t do well at the school lack “intelligence.” A good percentage of students at the school do not thrive in an environment in which teachers are under pressure to take a large number of students through a demanding curriculum without time to give attention to the needs of individual students. Hence, the need for “extra help.” A lack of “intelligence” (whatever that is) might be one reason why a student doesn’t respond to this environment, but there are certainly others.

Reflecting on all this, one parent offered a particularly thoughtful observation to members of the mail-list. Speaking particularly about new students at the school she writes:

They  (and us) were shocked by the volume, pace , strictness and demands for the organizational skills which very few at their age may have acquired. As a result they are not “doing so well” as they (and us) are used to. It is upsetting, embarrassing, stressful, threatening etc. I am not sure who feels more uncomfortable, the kids or the parents. I also considered tutoring after school in Latin, but I am deciding against it at the moment. Can we and should we overcompensate for the new demands in presentation, organization and life skills? What are your kids mostly struggling with? I doubt that it is the content. My family’s intention now is to make sure that all of the elements of life which were important to us and created balance and harmony are returned and remain intact, in spite of the homework I hope that the vigor that is making everyone so stressed will take on an intellectual quality, only then the school deserves its reputation.

Amen (as the PI searches for old recommendations of a Latin tutor).

To the End of the Land

While the Parent Imperfect was in Bolivia, the police arrested a 35-year-old man in relation to the recent murders in Mattapan. Most of the victims in this case were young people, but, if this suspect turns out to be the the one who did this (how could it have been a single person?), those who talk about this as an example of youth violence out of control need to change their/our tune.

News of the election, the wars and the next murder has quickly pushed the Mattapan story off the front pages, but it will be a while before the PI lets go of it. Perhaps it affected him the way it did because another story, even deeper in The Globe, had put in his mind the question of how parents deal with violence and its consequences.

A couple of Sundays ago, The Globe “Books” section contained a review of the latest publication of an Israeli author named David Grossman. The PI has been something of a fan of this man’s writing since, as a young reporter, Grossman ventured into Palestine and started talking to people about the Occupation. The result was an important book called, The Yellow Wind. Writing in Hebrew, Grossman was, and remains, very much a part of the Jewish State, a fact which gives even more credence to his powerful critique of many policies of that state.

As he wrote, The Yellow Wind, Grossman and his wife were raising a son, Uri. Soon after the turn of the millennium, Uri faced Israel’s requirement of obligatory military service. One wonders what conversations took place between Uri and his family as the time of service approached. An increasing number of courageous young people refuse to serve in the Israeli Defense Force, but the costs of doing so are very high. For whatever set of reasons, Uri decided to perform his service in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

The decision obviously stayed with Grossman long after his son put on his uniform. Soon after Uri entered the IDF, his father began work on a novel introducing, Ora, a middle-aged woman nearly overcome by fear for her son who is serving in the IDF. As the novel oozed out of Grossman, tensions increased to the boiling point in the Gaza Strip. Taking time out from his writing, Grossman engaged in a very public debate over Gaza strategy with the Israeli Prime Minister of the moment. The fact that his son was in the army must have lent urgency to his activity.

The wheels of fate turned. Of course, Israel launched a violent incursion into Gaza and, of course, Uri Grossman was part of it. On the last day of hostilities, as the IDF, having inflicted “sufficient” damage, was withdrawing, Uri Grossman was killed in action. Grossman’s own goodbye note to Uri, written just after his son’s falling, remains etched in the PI’s mind.

The younger Grossman was one of the last of hundreds of people killed in what could hardly have been called a “battle,” but Uri’s story has stayed with the PI. It took some time, but Grossman eventually found a way to turn back to his book. As he wrote, he dedicated even more time to public opposition to Israeli policy, even as he acknowledged that such opposition seemed increasingly futile. He finished, “To the End of the Land” in 2008, and the English translation is now available. When he finally gets his hands on it, reading this book may help put homework struggles with Vince in some kind of perspective.