Lefty Parent » General

Update on My Status

Cooper Zale — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:17:51 +0000

Me today post staples and haircut

Just a quick note that I have had a really good couple weeks of recovery and am back to writing and typing reasonably well. I am right now working on completing my “Confessions of a Lefty Parent” book proposal that I plan to send to a literary agent that my brother Peter has a connection with. I hope to be posting pieces on my blog again by the end of this week.

I appreciate all of you checking in presumably to see if I am posting again.

My scar

Cooper Zale… aka Leftyparent

Help Me Support North Valley Caring Services

Cooper Zale — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 01:28:20 +0000

FYI… I am recuperating well this week from my surgery Feb 1 to remove a 3 centimeter hematoma (blood clot) from my brain caused presumably by my bicycle accident last November. I am off work and my other normal volunteer activities until my neurosurgeon sees a CAT scan that shows my brain has returned to its proper position inside my skull from where it was displaced by the blood clot. But one of my yearly efforts is too critical to let even this stop me…

It’s nearly March again, and the one time in the year I pitch my circle of family and friends for a donation to a worthy cause…

I am soliciting donations for the Saturday, March 20 North Valley Caring Services (NVCS)} Bike-a-thon to collect pledges to support this vey crucial community organization located in and supporting a very poor, at-risk, mostly Hispanic community just three miles east of where I live in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.

The Langdon/Orion Street neighborhood, where NVCS is located, is one of the poorest neighborhoods in all of Los Angeles, known for its gang activity, poverty, homelessness and dense population. North Valley Caring Services continues a herculean effort to help that marginalized community help itself. Their current programs include:

* A breakfast program and food pantry for the neighborhood residents and homeless folks in the area

* Early childhood education classes

* Parenting support including English classes

* After-school activities for children and teens

* Referral & health-related services

The need is particularly great this year, because of our “Great Recession” and the fact that NVCS will soon be losing their “First Five” grant, that has been a major source of funding their programs for pre-schoolers and their parents. I was thrilled to be able to raise over $700 last year, urging my friends, familil and extended network to make a pledge to NVCS in honor of my April 2 birthday.

At my U-U congregation we help NVCS and the community it supports in other ways to. We collect food every Sunday for their food bank. During the winter holidays we buy outfits for all the younger kids in their programs, which are given to the kids by Santa at the yearly NVCS Christmas party. Since we llive in an area where many people have citrus and other fruit trees in their yards (and much of it falls on the ground and rots), I am helping organize an effort to go on Sunday afternoon and pick people’s friut and take it to the food pantry. It seems crazy to have a yard full of rotting oranges when two miles down the street people don’t have enough food to eat.

So this year, because of my brain injury, I will be riding only in spirit, but gathering even more pledges for my at-risk neighbors to the east, and the wonderful organization that supports them.

I would welcome any pledge. I pitch my family and fellow congregation members to pledge a dollar a mile ($26 total) or whatever. Even $5 or $10 would be a great help. If you would like to join the effort, and maybe honor my April 2 birthday to boot, you can email me at czale@socal.rr.com or call me at 818.298.5386.

Thoughts on Keillor’s Christmas Rant

Cooper Zale — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:48:30 +0000

So a UU Facebook friend alerted me and the rest of our circle yesterday that Garrison Keillor had published an editorial rant, “Don’t Mess with Christmas”, on Salon.com directed at Unitarian-Universalists and their penchant for revisionist hymns and carols. My friend’s few sentences were full of anger and denouncement of Keillor as unworthy of making such a criticism, and were very uncharacteristic for my fellow UU’s usual demeanor. His words had definitely pushed her buttons somehow.

When I finally was able to read Keillor’s piece, I was pretty shocked myself. It was angry and denounced others with none of his signature understated and understanding humor about the human condition. It seemed more like something you’d expect from Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, but not this gentle giant from Minnesota.

I am a big fan of Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion”, including his stories from Lake Woebegone and the funny and poignant but reassuringly human goings on of the residents. His monologues of the goings on in this bucolic Minnesota town often include lampoons of Lutherans and UUs, poking fun at (some) UU’s penchant to take God out of otherwise Christian religious rituals or couch spiritual wisdom with a disclaimer acknowledging God, “or whatever or whoever you believe in”.

To be fully candid, as a member of a Unitarian-Universalist congregation for the past 18 years and having studied to some degree the thoughts and actions of historic Unitarians, we UUs can be guilty of a certain hubris when it comes to our religion relative to others. At our best, we acknowledge that there are “many spiritual paths” and celebrate life-affirming elements of many of them across the spectrum – Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Pagan, Humanist, Buddhist, Native American. But at times we are guilty of thinking we have the most highly evolved faith, including (from what I have read) in early 19th century America when Horace Mann and other Unitarians put forward the argument that Unitarianism was the purest and most essential form of Christian thought. In a more contemporary context, UUs who try to be open-minded and welcoming at times enforce essentially a Republican-free zone.

So given all that, we UU’s, like all our fellow humans, are guilty of being imperfect, at times unknowing and still evolving. And as such we are legitimate objects of criticism, preferably the gentle and loving kind that Keillor usually dishes out with a wink and a smile. But certainly not in this case!

If I had been sitting and having coffee with my buddy Garrison and he delivered his rant, I think my first reaction would be to acknowledge the emotion I am hearing and say, “Wow… this really pushed your buttons and made you angry! Say more about that.” Then I might go on to say that, if it were me (and if friends can’t tell you this sort of stuff who can), I would have couched my anger in terms of “I statements.” Such as, “To hear someone changing the lyrics of a classic Christmas carol really makes me angry,” and then go on to say more about who I am and what my buttons are, rather than judge others as “wrong, wrong, wrong”. I have found those kind of “I statements” as generally more effective because they don’t push the recipient of the criticism into such a defensive position, precluding any opportunity for them to grow from the feedback.

I think I would (and do) take particular issue with his statement, “Christmas is a Christian holiday – If you’re not in the club, then buzz off.” Buzz off? Buzz off? That actually is his one statement that pushes my buttons!

Yes, the celebration of Jesus’ birth as the “son of God” is a Christian tradition. But in our country and much of the Western world the celebration of Christmas is much more than that, and includes that other iconic character in the red suit and all that he stands for. As I’ve said in another post, my mom, who believed in God but was not a Christian, believed in Santa Claus (at least the metaphor of Santa Claus) with all her being. To my mom, Santa was all about celebrating and honoring children, and modeling that good behavior for all the rest of us in a society where being “childish” is an epithet and which is otherwise too often child and youth unfriendly. Should my mom, who was not a Christian but loved the Santa Claus holiday, “buzz off”?

Still smarting a bit from my own pushed button, I would like everyone to remember that Christmas is the one religious event that is sanctioned in our country (and elsewhere) by a secular holiday. We don’t all get time off for Hanukah or Ramadan! You could make the argument that Christmas has become bigger than Christ’s birth, despite what Fox News, Christian right-wingers, and Keillor say. Santa Claus certainly embraces themes of Pagan Yule, Solstice and Saturnalia, along with acknowledging the wonder and possibilities of the birth of a child, and honoring that incarnate soul with gifts.

And then there is the commercial consumerist behemoth, including the much anticipated “Black Friday”, that is built around the celebration of the holiday. That certainly goes way beyond anything having to do with the principles of Jesus and the Christian faith that emerged from those principles. Maybe it would be a good thing in the long run if our marketplace “buzzed off” in terms of commercializing this holiday.

So buddy Garrison… I’m not a Christian, I’m an atheist. But I am going to take the liberty to joyfully sing the songs about Santa or baby Jesus, even perhaps some watered down UU versions, if that’s what the assembly is singing. And for your Christmas present, rather than coal in your stocking, I would like to wish you a return to your usual wonderful loving and knowing self, as soon as possible!

A Life of Thoughtful Choices

Cooper Zale — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:54:07 +0000

My partner Sally the other day, after reading one of my blog posts, commented that an overarching theme of most of my writing is having the opportunity, the wisdom, and the courage to lead a thoughtful life, which involves making thoughtful choices, in as many areas of life as possible. Though I had never framed it quite that way, I think she is right on. Under that umbrella of choices are ideas of liberty, agency, partnership (rather than hierarchy), and what seems to still be a radical idea that these things can be applicable to both youth and adults.

My mom, Jane Roberts, made the unorthodox choice in the 1940s of following the man who would later be her husband and my dad, Eric Zale, from their upstate New York hometown to Ann Arbor Michigan in the Midwest. At the time he was neither her husband, her fiancé, nor even her boyfriend. All he was offering her was the opportunity, after a year of residence, of applying to enroll in the university there. In the meantime she would be on her own to find a job and a place to live, which she did. This seems remarkable to me that such a partnership was forged between a man and a woman, not within the traditional context of marriage or the supervision or control of her parents.

I think that part of the appeal to both of them, of this move to another region of the country, was to escape parents and a family life that did not honor them as emerging souls with their own agency and their own goals. In Ann Arbor they did find at least some of that agency, finally becoming a couple, marrying, planning and having two kids. And they made a pact with each other that they would choose to raise those two kids completely differently than they were raised, and based on their own native intelligence and intuition, rather than the conventional parenting wisdom of the culture.

My younger brother Peter and I were born and raised with the benefit of this courageous, conscious choice of our parents, to raise us on the principle that, as my mom often said, “Kids will tell you what they need.” The intuitive leap in this statement was to break from the patriarchal practice of control and direction of children’s lives and to instead provide an environment of love and liberty within an enriched environment, maybe inspired by what they believed to be an insufficient amount of it in their own upbringing.

The Ann Arbor of the 1950s and 60s was perhaps an excellent environment for this unorthodox approach to parenting, being a fairly homogeneous and friendly Midwestern town yet infused with the progressive ideas and broad worldview of a major university, to counter any native parochialism that might have otherwise been present. There was a scale to the place that was to a youth’s (and their parents’) liking, you could get from anywhere to just about anywhere with less than an hour’s walk or a twenty-minute bike ride. Once I had reasonably demonstrated to my parents at around age ten that I was responsible and would consistently return home when the street lights came on, they pretty much let me go where I wanted.

It was not a place and not yet a time when parents would become concerned about child molesters and all the other youth-unfriendly aspects of a larger community, and the resulting emergence of “helicopter” parents, who stage managed nearly every aspect of their kids’ lives.

Though I grew up with a fairly conventional school environment, it was not yet the age when standardized curriculum and high-stakes testing had focused schools on a one-size-fits-all set of course offerings and educational trajectory. I also had a de facto understanding from my mom during my middle and high school years (my parents had already divorced and my dad moved out of the house), that if I did not feel like going to school (usually expressed as minor health issues), I did not have to. A shy kid with tenuous self-esteem, I used these furloughs to de-stress from all the social pressures of being jammed together with hundreds of other kids my own age, heightening the opportunity to feel inferior to somebody in every aspect of my being.

The period of my older youth and young adulthood was full of tribulations, including ongoing family issues stemming from my parents’ divorce and my own feelings of low self-esteem, inadequacy and romantic longings I was too timid to act on. But it was also full of opportunities for me to make many choices about the content and direction of my life. I plunged into the theater, used a summer job to finance a backpacking trip through Europe, experimented with marijuana, and explored and embraced the ideology of feminism. I also made the conscious choice to stop rebelling against, and start doing all that I could to help, my mom get through her depression and back on her feet. Finally I left my hometown in a half-baked scheme to go to Los Angeles and make it in the film and TV business.

Some of my choices were more successful than others, better thought out than others, but they all stemmed from a conscious assessment of what seemed like the best course based on who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. I was not following anyone else’s program or script.

Part of my heritage from my parents was not to accept conventional wisdom and not to shy away from the unorthodox if, after thoughtful consideration, it was the best path forward. So in Los Angeles when I was getting nowhere in the entertainment business, I volunteered and eventually became a paid organizer for the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women, a male person with a prominent roll in the campaigning for women’s rights in the early 1980s.

Then meeting my future partner Sally and our discussion of many weeks finally leading to a decision to get married and have a family. Planning and having two kids, the older one himself bent on following an unorthodox course and testing our commitment to, as my mom said, let kids “tell you what they need”, instead of accepting the conventional parenting wisdom and path of least resistance.

All these choices, all the processing of the consequences of these choices, have been the stuff I am writing about. The success of this approach and the positive developmental impact on my life has shifted my philosophical underpinning subtly from the maybe paternalistic liberal progressivism of the university town of my birth towards feminism and more of what I now call a left-libertarianism. We honor each other by being in community and being of assistance to each other, but we do so by, as our feminist mentor Toni Carabillo said, “Holding close with open arms”. We give each other, adult and youth, the space to find and be ourselves, and then freely give (or not) our found gifts to that larger community.

I still feel very much embroiled in developmental transition, and having crossed the age of 50 accept the conventional metaphor of being “over the hill”, except of course with my own twist of reframing. Now that I am “over the hill” I will continue to move forward, now at even a stronger and more confident pace, because I am going downhill and no longer fighting against gravity.

Just a Word about my Lefty Parent Links

Cooper Zale — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:02:26 +0000

You may or may not have noticed the links down at the bottom of the right column on this blog page, but I thought I would take this opportunity to talk about each. I have found the internet to be an incredible tool for researching, making connections, and pursuing my own development in ways I could never imagine doing before the Web…

* Alternative Education Resource Org – This is the website for the organization founded and led by my friend and fellow activist Jerry Mintz to help promote, launch and support alternative schools and democratic process in all schools. AERO has a yearly conference, which I have attended for the last three years that brings alternative educators and other supporters of educational alternatives together for great work shops and other opportunities to exchange information and ideas and otherwise collaborate. AERO also maintains a database of alternative schools around the country. AERO membership gives you access to their listservs where you can tap into a nationwide community and also their very good quarterly “The Education Revolution” publication edited by my other friend and comrade Ron Miller, the author of “What are Schools For?” and the “Self-Organizaing Revolution: TBD”.

* Discover UU – A site promoting religious and spiritual tolerance, education, and inspiration under the pluralistic spiritual umbrella of Unitarian Universalism, founded and managed by my fellow UU congregation member Aaron Sawyer. DiscoverUU.com is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization developed to promote, encourage and foster Unitarian Universalist communities on the World Wide Web. The site has a number of blogs and other links related to a humanistic approach to life.

* Educating for Human Greatness – A web forum used as a focal point for an informal online community of mostly alternative educators, started and led by longtime teacher Lynn Stoddard (a fellow education activist I have gotten to know at AERO conferences), who are collaborating to move the American education system in more of a humanistic direction. Lots of provocative discussion on educational policy, issues, and networking.

* Leftyparent Blog on Daily Kos – Pretty much everything I post here I also post on this progressive political blog site. What is fun about Daily KOS is that I often get a lot of responses (pro and con) on my posts and have the opportunity to respond myself and dialog. The back and forth can be very interesting and you may get dragged into the fray yourself. And if you are so inclined, you can start your own blog on this site and you can put your own ideas “on the table” for this community to respond.

* Pat Farenga on Unschooling – Pat is another friend and comrade who I met at an AERO conference. He is a a thoughtful and tireless advocate for homeschooling and particular the more learner-led “unschooling” variety. His site has lots of information on and advocacy for this very unorthodox but effective learning path.

* UU Homeschooling Discussion Group – This is a listserv of Unitarian Universalist parents that are homeschooling their kids and exchanging information and support to help each other do this successfully.

Supporting North Valley Caring Services

Cooper Zale — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 17:52:11 +0000

Neighborhood kids at NVCS holiday program

It’s March again, and the one time in the year I pitch my circle of family and friends for a donation to a worthy cause…

On Saturday, March 21 I will be riding my bicycle in a Bike-a-thon to collect pledges to support North Valley Caring Services (NVCS), a small community organization located in and supporting a very poor, at-risk, mostly Hispanic community just three miles east of where I live in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.

The Langdon/Orion Street neighborhood, where NVCS is located, is one of the poorest neighborhoods in all of Los Angeles, known for its gang activity, poverty, homelessness and dense population. North Valley Caring Services continues a herculean effort to help that marginalized community help itself. Their current programs include:

Some of the NVCS staff

* A breakfast program and food pantry for the neighborhood residents and homeless folks in the area

* Early childhood education classes

* Parenting support including English classes

* After-school activities for children and teens

* Referral & health-related services

I seem to be getting more and more involved in the organization with each passing year. Two years ago I got recruited by a fellow member of my Unitarian-Universalist congregation to ride in the yearly NVCS bike-a-thon fundraiser. I was thrilled to be able to raise over $500 that year, hitting up my fellow U-Us for money plus asking my extended family to make a pledge to NVCS in lieu of a birthday present for me (since my birthday is April 2, around the same time as the event.) Last year, I rode again, raising even more money, but also joined their fundraising committee. This past fall, I agreed to chair that same fundraising committee. My participation has been a great blessing for me, since as any of you know who do volunteer work, you meet the greatest people that way.

At my U-U congregation we help NVCS and the community it supports in other ways to. We collect food every Sunday for their food bank. During the winter holidays we buy outfits for all the younger kids in their programs, which are given to the kids by Santa at the yearly NVCS Christmas party. Since we llive in an area where many people have citrus and other fruit trees in their yards (and much of it falls on the ground and rots), I am helping organize an effort to go on Sunday afternoon and pick people’s friut and take it to the food pantry. It seems crazy to have a yard full of rotting oranges when two miles down the street people don’t have enough food to eat.

So I will be riding in the 26 mile bike-a-thon again this year, hopefully with a bigger group of riders this year (we had about 40 last year), and despite the bad economy, gathering even more pledges for my at-risk neighbors to the east, and the wonderful organization that supports them.

I would welcome any pledge. I pitch my family and fellow congregation members to pledge a dollar a mile ($26 total) or whatever. If you would like to join the effort, and maybe honor my April 2 birthday to boot, you can email me at czale@socal.rr.com or call me at 818.298.5386.

Reflecting on Lefty Parent So Far

Cooper Zale — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 22:00:35 +0000

Me in my home office

I’ve been doing this blog for a couple months now and I thought it appropriate to stop and reflect today on how its going so far. So here are some thoughts…

First of all, I want to acknowledge all of you have posted comments on my posts, including: Adam Fletcher, Bob Bruech, Caroline D, Cheri Isett, David Wolinsky, Emily Haraldan, Ida Hurt, Jim Strickland, John Thompson, Katie L, Kim Moreas, Leo Fahey, Nancy Shriver, Noreen Ringlein, Sally Rosloff, Blanche & Reuben Rosloff and Tom Kennedy (I think that’s everybody!) Some of you I know from my life in Los Angeles (my U-U Congregation and my partner Sally’s alternative energy and healing community), others from online communities I participate in (AERO, IDEA, EfHG, Ed Week Forums, etc.), and maybe others beyond all that. It is hard to write when you don’t have an audience, so your comments have been critical in keeping me going.

I guess there are others of you out there who may be reading my blog but not commenting, I am only semi-aware of you from my daily “blog hit” statistics. I seem to be getting about 20 or 30 a day. I would be thrilled of course if you identified yourselves by a quick comment on this or any other post.

We are all unique souls with our own thoughts, story and wisdom to share with the rest of the world. When I passed my 50th birthday, I felt compelled like never before to try and share mine. What is the point of living so long in this incarnation and experiencing so much if you have no thoughts (posing as wisdom…*g*) to share with others? Particularly when, in my case, I don’t see anyone speaking so much from the perspective I’ve acquired, seasoned by a child-friendly youth in the amazing town of Ann Arbor, later tribulations, feminism, raising kids who did not fit in the educational box, Unitarian-Universalism, the historical perspective of Riane Eisler’s “The Chalice and the Blade”, “New Age” wisdom including “Creating your own reality”, just to name some of my influences.

We where am I headed at the moment? Well I’ve been out of work since July 2008 (though with five months severance pay) which has been an interlude that has been giving me the opportunity to really see if I can focus on my writing… and I feel like I am having some success in that focus. I have been able to keep up with writing this blog and also writing vignettes for a companion book, with a current working title of “Confessions of a Lefty Parent”, which I hope I can get published as a contribution to the movement to transform how youth and adults engage each other in our culture. My fantasy is to be able to make money as an author and advocate so I can continue to focus on this full-time.

But now my severance has run out and I have been lucky enough to find a new job working on a three-month information technology project that will bring money in again towards paying the bills. Going back to this work will take a great deal of my time and challenge my ability to keep up this blog and my other writing and youth/adult engagement projects. But now that I have made this transition to writing nearly every day, I don’t really want to let go.

As my dad always believed… life is an adventure… and I am now charting new ground in my own life story, as many of you are as well I am sure.

Welcome to Lefty Parent

Cooper Zale — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 06:23:30 +0000

Me in my home office

Hey fellow travelers… whether you are involved with raising your own progeny, someone else’s, or are just playing a role as an adult in some kid’s life, I want to share that experience with you, because there is nothing more profound than helping people (young or otherwise, and even including yourself) come into their own in this world and move forward on their evolutionary path.

Having spent over half a century in this incarnation on earth, and almost half of that as a parent, you can bet that I would have some thoughts, posing perhaps as wisdom, about this very fundamental role in human society, and I wager that you do as well. You cannot go through the experience of helping kids on their journey to agency and adulthood without feeling at times inadequate, moved to tears, longing to have another chance, blessed, relieved and many other gut-checking emotions. It is hard work, and as many have noted, you are more likely to feel guilt and get blame for failure than feel pride and get kudos for success.

For me, the job got easier when I took a deep breath, went back to lessons I learned from my parents and my own youth, and chose to go with my gut. I was raised by two people, my biological mom and dad, who made a decision even before I was born in 1955 to raise me outside the conventional parenting “best practices” of the 1950s. They were no experts on parenting, but their instincts told them that they should do everything their parents did not do, and ignore much of the conventional wisdom of the time, from Dr. Spock and others. So they created an enriched environment with love and liberty in which I managed to grow and flourish. Not that there weren’t rough times. Their own relationship was problematic, and ended in their divorce in 1965 when I was 10. But they both continued their focus on trying to be the best parents they could be for me and my younger brother.

My mom used to say that “kids will tell you what they need”, a philosophy in no way permissive, but was an honoring of the personhood of a younger person, who in the end must chart their own course. My youth was a rich mixture of adventure, imagination, respect given, freedom exercised leading to responsibility learned.

Later as an adult I became a parent myself, wrestling with the conventional parenting wisdom of the 1980s, with its tough love and directed “helicopter” parenting, versus my own instincts in a different direction. In the end, my partner Sally and I agreed to throw away the rule book for parenting and and try to come to grips with the following…

1. As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”, and is the beginning of just about everything

2. Life, at its best, is an adventure – not always successful, not always happy, but a compelling narrative worth living and sharing with others

3. Understanding the context that surrounds the situations we find ourselves in is always critical to effectively navigating them

4. There is both creative tension and synergy between looking inside yourself for guidance and being connected to something transcendent and larger than yourself, whether civic, magical, religious, spiritual, universal and/or biochemical

5. We all ultimately have responsibility for our own actions, adult or youth, and given that, are best when we have the liberty to rise to that challenge

6. It is most effective to treat people with respect, whether adult or youth, including offering but not insisting on giving guidance and other help, unless that guidance or help is asked for

7. The education that stays with you are the things you learn on your own initiative, the other stuff tends to be forgotten

So why “lefty parent”? It reflects that creative tension between the politically liberal, left-leaning family and community I grew up in and my own left-handed tendency to think outside or not quite fit in the box of a right-handed world, even the left-leaning part of it.

Unlike some blogs I have posted on – where I never get a response from the blogger to my posts, and the opportunity to have a real forum for ideas is squandered – I commit to reading your comments on my posts, replying with my further thoughts, and fostering the dialog towards our evolution as individuals and as members of our shared society.