Sunday was Easter, and as usual, it was a problematic holiday for me on several levels. First, there’s the fact that I’m Christian, and my husband is agnostic. He doesn’t object to our celebrating Easter, but he’s not all that keen on it either. He helps us color eggs, and he cleaned the whole house while I was at church so it would be nice for all our relatives who came in for dinner. But he’s not exactly enthusiastic about the whole thing.

Then there’s the stupid moving date issue. I’ve studied the process by which the date is set, and it still doesn’t make sense to me. This year, Easter was actually set before Passover! Jesus was in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover when He was arrested and crucified. How can we celebrate Easter almost a month before Passover starts?! Different Christian sects celebrate it on different days which is weird too, and by the way, it was snowing when we got ready to do our Easter egg hunt. Very festive and hopeful and spring-y. We hunted eggs inside.

Then there’s the problem of Christians being inspired at Easter to say very un-Christian things. I guess preachers realize that many people in their congregation on Easter Sunday won’t be back until Christmas, so they take the opportunity to rain down eight months’ worth of fire and brimstone on them. This year, my parents invited me and my son to attend their church for Easter service. I figured my six-year-old would have more fun there with his grandparents and aunt than going to our little Episcopal church with just me, so we went. The flowers were beautiful, everyone was friendly and the music was great. But when the pastor began speaking, I remembered why I had left this particular church. The minister spent a full 10 minutes explaining how anyone who wasn’t in church celebrating Easter that morning was going to Hell. He went into great detail about Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhist and atheists spending eternity with the devil because in John 14:6, Jesus is quoted as saying, “No man goes unto the Father but through me.”

I have multiple issues with this whole idea. First, Jesus was a loving, tolerant, inclusive spirit. He said that God loved the world so much, He sent His only Son to save it. I’m sorry, but if God loves us so much, why would He set us up to go to Hell? I know a lot of wonderful Jews, Muslims, and Hindus. Why should they be damned just because they never heard of Christ or because they were misled by well-meaning parents, family and friends whose faith is just as strong as mine? And what about people like my husband who was physically abused in the name of God or those who were molested by pedophile Catholic priests? Many of them have had to reject the Christianity of their abusers just to maintain their own sanity. If my husband and non-Christian friends are going to Hell while I have to spend eternity in Heaven with a bunch of perverted priests and my husband’s abusively zealous stepmother, I think I’ll decline.

My second issue with this exclusive statement is that John wrote his gospel about 60 years after Christ’s death. John probably never knew Jesus personally, and he certainly did not have access to a video or audio recording of Jesus’ words. Many Bible scholars have questioned the authenticity of John’s history. As a student of literature, I have to go with them. John wasn’t at the Last Supper. Most of the people who were there were dead by the time John wrote his gospel. John is the only one of the gospel writers who records the conversation at the Last Supper. Isn’t it possible he got the quote wrong? Especially since it contradicts much of the teaching Jesus did prior?

Finally, I just can’t believe that a compassionate God would send only one messenger with His word. If He loves us as much as Jesus said He does, why would He send just one Savior and hope that word got around? Even today, with our global publishing companies, worldwide telecommunications networks and the Internet, millions of people never hear of Christ’s teaching. It’s not their fault. And think of the millions of people who lived before now. Jesus was one man living in and preaching in a tiny part of the world, reaching a tiny percentage of its population. So anyone didn’t get the memo goes to Hell? What a crock! I can’t believe in a God who loves people less than I do, and a God who would condemn good, but ignorant or damaged or deceived people cannot love His children as Jesus said He did. So do I reject God and Jesus or just John, a fallible human being who wrote decades after Christ’s death? Hmm…

Anyway, Easter’s over, and I have to say that the end of Easter is far better than the end of Christmas. When Christmas ends, it’s such a letdown, and all you have to look forward to is weeks and weeks of cold, dull, dark winter. When Easter ends, spring’s right around the corner. Plus Lent is over, and I can eat French fries again!

For many years now, it’s been trendy to blame television for all our woes. It makes our kids stupid. It makes our kids unimaginative. It makes our kids violent. It makes our kids materialistic. It makes our kids fat. I’ve read some interesting articles on the subject, mostly written by people who do not allow their children to watch television. Some of them don’t even have a television in their home. That’s their prerogative. But I’m done feeling like a bad mom because I do let my kids watch TV. I’m done being consumed by guilt every minute that my children spend in front of the small screen. I’m going to make an argument for reasonable TV watching. It may not be a trendy argument, but I think it’s a good one.

First, I disagree with people who argue that TV makes kids stupid. I was just brushing my teeth in the bathroom, and I heard my 2 ½-year-old in the other room speaking Spanish as she was watching Dora the Explorer. I was impressed. My toddler knows several words in a language I don’t know. Chances are, if she had not gotten to watch television, she would not have learned any Spanish until high school when our school district starts foreign language classes.

I’ve noticed that both my children have developed vocabulary they may not have been exposed to without television. My six-year-old son uses words like “rendez-vous,” “pedagogue” and “earnest.” Ask him where he heard them, and he’ll tell you it was from watching Disney movies on TV. Although my husband and I might have occasionally used these words, we don’t have the need to very often. Television exposes children to unusual situations, out-of-the-ordinary events that call for vocabulary we just don’t use in everyday speech.

Television gives children the opportunity to exercise math skills as well as reading. Most evenings, we’re too busy to have the TV on; however, if it’s on, we’re usually watching sports. My son’s practiced his math on baseball and football scores. He’s read the stats of Derek Jeter and Peyton Manning. He’s learned logic and strategy that he’ll be able to use to problem-solve.

Does television make children unimaginative? If it does, then maybe I should make my son watch more. Every year at parent conferences, his teachers’ only concern is that he tends to live in his own little imaginary world, peopled by Star Wars and Harry Potter characters, pirates and monsters that he gleans from movies, television and books. I hear anti-TV folks say that letting kids watch TV stifles their imaginations by stuffing their heads full of other peoples’ ideas. But if that’s the case, shouldn’t we beware of books too? I’m reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to my son, and he’s running around the house battling giant squid and sharks, much the same way he battles Transformers and Spiderman villains. The difference between TV and books may be more clearly delineated for adults than for kids – children seem to absorb the creativity in the same way, no matter what the medium.

As for violence, sure, if you let your kids watch violent shows, I’m sure they would be affected. I would no sooner let my children watch The Sopranos than I would read The Godfather to them as a bedtime story. Television is no more violent than literature. And some literature is far worse than ANYTHING you’ll see on TV.

As for television turning kids into materialistic brats, I think we need to keep it in perspective. As an anti-materialist myself, all those commercials for toys and fast food and candy do worry me, but my children’s materialism has been shaped far more by their grandparents’ indulgence than by advertisements. I find it’s pretty easy to counteract the influences of TV commercials anyway; my kids are more interested in what I have to say than what the boob tube says. On those rare occasions that my children talk about something they saw on TV, I simply say, “Yes, dear, that’s nice” and keep on moving. Now that my son’s older, I’ve actually talked to him directly about the dangers of advertisements. “Don’t believe everything salespeople say,” I tell him. “Sometimes they don’t tell the whole truth.” He’s only six, but he’s got the concept already. The other day, we were at the store and he saw a toy that had been advertised on TV. He looked at it carefully, then turned to me and said, “That doesn’t look as cool in person.” Kids aren’t as gullible as we (and Madison Avenue) like to think they are.

Then there’s the new thing – television must be to blame for our kids being fat. The anti-TV folks are winning this battle. But here’s the thing – kids cannot be running around every minute of the day. They have to have downtime. And whether they’re reading a book or watching a TV show, they’re not burning 100 calories a minute. Sure, if you let your kid watch four hours of television a day, he’s probably going to be fatter than a kid who watches one hour or no TV at all. But the biggest kid in my school was also the biggest nerd. He was home-schooled to 7^th grade, read voraciously, and he was ranked second in our class because he couldn’t pass Gym. He told me once he wasn’t allowed to watch TV at home. Hmm…

As far as I’m concerned, television gives my kids some opportunities they can’t always get from books. My little girl can’t read yet, so Dora the Explorer and Blue’s Clues are wonderful tools for developing her vocabulary. Watching sports on television shows my son athletes in action in a way he could not get from reading about them or listening to a radio broadcast. Now when he plays baseball, he tries to imitate Derek Jeter’s movements. TV is just like anything else in a child’s life – parents have to exercise control and caution. You don’t want to let your kids eat 20 Twinkies a day or let them read the Marquis de Sade at age 10, but you have to feed them and you want them to read. You can let them watch TV in good conscience, as long as you’re monitoring what they watch and how much. Television can be, in the words of Dora, muy bueno!

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t go to a lot of movies. They’re too expensive. People are too annoying. It’s too hard to get a babysitter.

Still, some films are compelling enough to make me shell out a bunch of money, get a sitter and brave the jerk next to me talking throughout the movie. So far this summer, I’ve gone to three films, which is a lot for me. Here are my reviews if you’re interested.

1. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End - As a former Disney cast member and devout Johnny Depp fan, it hurts me to say this film disappointed me. Great special effects and wonderful music, but the plot is downright silly. The first third of the film is fun, the second third is confusing, and the final third is a real downer. Whereas the previous two films were energizing, I walked out of this one almost depressed. My sister leaned over to me at one point and whispered, “Is it possible for a movie to ‘jump the shark?’” If it is possible, then this one did. Maybe my expectations were too high; I saw the midnight showing with my sister on opening week in May, and I’d planned to take my husband and son that weekend. They still haven’t seen it, and it’s July.

2. Ratatouille - My two-year-old daughter drove us nuts for a month, making us play the trailers over and over on the Internet. I thought this movie would be cute. It was much better than that. The animation is beautiful! I’ve been to Paris several times, and I would never have dreamed that animation could do it justice. Pixar’s rendering of the city was spot-on. Admittedly, I’m a Disney freak, a Francophile, and a gourmet, so the film probably had an unfair advantage with me. But it was engaging and lovely and kept my toddler and six-year-old son still for an hour and a half. Any movie that can do that has to be doing something right!

3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - I’ve read all 6 books multiple times, so unless this movie sucked, I was going to like it. It did not suck, so I loved it. The special effects are fabulous. The film moves very quickly, and you get to see some parts of Hogwarts and some areas of Harry’s life that have heretofore been neglected. The sets are magnificent, especially the Ministry of Magic. The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is just what I expected, although I was disappointed that Sirius’s mother was left out. I will definitely see the film again. All that being said, though, I have to admit, of the 5 Harry Potter films, this is the only one where you could get lost if you haven’t read the book. If you’ve seen the other films, you’ll probably be alright, but you may want to consult your friends who’ve read the book just to clarify some things. It doesn’t stand on its own feet as steadily as the previous four. Still, it is exciting and gorgeous, and watching these characters grow up before our eyes is a treat. They are amazing kids, and they’re becoming great actors too. I’m taking my husband and son this weekend.

I’m not planning to see any other movies this summer unless my husband, a longtime Simpsons fan, really wants to see that one in the theater. The trailer for Disney’s “Enchanted” is hilarious, though. It comes out at Thanksgiving. November looks promising!

I’m an English teacher, so it’s no surprise that I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about language. This summer, however, has been peppered with moments that have heightened my awareness of the many roles language plays in our lives. I’m still trying to make sense of all of them, so here’s just a rough sketch of these events.

During the first session of summer school, I had the pleasure of working with a custodian named Raul who has been coming to our Writing Center to improve his English. He’s not a student, but our policy is that we offer language services to all staff of the university, which is great because he’s the nicest person I worked with all summer. His main goal in coming EVERY DAY is to be able to read to his three young children, so he brings in children’s books and reads them out loud to his tutor who provides pronunciations or definitions if he needs them. I’d rather have an entire country full of conscientious, hard-working family men like Raul than the spoiled, entitled white kids who come late to appointments and then expect me to write their paper for them so they can get an A in their Psych class.

Don’t tell me the official English movement is not racist. Perhaps a few English-only proponents are truly not racist, but they are the exception to the rule. Bring the subject up with someone who supports making English our one official language and see what their first supporting argument is. I’ll bet you it involves Spanish-speaking immigrants or Mexican immigrants. They don’t seem to mind other languages or cultures, though. One day at the Writing Center, I worked back-to-back appointments with Raul, our Hispanic custodian, and a Norwegian girl named Astra. A third American student was working at a table behind us. When Raul left, the student sitting behind me said snidely, “I didn’t know you guys helped teach janitors to read.” I took a deep breath and replied in my most Disneyfied voice, “Yes, we help all students, teachers and staff at the university.” The young man shrugged and went back to his work. When Astra, my Norwegian student, came over to work with me, however, the young man tried to flirt with her. Raul and Astra are the same age. They are both immigrants learning English. Raul may be “just” a custodian, but Astra is unemployed. Why did Raul’s learning English bother this kid whereas Astra did not? Hmm…

A few days ago, a student brought in her term paper. Her thesis was that we must make English the official language of the U.S.. Now I enjoy tutoring papers with which I completely disagree. They are exercises in self-control for me, and I’m pretty sure my student had no idea I disagreed with every point she tried to make. Of her four arguments, only one was reasonably supported. I pointed out some major gaps in two of the others, then spent the rest of our tutorial focusing on her poor paragraph organization. Her arguments: we must preserve American history; multiple languages cost too much; we must protect English; and multilingual education programs are ineffective. The fourth point she proved pretty well, but the others relied on faulty logic. First, the preservation of American history does not rely on the English language. I suppose if American history began in 1776, you’d have a decent argument. If we’re going to go the history route, we should all be learning the Native American languages which are in serious danger of going extinct. Or Hawaiian or Aleutian. Second, multiple languages cost too much. Tell Europe that. Some of those countries, including Austria, Belgium, Switzerland and Monaco, have several official languages, and they’re doing quite well. Besides, spending all the time and money to make English an official language will cost more than leaving it as is. We already teach English - to immigrants and native English speakers. What’s the difference? Finally, “protecting” English is a nonsensical notion. English is just fine, thanks. It’ll continue to do well if we don’t try to preserve it like a relic in a museum. (See Latin - a dead language - or French - dying language.) Most people who contend that we must make English the United States’ official language speak only English. Because the language is so bound up in their identity, they are terrified when “experts” suggest that our language is in danger from non-English-speaking immigrants who are going to kill it. Immigrant families’ native languages rarely survive past the second generation; in other words, if a Mexican couple comes to the US and has children here, those children will likely learn both Spanish and English, but the couple’s grandchildren will probably learn just English. Anyway, I’d contend that English is in more danger from native English speakers who butcher it on a daily basis than from immigrants who make conscientious efforts to speak it properly.

Which English are we going to accept? Just American? What about British, French or Canadian English? Do we accept only certain terms? Am I still allowed to call all soda “Coke” as we tend to do in Indiana? Or do I have to call it “pop?” My husband’s from New England, and he gets bent out of shape when I call a body of water a “lake.” Evidently, they have specific rules about what constitutes a lake up there. Will the entire country have to adopt the New England definition? Or will we force the Easterners to conform?
Can I still speak French to my children at home? I speak three languages, and I wanted to give my children the advantage of being bilingual. If English is the official language, can I still speak French or Russian when I’m out in public? I usually only do it when I don’t want people to know what I’m saying. After all, most Americans can’t speak a foreign language, so I can say whatever I want if I’m not speaking English. Maybe that’s what upsets so many people. The idea that others are talking about them in a language they can’t understand. Here’s a thought - learn a foreign language so you can understand! You might also broaden your mind, make yourself more interesting and more marketable. If it’s so easy for immigrants to learn English, it should be no problem for us to learn Spanish, Chinese, or Russian. Then when you go visit those places, you won’t have to hear people say, “You’re in our country now, speak our language!” Not that they will. Most of them already speak English.

I was honored to be nominated and accepted for a weekend-long seminar for associate faculty a few weeks ago. We had a great time, and on the last day, we got together to talk about what we had gotten out of the weekend. The discussion was very positive until the last person spoke. He said he was happy to have made so many contacts in other departments because they could help him with a “project” he was working on. His theory is that our intro composition class does not prepare students to write in other schools because we do not concentrate on “the basics” - grammar, style and classic essay form. He wanted to use the cross-discipline contacts he’d made to gather assignments from other schools to prove that we need to change the structure of the course. Having worked in the Writing Center for five years now, I felt more than qualified to refute his argument. After looking at countless assignment sheets from every school, I know for a fact that most instructors, regardless of discipline, are more concerned with content and thought process than grammar. This was not the appropriate forum for me to challenge him, though, so I’ve been stewing over it ever since.

I love grammar, and I was raised by an English-teacher mom who loves it too. I know it better than most people. But you don’t have to know grammar rules to be a great writer or speaker. You certainly don’t have to know them to be a powerful or successful person. I guarantee you George Bush does not know what a dangling participle is; I know Donald Trump can’t diagram a sentence. Shakespeare probably couldn’t either since he had very little formal education.

Bringing up Shakespeare reminds me of something else. Language changes. If Shakespeare did learn grammar, he would not have learned the rules we learn now. His English included thee, thy, and thou forms of the word “you.” His English included words that are foreign to us now. Heck, I learned rules just 25 years ago that no longer apply. You know that comma rule about items in a list? Do you put a comma before the “and?” Not anymore. Why bother learning a bunch of “rules” that have many exceptions and are likely to change anyway? If students haven’t learned grammar by the time they graduate from high school, it’s not going to happen. I know dozens of college professors, including many in my English department, who do not know grammar and they have PhDs.

Personally, I love language. It can be empowering, but it can also be a weapon of tyranny. When I was 18 I went to France with my family. A bum on the streets of Paris came up to my parents and started asking them for money. Not being able to speak French, my parents were at a loss. The vagrant got angry with them and started berating them and “les Americains stupide.” I was a fairly sheltered teenager, and I was just as frightened as my parents until the guy started talking about how American tourists were invading his country and couldn’t even speak the language. At that point, I got mad. And I realized I could speak his language, and I could use it to berate him just as he was berating us. So I did. I told him off, not with a swear word, but by using the informal French “you,” a usage that I knew would linguistically reduce him to an animal. And this big, street-wise, intoxicated jerk gave up and took off. In the face of a size 6, 18-year-old girl. I know language, and I know how to use it. And when I hear people insisting on immigrants speaking English or making students learn grammar rules, I know what those people are really doing. They’re asserting their superiority. I know because I’ve done it. Whenever someone makes me mad, I use words like daggers. I start pulling out every multi-syllabic vocabulary word, every convoluted sentence structure I can think of, and I’ll correct every split infinitive and every improper verb form my opponent uses. I don’t do it often, though, because it’s rude. I never correct my friends’ e-mails to me; I don’t often correct my husband or my kids’ speech. Language should bring us together, not enforce some kind of linguistic caste system.

Making English the “official” language of the U.S. won’t keep smart companies from offering their websites, marketing materials and forms in other common languages. Just as making homosexual marriage unconstitutional hasn’t stopped companies from offering same-sex partner benefits, outlawing Spanish, French, or any other language will not stop corporations from doing whatever they need to do to make money.

This is rambling, I know. Like I said, I think about language a lot. And it is important. After all, no matter what they say on the playground, words can hurt just as badly as sticks and stones.

Some people tell me I shouldn’t get so worked up about what the federal government’s up to. After all, most of that stuff doesn’t really matter in our everyday lives. Hmm…

I lost my wallet last year. Luckily, I only kept a few things in it – frequent shopper cards, a little cash, pictures of my kids. Unfortunately, I also had my and my baby girl’s Social Security cards in it.  Since I don’t often need our cards, though, I didn’t worry too much about it.

Then my husband decided to refinance our house, and because of the Patriot Act, I have to show my Social Security card to close on the refi.

So I went to my “local” Social Security office. It’s a 30-minute drive to a neighborhood that I wouldn’t exactly call safe. I had to have my kids with me since the office closes at 4pm. I knew right away it’d be a disaster. There were big signs posted on the front door – no food, no cell phones, no guns. So I left the McDonald’s Happy Meals I had gotten to keep my children quiet in the car; I turned off my cell phone, and I tried to reassure my 6-year-old that he need not worry about guns. (He saw the picture on the door and freaked out a bit.)

Once inside, things just got worse. There were about 60 people packed into a 200-square-foot room. I took a number – A31 – and we sat down. That’s when I noticed yet another sign: Keep your children quiet and under control so we can conduct business privately and without interruption. Right. I’ll explain that to my 2-year-old who is already running around checking things out.

I started filling out my application only to discover that I needed my parents’ Social Security numbers. I have no idea what those are, and my parents are on vacation in the Cascades. Besides I can’t use my cell phone to try to get hold of them anyway, remember?

After ten minutes, the irritable clerk finally called a number – A26. Hurray, there were only five people in front of us. Another fifteen minutes and they called A27. By now, my son is whining about the wait and bouncing up and down in his chair, annoying the very large man next to him with lots of rather graphic tattoos and a bolt in his nose. I was trying to keep my daughter entertained, but she was not having it.  She kept wiggling out of my lap and taking off. Every time I would catch her, she’d shriek, and I’d get dirty looks from the clerk. So after waiting about thirty minutes, I gave up.

I bid farewell to the pictures of George W. and Dick Cheney that were looming over our chairs and walked out the door. I heard them call A28 just before the door swung shut. I’ll have to find a time to go back after we return from vacation and before we close on our mortgage. Needless to say, I won’t be taking the kids.

Who says federal government doesn’t affect our daily lives? It just helped ruin a day for me.