On the Job

It occurs to me I haven't said much about teaching recently, and I'm wondering now why that is.

To get to the root of it, I'd like to ask myself a few questions: am I trying to hide something, or feel that I cannot be honest? Do I have "better" things to write about? Do I feel my audience has little interest? Have I categorized teaching into one of those things I don't think about anymore (…going on autopilot…) and thus don't have anything enlightening to say?

Well, I suppose I should take a step back and simply state what's been happening in the world of school. In early February, we had the end of the first semster, a week off (Austrians will take any excuse for time off : woohoo!), and then came back to a new semester, and a slightly new teaching schedule. I haven't been the most satisfied, and that's why I feel I need to ask myself these questions.

Because the real question is whether I want to make a profession out of teaching? I'm still on the fence. Now more than ever, since I've had two years in the "business." It seems a little stifling...by that I mean the material isn't very challenging, the expectations are not as high as they could be - for me or my students. However, I have little autonomy in the classroom, especially this year. I guess I should keep in mind that, if/when I become a "real" teacher, rather than just an assistant, i.e. live-action dictionary, I will be able to set my own rules, curriculum, etc., at least more so than currently.

I've been thinking very seriously about becoming TEFL certified, to teach English abroad. I met a few English teachers abroad this summer, and they all had positive things to say about their experiences. I'll be honest, I'm a little afraid of being let loose in a classroom full of kids whose native language is not English, especially if I don't know their native language, either. If I did take an online course to become TEFL certified, I could even stay in Austria. I haven't yet made up my mind whether I'd like that or not.

The biggest uproar in the Austrian school system is the new Zentralmatura, which is the new, centralized government school-leaving exam for Austrian secondary students. All students who are now in the sixth year at Gymnasium (roughly American Sophomores) will have to take the centralized state test. There’s been lots of “debate” (whining) about it at school, from my colleagues.

The difference between the Zentralmatura and the traditional Matura (similar to the German Abitur) from which they’re transitioning is basically the difference between the American ACT and a high school final exam a teacher creates at the end of the year. Although the Matura is farther reaching than either an ACT or a final exam, basically teachers have had the right (and autonomy) to put whatever they wanted on their exams for their students, i.e. testing them on exactly what they’ve been taught. 


The Matura typically includes a German comprehension portion, a Math and Science portion, and a foreign language portion (either written or oral) in English – the most popular – or another living language, typically French, Spanish, Italian or Russian. The teachers are complaining that the new Zentralmatura is killing their classes. They have to teach twice as much, with half the preparation time. That is, they have to teach what they've always been teaching in school, plus the addenda of multiple choice/standardization/teaching to the test. I get it. I would complain, too!

All of the explanations I’ve gotten for the transition to a centralized state test have not sufficed in my opinion. It seems like a big fat mistake and a hollow attempt to copycat the American secondary system, which is completely broken! Come on, people. If you’re going to change your system, at least get a good, viable role model, not a crappy, broken-down one. I thought everyone knew the ACT/SAT stuff was just a load of graft set up by the Princeton Review – forcing unsuspecting highschoolers to fork over money by telling them they’ll never get into college if they don’t take one of these tests. Maybe this is overblown, and has nothing to do with the United States. But then again, Austria has imported Jersey Shore - (why do they always choose the bad aspects of American culture?)

The Zentralmatura is in some ways worse as a standardized test, because no one is ever forced to take the ACT. Some colleges and universities don’t require them in an application anymore (like my alma mater, in fact); but, to graduate from Gymnasium at all, let alone go to uni, you need to pass the Matura. How’s that for Schwindel, hmm? Not to mention, standardized testing is a completely foreign cultural concept anyway, which is the root of most of the complaints.

Recently, Die Presse has been running articles on the various opinions related to the Zentralmatura. Though they are in German, here is a link.

The Fur Coat

my fur coat on the hanger

Is is a widely know fact, among those who frequent Vienna, or live here, or have anything at all to do with the city, that every real Wienerin owns a fur coat. It is a rite of passage, a mark of class and sophistication. A woman goes from being a "Fräulein" (or, if age has already exacted its toll, from being a "Frau") to being a "Dame" once she owns a fur coat.


Now, these coats come in all shapes and sizes. There are full-length mink, beaver, ermine; there are fur-trimmed wool coats, half-length rabbit or raccoon, or simple stoles to be worn at the opera - in the balcony. Or front row center. The choices are endless, even if the bank account isn't. For those of you interested, a floor-length mink costs about €10,000, and was most likely caught and bludgeoned to death in Siberia. The killing of animals for the fur trade is illegal in Austria, but the selling of furs is perfectly legit, provided the animals died and were sewn together in a different country. And the demand is high, obviously.


I have my own fur-trimmed winter coat, and, since I packed it and brought it all the way from Wisconsin, I'm glad this year I've gotten to wear it quite a bit, what with the extremely cold month of February we've been having in Europe. And I honestly don't get the excuse to wear it in the USA I do here; besides, it's such a beautiful coat.

At this point, many of my loyal readers (who?) might be scratching their head right now. Really? you could be thinking. Vanessa? The vegetarian? Owning a fur? That doesn't sound right. Why would she have anything to do with fur? Let me tell you. It's an interesting story, which is why I thought it would make an interesting blog post.

in front of elevator in my building

It all started my freshman year at Lawrence. The drama department was having a costume sale in the Voyager room across from the old Grill in the Union. There wasn't much all that exciting up for grabs, except this coat, which was sitting humbly (yet provocatively) on a hanger. Price? $10. I realized then that it would become mine.


I have no idea why no one else wanted it. Perhaps it was destined for me, perhaps I was the first one to get down to the sale that day. Perhaps all the other hippy-vegan darlings of my alma mater were too principled to lay down ten bucks for something that was once an animal. It doesn't really matter. As soon as I laid down my ten dollar bill, I secured the coat against my person and dashed back to my dorm. I did a little dance in the stairwell before getting to my room and opening the door to my roommate, who was on Facebook when she should have been studying for art history.


To me, it was obviously vintage - at that point, I didn't quite know how vintage - and by that sheer fact made even better.  Being vintage, whatever animal it had been was obviously murdered before my lifetime, and therefore pardonable, in my code of ethics. I've been wearing vintage outfits, and specifically, vintage coats (my great-grandmother's until it fell apart, and then ones from second-hand shops), since high school.

fur cuff - the other side is disintegrating :(

Unfortunately, this year, as I have worn the coat like a winter coat (its intended purpose) and have not been very gentle, the fur on the cuffs first started to shed, and then started to come out in clumps. It's like my coat is going through chemotherapy. Luckily, the collar is as good as new (basically) and the cuffs are detachable, so my project for next winter is to get them off and find a suitable, attractive replacement. 


Noticing how badly the fur is falling apart prompted me to do a Google search on it, to see if I could figure out a few more things about it. I've thought about taking it to a furrier in Vienna to have it appraised, but since it's no longer in the best condition, and the furrier might chide me about not taking good care of it, I balked. That's probably the only way to know for certain what kind of fur it is, however.

The only clue the coat itself has given me is the tag in the lining: THE PETTIBONE & PEABODY CO. it reads. I asked my dad about it, since he grew up in Appleton and he remembers there being such a store when he was a little boy. His mother shopped there. It is there no longer, much like many of the old department stores of yesteryear, being bought up or run out of business by chain stores and the like. Amazon.com, perhaps. Anyway, my Google search came up with some very interesting results, particularly this blog and this souvenir book sold by the company before its demise. It appears that Pettibone and Peabody was one of the oldest retailers in the state of Wisconsin, and opened in 1865. It was Appleton's premier retailer until it H.C. Prange Co. (now Younker's) bought it out in 1946. Thus, for the tag to still read "Pettibone & Peabody Co." it must be at least 65 years old, any may be even older. No wonder the fur is disintegrating, right?

Regardless, I'm pretty tickled about this. Not only is it super vintage, it's my favorite era - I was guessing realistically that it was from the 1960s or later (and donated post mortem by some Lawrence aluma/us) - but in my heart of hearts, I knew the style screamed 1940s - and I was totally right. Maybe even 1930s, but I won't get ahead of myself. 

For those  of you unconvinced, please please  follow my links! And this one while you're at it. And then if you're still not convince, that's not my problem. 'Cause haters gonna hate.

Stumm und Laut: Silent Film Festival in Vienna

Buster Keaton in a still from The General

Last weekend, I attended the Stumm und Laut silent film festival in Colombusplatz in Vienna.


An aficionado of the silent era, in particular Buster Keaton, I was thrilled to discover such an opportunity in Vienna - and for free! Not only that, two different programs for Friday and Saturday, which meant that I had to go both nights. I did, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.


A note on Buster Keaton: I love Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, all those guys.  But Keaton, a child actor from Vaudeville days, is a particular inspiration to me. He once said, "Most men put their pants on one leg at a time, but I'm not most men. I put my pants on two legs at a time," by which he meant that he purposely bought over-sized trousers. One of his gags involved going to a thrift store or other clothing shop, and,  to avoid a certain person, such as in Cops where he tries to evade the police, he pulls a pair of very large pants off the rack and jumps into them. Disguised in his new duds, he walks away from the unsuspecting policeman.


This prompted me, when I was still a freshman at Lawrence, to go down to the local Goodwill store and buy a pair of my own over-sized trousers, affectionately called my "man-pants" because, of course, to get the right effect, I needed to buy men's pants. They were brown, rather ugly, and intended for a short and stout man (inseam 30", waist 38") and wouldn't stay on without a belt. But I bought them and wore them around campus, and practiced jumping into them when my roommate, opposed to any and all "odd" behavior, was out of the room. I still wear them quite often, since they're so comfortable, and no longer terribly odd-looking, what with the "menswear" fad going on now. I didn't pack them for Austria because I didn't really have room...though in missing them, I did wander around the sales racks of the men's department at Peek & Cloppenburg the other day (an Austrian department store, sort of like a high-end T.J. Maxx).


Getting back to the film festival: they played a Lumière film, L’arrivée d’un train en gare de la ciotat, one of the very first moving picutres; two Méliès films: Panorama pris d'un train en marche and Le tunnel sous la manche. These were all accompanied by an a capella singer - amazing to listen to her make train sounds! - and the last film was a feature, Buster Keaton's The General about a train engineer in the south during the Civil War who saves his beloved and town from an advancing Union army. Sometimes, in our modern times, The General is panned because the hero is a Confederate, and I don't know why that is, but I maintain it's still great movie. Very cute and typically Buster Keaton, with plenty of physical humor, but not slapstick. To call Keaton's on-screen acrobatics "slapstick" is to undermine the beauty and art of The Buster Keaton. 


Reference, if you will, some of Charlie Chaplin's work for slapstick. The Rink, for example (show on Saturday along with Méliès' Le Voyage dans la lune and Le raid Paris -Carlo en deux heures, and two Keatons: Cops and Nieghbors  with accompaniment by a Viennese techno-pop group) is one pie-throwing, tumble-down after another, with everyone in the scene bruised and battered but Chaplin. Keaton, on the other hand, like Harold Lloyd, took the pit falls and rat traps and pies in the face himself. Sure, Chaplin had the Little Tramp, and he became richer and more famous around the world than either Lloyd or Keaton, with a longer career that lasted through the silent era and into talkies. But Keaton and Lloyd had the integrity to do their own stunts, the first two fingers of  Lloyd's right hand infamously being blown off during filming of Safety Last (he wore a prosthetic from then on). The thing that did Keaton in, unfortunately, was alcoholism, which he attributed to his first wife leaving him and not allowing him to see his sons.

An interesting article on Keaton and Surrealism by Gordon C. Waite can be found here, if you desire to read up on the artistic nature of what might otherwise be simply called "comedy."

Cinque Terre: Another Look at Italy

Callie and Sarah: Vernazza from the pier

I have so many pictures of the Cinque Terre - mostly because of all of the beautiful scenery - and, seeing as we mostly just hiked and ate delicious food and drank too much wine I can't think of a reason to give my usual lengthy explanations of any of them.
I will, however, clarify what the Cinque Terre is, for those unfamiliar: it is both a national park in Italy (protected wildlife and all that...camping, hiking trails, etc.) and five towns near the national park, which, if I may, are basically an Italian Door County (i.e. tourist destination) with overpriced restaurants, charming views, cozy B&Bs, and the odd cultural event.

Onto the photos:

VERNAZZA (where we stayed)

MONTEROSSO

lemon groves

more lemon groves

Vernazza from the trail

Callie and Sarah on the trail

CORNIGLIA

from the trail

at the train station

Funny story: there was this refrigerator on the trail
<--
We had to wait for it to pass before we could continue. Guess that proves people really do live up in these hills...

Me and Sarah on the trail

My happy-face Latte :)

MANAROLA

A church in Manarola - we did not go in.

Callie & Sarah on the Vineyard walk

view of town

RIOMAGGIORE

The "Via dell'Amore" - Way of Love :)

Amore

Portofino: where the movie stars hang

And last but not least, Portofino (not technically part of the Cinque Terre, but part of the Italian Riviera)!

We went to scope it out...and maybe hope to do a little celebrity stalking ;) - but to no avail! Ah, well.