ArtBlog

Father's Day Tribute to Bill Appling

This Father’s Day is the memorial service for William Appling, a renowned choral conductor and teacher, my friend and mentor, probably the most important person in my life after my parents and my family. Bill passed away on August 29, 2008.

The moment Bill Appling got through to me was the moment I found myself pressed against a Western Reserve Academy wall, feet off the floor, his giant hand clutching my flea-market tie and button-down shirt, his scowling face inches from mine. “How dare you complain? Do you have any idea how lucky you are? To have a mother who cares? To be here? You are spoiled and you don’t even know it!” Bill set me down and assumed a disgusted face, but I knew that he knew that he had my number and was pleased about it. And he knew that deep inside I was pleased, too. That was 1977.

Certain bonds require no words. Bill arranged for Richard Rogers, then the Assistant Concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra, to be my violin teacher. After two years as his student, Richard said that it was time to make a choice: to take violin seriously, or to settle for being an accomplished amateur. I asked what it would take to be serious.  Richard said two to four hours a day of practicing, to the sacrifice of all other extracurricular activities.  I looked at Bill, whose eyes were cloaked, his face impassive, turned to Richard and said “I can’t do this; I’m sorry”, looked back to Bill and felt an eddy of sadness wash between us.  Then it dried up, but for long days I was on one side and Bill on the other.

Music or not, Bill decided I “got it” and made sure no impediment stood in my way: keys to the darkroom so I could make prints after curfew, in the wee hours of the night, a camera, recording equipment, graphic design materials. In return, I was pressed into service in surprising ways that reflected his confidence and also lack of other resources: photographer, chamber music coach, sound engineer, and poster designer, the last of which became a thread that wove our relationship for 30 years.

Bill raged against conventional wisdom. “Why?” he would ask, the pitch rising at the end, with a deeply furrowed brow. Then he would turn to me and instantly have his face inches from mine.  “Why so seeeeerious? Smile, Art, smile!” he would say with the frown still on his face but a voice light with laughter.

But nothing outraged Bill as much as false marketing.  “They say it’s a Top School?” he would sputter. “What does that mean?  Anything?  Hogwash! This is Excellence.” And he would pull out a Great LP, put it on the turntable, and we would sit in silence, just listening.  Once, he conducted a master class seated at a piano, speaking as he played, starting from Bach, combining it with African music, morphing into slave spirituals, then into jazz and rock, disparate ideas pulled into a seamless continuum.

Over the past two decades, I would get phone calls from Bill without ceremony.  “What are you doing? I have something for you to think about…” I would have a rush of joy at being asked. 

Often having a father means that one still needs a father.  Shortly before my father died, he said I could ask for one thing. “I want you to tell me that you love me,” I said. We never spoke again and to this day, I don’t know. With Bill, there was never a question. I loved him in a way I never before felt love, and felt loved in a way I never before felt. If a father is a role model, a cheerleader, a confidante, and an impetus for achieving one’s potential, then Bill was that man.

Happy Father’s Day.

Household manager/childcare person needed!

Our babysitter got a great job pursuing his passion for green buildings.  So we need a high energy, bubbly, caring, responsible, organized person who wants a decent paycheck with flexible hours, lots of time off, benefits. independence and potential for growth!  If you are interested or can recommend someone else, please email me!

Below is a detailed description of what we're looking for. Would be perfect for someone with a late-night social life, a writer, an artist, or just someone looking to make a career transition with people who can help get her there. 

We are essentially looking for a right-hand person at the intersection of our personal and professional lives. Allison is one of the top people in her profession and generally works 14 hour days from her office in midtown. She misses the family dearly and tries to make up for it on weekends. I run a business downtown that helps start internet companies and and juggle all the other stuff at home.

We are most successful with people who see this not just as a babysitting job, but as an opportunity to jumpstart a career or pursue an aspiration. One of our babysitters has gone into computer project management. Another as a retail store manager.  One still works for me, but as my office manager, using admin skills she developed while helping to manage our household.

Because of this, the opportunities are flexible based on the person's interest and aspirations. Obviously, our basic need is babysitting, but that's generally a part-time activity. We have a couple of renovations we're planning. We are very active in non-profits. We and our kids are very social with the good fortune to have  a great and large network of down-to-earth friends.  There's a lot of work managing these activities.

The kids are both incredibly funny, silly, affectionate, and physical. They are into Transformers, spy stuff, science art, swimming and climbing. Their personalities couldn't be more different. Ben (8) is extremely sensitive and emotionally precocious. He struggles mightily with reading and worries that his friends laugh at his difficulties. Elliott (5) is tough, intellectually and artistically precocious and has a magnetic personality that means he doesn't have to work to make friends and too often gets anything he wants.

The minimum schedule is based on the kids. The rest is flexible.  Here are some data points on the kids schedule:

* M-Th: 3 - 8pm
* Occasional late-nights when we have events (about 2-4x per month)
* Occasional Saturday nights (1x per month)
* School holidays and breaks: 8-6pm

Compensation is based on a full-time salary of $42K per year, plus bonus. Benefits kick in after 3 months, including health insurance, major holidays, 3-4 weeks of vacation, subway reimbursement, plus cellphone or Blackberry. We also travel as a family a fair amount - when we're gone those days are also paid days off.

If you have or are pursuing a college degree, have a driver's license, have experience tutoring or as a camp counselor, can swim, and know how to play, we're interested in hearing from you. 

Experts are just part of the solution

Perhaps because my mother continually received calls from teachers dismayed at my "underperformance" in school, it was not a surprise to learn that my older son was being assigned a reading specialist, since he was having trouble keeping up with the other children in his first grade class.

I was willing to carve out 90 minute slots for people I didn't know.  Why wasn't I willing to carve out slots for my children, especially when they needed me?

So Ben started coming to my office Mondays and Wednesdays after school to work on homework.  It quickly became apparent that reading was a big issue.  He didn't want to do it.  It made him feel stupid.  He felt the other kids were making fun of him.  It was hard.  He was forced to read "baby books", where he still failed. 

The last statement made me see red. But in fact his reading was awful.

One day, I held up a book in front of me so I was peering over the top.  Something told me to watch his eyes as he read.  Instead of making linear left-to-right movements to follow text, his eyes appeared to jump all over.  As I watched, the apparently random pattern began to resolve into the pattern of the illustrations. 

So I retyped the text of the book into a Word document, one sentence per page, 36 point type.

I put it in front of him.  He read, with great difficulty.  My heart sank.  But as he was dressing to go home, he said, "Dad, reading was a lot easier without the pictures.  Can we do it again?" 

Over the past few months, we've read, covering the pictures with white paper. 

And why not?  This is a boy whose visual intelligence is truly precocious.  Little kids' books are richly illustrated.  What's more interesting - the images or the text?  Clearly, for Ben, it's the images.  I can't blame him.  Covering the pictures is the only way to make the text interesting.

A technique for teaching reading is to have kids focus on the pictures for clues to the words meanings.  But for kids like Ben, the pictures are more interesting and complex in context than the words. 

Everyone missed this. 

Experts are taught to be experts in a technique or a set of techniques.  It's impossible to become deep in multiple areas, which means that experts are self-limiting in their breadth.  They're the 80 in 80-20 solutions.  For us 20s, it is imperative that we use our own wits to arrive at practical solutions. 

So I don't blame them, but it makes me worried about the kids who don't have parents who can take work hours to focus on their issues, or who don't have access to resources who can help figure out the unique needs of each child.  It's left me with an overwhelming sense of how truly lucky I and Ben are and a question about how to help the kids who don't have his advantages.