Brett Berk

Fordlandia is Greg Grandin’s non-fiction account of Henry Ford’s cluster-fucky attempt to start a rubber plantation (and model town) in the Brazilian Amazon. It is also the only book that the Gay Uncle has ever officially reviewed. And guess what? It was just nominated for a National Book Award. Coincidence? He thinks not.

The Gay Uncle didn’t go to the march or the HRC dinner in Washington this past weekend. VanityFair.com asked him why not? So he told them. (Hint, it had something to do with Beyonce.)

Click on.

The Gay Uncle was thrilled to find, in today’s New York Times, an article about the capture of a dangerous juvenile criminal–one Zachary Christie–who was apprehended and removed from his first grade classroom for possession of a deadly weapon. Little Mr. Christie–a.k.a. Zach Attack–had recently joined a paramilitary organization (code name: “The Cub Scouts”) and, intoxicated by the hazing rituals enacted upon him there, brought forth this evidence in the hopes of using it to attract and recruit additional members. Secreting it somewhere on his person, he managed to escape the probing hand of school security, and once safely inside, extracted the item and began displaying it to his impressionable classmates. The Gay Uncle cannot confirm rumors that one of his peers may have said, “Ew. It smells like poopie.” Or that another may have said, “Lincoln is the capitol of Nebraska.” He also cannot confirm that Zach expressed his plans to “shank a bitch” during lunch when “the screws were on their prep period”. Nor can he confirm that the source of this vendetta involved an unpaid meth debt. (Eyewitnesses reported that the boy may have said “math”.)

What Gunc can confirm is that this kind of zero tolerance policy is obviously necessary and 100% effective, just like the zero tolerance/mandatory sentencing policies that have been carried out in other realms like drug crimes, or teen intercourse. He’s thrilled to see these practices trickling down and being applied to the youngest trouble makers. Kudos to the Christina, Delaware school district, and those on the front lines everywhere. It is only through their vigilance that we can stem the tide of the total social breakdown.

Photo Credit: Mustafah Abdulaziz, New York Times

New York City Board of Education bans bake sales. Gay Uncle requests brownie variance. (And writes about it in Momlogic.)

Click here to read

A loyal reader wrote in recently in response to my piece Parents: Preschool’s Biggest Problem. She wasn’t struggling with saying goodbye to her kid at drop off time–he’d been going to school since he was seven months old. What she was having trouble with was his having started Kindergarten. Now that he was taking the bus to and from school, she was freaking out about “how much less I know about what happens during the day, since I no longer pick him up directly.”

When the Gay Uncle ran his school, he provided a Highlights of the Day sheet, which he carefully (or not-so carefully) typed up and posted every afternoon. He did this not just to let parents know what kind of fascinating and newsworthy events had taken place during their time away from their precious darlings–Vita built a bed! Tancredi beat on a pillow! Mina mixed yellow and red to make orange!–but (more importantly) to give them some concrete and grounding fodder around which to construct conversations with their kids–e.g. “I saw that you read Little Blue and Little Yellow at circle time today. What happened in that book?”–instead of trying the abstract, tedious, and ineffectual “What did you do at school today?” He’s heard tell of other teachers doing the same thing: emailing out quick bulleted lists of the day’s major events, lessons, achievements, and perhaps some photos. This doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

But if the teacher is unwilling to engage in this practice–and teachers are overworked and underpaid, so she just might be–Gunc’s advice is to find out what the core schedule is (e.g. Work Time, Snack Time, Story Time, Rest Time, etc.) and then structure some concrete questions around these. “Did you have work time today? Tell me about what you built/made/mixed/cut/pushed/ruined/dressed up in.” And then build from here with leads like, “Then what happened?” or “Then what did you do?” or “Who was there with you? What did they do?” Making your questions concrete, grounded in personal experience, and conversational will not only provide your child with the scaffolding they need to answer, it will also give them a template they can use to store up details for you. And as these details aggregate, you’ll learn about their friends, their favorite activities, the things about which they’re most excited, and their myriad failings.

NOTE: School is your kid’s first experience with something totally their own, so they might not want to share–and it’s not their job to do so. If this tactic doesn’t work every time, don’t force it. Let them revel in having a space that belongs totally to them.

The dads who like books over at BookDads.com have gotten hold of the Gay Uncle’s spectacularly helpful tome. And guess what? While they start out suspecting that “this book may seem to be a lighthearted memoir of flippant advice about raising kids…” they eventually reach the conclusion that all of you have, that the G.U.’s advice is “sometimes snarky, always useful, and overwhelmingly delivered with compassion and humor.” Throw them some Gunc love, and click over to their site to read the rest of the review, and all the other dad/book-related content they have there. Right here.

While the Gay Uncle is busy getting excited about the exploits of openly gay high schooler Kurt on Glee–who seems contractually obligated to come out to someone on every episode of the program–there are apparently other “trends” a-brewing in the land of homosexual adolescence. Documented with precision, if sometimes a lack of humor, in the precise but often lacking humor pages of the New York Times Magazine, is the experience of openly gay middle schoolers. Those of us who are gay–and the Gay Uncle counts himself amongst this group–had all sorts of inklings that this was the case long before high school or college or whenever it was when we started telling people (for the G.U., these were particularly present in the 7th grade gym locker room. If there was a camera trained on him during that time, you would see footage full of furtive glances and shameful avoidance, and there just may have been a flock of actual question marks flitting about his faggy little head.) But some brave queer kids are actually making their presence known to friends, family, and school administrators. More than this, they’re demanding an end to anti-gay/lesbian bigotry and harassment, which is generally simply avoided in many junior high schools because a) people don’t care b) administrators don’t want to be seen as pushing a “gay agenda” or c) no one’s been hospitalized or killed yet.

Having worked in a preschool classroom for many years–and having had his first boy crush in kindergarten–the G.U. knows that these feelings start much earlier than sixth grade. He also knows that it shouldn’t take an “incident” like someone being stabbed or the star quarterback coming out to get folks talking about what is in reality the normal range of human sexuality and experience. He spoke openly and supportively about being gay with his four year old students (check out this article to find out how) and if anyone claimed he was pushing the Gay Agenda, he reminded them that we’re pushing the straight one on kids constantly, and demanded equal time.

Remember: The fact that the age at which kids are first coming out is going down isn’t a function of people “turning gay” earlier. It’s a function of the ubiquitous presence of INFORMATION (here on the internet and elsewhere) that allows young people to put a name to the feelings they’re already having. The GLBT kids are there in elementary school, middle school, maybe even in the womb. So let’s do what we can to make it easier for them, instead of more difficult.

The Gay Uncle plays expert–a role from which he ordinarily shrinks–in an article about children being raised by “Gay Families”. He’s not exactly sure what he thinks of this moniker: the families aren’t gay, just the parents are. But he supposes it’s better than “homosexual families” or “pervert families”. Gunc did his best to provide snarky responses to the interviewers dull (and sometimes offensive) questions, but she didn’t really seem to understand things like irony or sarcasm, so his answers end up sounding like a Mattachine Society pamphlet, circa 1954. Still, that can be kind of funny, right? Click here to read.

How far would you go to get your kid into preschool? For example, would you pretend to change religions, like this mom? Check out the Gay Uncle’s new piece in Momlogic, and be sure to share your perspective in comments.

Click here to read the article.

Just in time for the Jewish Holidays, the start of the school year, and the beginning of “Candy Season” (October 31-January 01), here’s a thoughtful new piece-of-Gunc on corralling your kid’s behavior–from COOKIE.com.

Click here to be elucidated.