January 5, 2013 - Cheat Day

January 5, 2013 (Saturday)
(Post 700, Day 5 of 2013, 736 days since starting this blog)

Daily Comment

Today I want to write about a person who was, more than my parents, my first mentor.

Marlene Feingold was, among so many other things, an elementary school teacher, a musician, an iconoclast and a free-thinker, a political activist, and an example to generations of young people that living with your own ideas was at least as likely, if not more so, to lead to a successful life as conforming to your parents' societal ideals.

I met her when I was nine years old. My mother had met her a few years earlier while president of the PS 209 PTA. Miss Feingold was a fifth-grade teacher and 209's music teacher. While Mom was substitute teaching on her way to becoming a teacher herself, she asked Miss Feingold to give her kids music lessons. She taught me guitar, my brother and sister recorder. 

At the time, I was having a very difficult time in 4th grade, where I had been put in the 'slow' class after having skipped third grade. Marlene was very into folk music, but had formal music training as well. I had two books to study from: a paperback of folk songs and the Segovia classical guitar method.

My music lessons were a combination of her disciplining me, explaining the assignments to me, and listening to my complaints.

She was the first person to ever tell me to think for myself. She was the first person to put the idea in my head that just because everybody does something, just because everybody believes something, doesn't mean it is the right thing to do, or to believe without question.

That blew my ten-year-old mind.

One of my most vivid memories is of a time when she was rehearsing the glee club. She had the stronger singers anchoring their sections, and seated each section in a different row. After giving us our parts, she had each row sing their part one-at-a-time. When my row sang, I sang one thing, everybody else in the row sang something different. All the students laughed. I felt embarrassed, lacking the confidence to believe I was right and everybody else was wrong. 

As if reading my mind, Marlene asked the rest of the students to raise their hands if they thought everybody in the row but me was singing the right thing. A few hands were raised, then more, and then almost everybody raised their hands, at which point she pointedly said, that, like the other singers in the row, the majority was wrong, I was the only one singing the right part.

Fifty-two years later, I remember the way that incident made me feel, what that vindication meant to me in my life.

When my sister was out of elementary school, and I had already started high school, I didn't see much of her, and when, after I graduated high school and my parents moved out of the PS 209 neighborhood, I didn't see her at all for a few years until she came for a condolence visit when my mother died.

It was about twenty years later when I happened to run across her again. By then, I was living in upstate New York, and arranged to visit her. She had retired from teaching. She asked about my brother, who she had taught in fifth grade, and who she remembered with great fondness. And she told me she had come out as a lesbian. That she had been afraid to do that while she was still in the school system, and had trepidations about what others of her former students would think of her.

I told her it was a sign of respect that everybody had thought she was a lesbian all the time, and nobody had gossiped or put her down for it.

I also told her how fondly I remembered her and how important she had been to me.

We kept in touch, from time to time, over the years since, pretty much via email and later, on Facebook. She was an activist in the LGBT community, had formed a politically-themed music group, was also active in the animal rights movement, and never, ever lost her sense of humor.

In fact, I would be very remiss to not mention her sense of humor - it was off-beat, and she was unafraid to be humorous in 'serious' situations. As a teacher, she incorporated humor in the classroom to a degree I (who never had her for a regular teacher in elementary school - that was my brother Andy's draw) I never experienced in my academic career. When I was in fifth grade, she made up a student, her whole class collaborated in the hoax, and it was a source of great amusement. I also saw a test she gave, and it included a question about Lassie rescuing Jeff (pre-Timmy kid owner) from a bull by running around the bull with a red cloth. The answer was that this couldn't happen, because dogs are color-blind. 

Decades later, we traded jokes online.

She was the single most important musical influence in my life, and, at least as important, was the first and last mentor I ever had. She was as influential as my parents in making me what I am today.

RIP Marlene. We who you touched are saddened by your passing, and our world is diminished by your no longer being of it.

  

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First-half year 2013 daily weight from December 31, 2012

Food and Diet Section

 Today's Weight:        203.6 lbs 

Yesterday's Weight:    203.4 lbs

Day Net Loss/Gain:     + 0.2 lbs

Diet Comment

What a weird food day yesterday was. I successfully fasted for 23 hours, then I ate for the next 7 hours, beginning and ending with a quarter-pound of pepperoni. In between, nothing but vegetarian stuff (except for the mayonnaise, which includes an egg and yogurt among the ingredients). I guess the only surprising thing about the gain in weight was how little it was. I would call it a push.

Today's first cheat of the year starts out with a solid, non-cheat breakfast, and goes downhill from there.

Food Log

Breakfast

Chicken with feta and spinach sausages with Rajma Masala (red kidney bean curry), spinach and eggs.

Lunch
Ezekiel Golden Flax sprouted grain cereal with blueberries, vanilla almond milk, and stevia-inulin blend.

Dinner
At Village Burger, I had a Moroccan burger (patty made with peanut sauce and Moroccan spices (tumeric, I'm sure, but I have no idea what else), aioli, lettuce, tomatoes, red onion - pickles removed) and sides of cajun fries and onion rings. It was delicious, but the presentation (cheap cardboard containers on a puke-colored tray) forbade a picture.

Snack
On a friend's recommendation, Kashi Chocolate Almond Butter cookies, and dark chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

Liquid Intake   

   Coffee:  30 oz,  Water:  52+ oz.

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