Hasta La Gadget!

The food at Cannes was disappointing this year. It’s usually one of the highlights: the fresh Mediterranean salads and gala grilled fish, a reprieve from the humdrum fare in Paris. Yet this year I happened into a restaurant where the fish seemed left over from last year’s fest. A nicoise salad–usually exceptional in Cannes–came with cold iceburg lettuce. And every time I went to one of the parties, I seemed to arrive just when the chefs were packing up the lobster, so I’d be left with a toothpick.

In contrast, the films this year were excellent! I enjoyed the two Romanian grim films, Graduation and Serianevada, for their serious intensity; the prize-winning Toni Erdmann for its zany creative humor; the Brazilian film Aquarius for its luminous spotlight on actress Sonia Braga in sunny splendid Recife; Jarmusch’s Paterson for its deadpan serenity; Farhadi’s The Salesman for its theatrical moral conflict; Verhoeven’s Elle for its cold perversity; and Almodovar’s Julieta for its warm wisdom. I even relished a film few critics did: Nicolas Refn Winding’s The Neon Demon, a sublime virtuouso achievement of eerie image and engineered sound, with beauteous model Elle Fanning in haute couture for our gazing pleasure.

The only film that disappointed me was the one that won the Grand Prix: Xavier Dolan’s histrionic dejeune adaptation of a Jean-Luc Lagarce play.

What was exciting at this year’s festival was the greater preponderance of humorous and entertaining films, as if some drug had entered the cinematic waters. Even Bruno Dumont, notoriously serious, known for his ominous Tarkovsky-like shots on wavering grass in the dunes, with a brutal inexplicable murder to follow, had become light and joyous. His new film Slacker Bay, taking place in the French dunes with cannibals, was a slapstick frolic with aristocrats in frilly shirts, poor urchins in rags and police investigators with big bowler hats, many of whom had a tendency to fall down, plop in the middle of the scene. The film is so light that at one point one of the characters flies off with her billowing skirt into the sky.

Indeed, a rare sight, I caught Bruno Dumont laughing in the press conference!

One of the darkest films in subject–rape and family dysfunction– Paul Verhoeven’s Elle, made me laugh out loud every moment. Another film, Alain Guiraudie’s somewhat half-baked Rester Vertical— featuring a wandering would-be screenwriter with offbeat sexual adventures in French countryside–put me in a good mood.

It was also great to hear the buzz about feminist issues throughout the festival, from the journalists expressing wonder about the exceptional amount of films this year with strong female leads, to Jodie Foster speaking out on behalf of women at the Kering Women and Motion talks.

And seeing Iggy Pop–in the documentary by Jim Jarmusch–cannot but raise one’s spirits and inspire an energetic catapult (I like to flip myself).

In the Director”s Fortnight, even Alejandro Jodorowsky, famed for his dark surrealistic extravaganzas, had a gentler more cheerful offering this year: a nostalgic journey through the director’s youth, celebrating his poetic path with colorful scenes and colorful characters, including a wild poet with witch-red hair. The scattering of scenes in Endless Poetry (seemingly haphazard) leads to a pointed finish: a miraculous long-in-coming imagined reconciliation with the director’s abusive father, whom Jodorowsky had left behind at age twenty-four and never seen again.

The film ends with a warm hug.

“I want to go with sublime feelings,” Jodorowsky told me with a vibrant laugh. “I do not want the ugly. The world is not ugly. It is marvelous!”

He lifted a glass of water, his eyes shining like a child’s. “This glass can have either an elixir or a poison!”

Of particular interest to me, in this strong and exceptionally cheerful festival, was Rithy Panh’s new film, Exile. Panh, whose career has focused on making films on the genocide in Cambodia, which he and his family suffered, came to Cannes with his latest personal film about the Khmer Rouge experience.

It too had an undercurrent of joy: the joy of vanquishing suffering through art. The film is a collage of artifacts from Panh’s past and memories: suitcases, guitars, bikes, typewriters, pots, arranged in a sublime composition. Water drips in a cistern. White flowers blossom on heaps of graves. A nest miraculously fills with eggs. Huge rocks (the symbol of oppression) fly light into the sky.

“Beauty. I will always love it,” says the narrator.

The title “Exile”, I learned from the director, refers to the fact that one must “exile” oneself into one’s own imagination in order to bear up with and overcome the darkness of the planet.

“To survive inside, one must exile oneself from reality,” the director smiled. “One cannot live without the imagination! It is important to fly.”

Panh waved his hands with whimsy: “Fly, fly…”

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Becoming a parent, especially a mother, is one of the biggest responsibilities that one can assume in ones lifetime. Creating and nurturing a new life is an immensely complex task, which requires a lot of dedication, love and also skill and knowledge. Being a mother is hard even when the child is healthy and growing harmoniously, but the challenges of parenthood are multiplied so many times over when the child’s development goes awry, for example when the child has autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders.

About 1 in 68 children will develop autism, and even though we don’t yet fully understand what causes it, our knowledge about what puts someone at risk for autism is growing each day. For example, we now know that autism is a heritable disorder: a child who has a first degree relative (a parent or sibling) with autism has a 1 in 5 chance of developing autism as well. These children are considered to have a high risk for autism. But the risk for autism is not purely genetic: it is also environmental. There is a growing body of research showing that autism risk is elevated by certain environmental factors such as toxins. In fact, one of the overarching themes at this year’s International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) was the issue of environmental causes of autism — what factors in our environment are responsible for elevated autism risk, and can they explain part of the recent rise in the number of children diagnosed with autism?

When thinking about “environment,” we usually conjure up images of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil we step on, the buildings we live in, etc. But much of the research on environmental risks for autism focuses instead on the pre-birth environment. In this case the environment is the mother, her body, the nutrients in her blood, the air in her lungs, the function of her various organs, etc. And even though traditionally, the mother’s womb has been praised as being one of the safest places on earth, recent research warns us of lurking dangers. For example, the mother’s exposure to organophosphate pesticides at some point during pregnancy was associated with increased risk for autism for the child in one study, with exposure during the third trimester of pregnancy doubling the autism risk. Air pollution has also been associated with increased risk for autism: mothers of autistic children were more likely to have lived in homes exposed to high traffic-related air pollution during their pregnancy. Also, mothers who had a metabolic condition such as diabetes, or who were obese during pregnancy, were more likely to have children with autism or developmental delay.

These findings are particularly worrisome given that sales of organic food (food free of pesticides) represents only 4 percent of the total U.S. food sales and it can be 30%-100% more expensive. More than 46.2 million people in the U.S. live in an area with high levels of air pollution, more than a third of U.S. adults (78.6 million people) are obese, and 9.3% (29.1 million people) have diabetes.

This suggests that becoming a mother has become an even harder endeavor than before: it requires more knowledge and awareness about risk factors, more money to be able to afford avoiding them, and more discipline and a restrictive life-style. We have unfortunately created a world that is cruel to mothers-to-be, a world that places tremendous burdens on their shoulders for ensuring the health of their children. This is a world in which mothers have to worry about the most basic and automatic decisions humans make, such as eating, breathing or simply having a well functioning body. By putting neurotoxins in the food we eat, polluting the air that we breathe and generating societal trends of food consumption that lead to obesity and diabetes, we have created a world that restricts tremendously the lives of women who choose to responsibly become mothers.

Reducing the environmental risk of autism is not just a health issue — it’s also a gender equality issue about the basic rights and freedoms of women. There is an old saying: “It takes a village to raise a child.” We women should demand that our extended village, our society and world, takes better care of our children and of us by providing us with food, air and water that won’t put our children at risk for autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders.

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As a college student, summer means liberation from class and midterms, but it’s also time for the often-dreaded hunt for an internship. Whether it’s scarcity of opportunities, unreal competition for the ones that do exist or a lack of alignment with your hopeful career choice, finding the right internship can become an internship of its own. Rather than gamble with internship-ception, ask the real question… “Is an internship even worth it?”

As someone who has pursued both a traditional internship and taken the entrepreneurial route by becoming my own boss, I can tell you that both paths possess challenges and opportunity. If you’re looking for applicable experience with real-world problem solving, I’d suggest taking a stab at your passion this summer and strike out on your own. Below are some things to consider before going full-on Social Network as well as a few tips to get there.

Why Internships?

One of the established reasons for pursuing an internship is to lean on those already within an industry to learn and ask questions, and this is absolutely a benefit. Just like a freshman looking for tips on how to snag a free slice at the dining hall, you’re going to be new to this whole professionalism thing and you’ll want seasoned vets to show you how to do things. For me, it was interning at a radio station and learning the lexicon of the industry as well as gaining foundational knowledge in “how things are done in this business.”

The role of a summer intern is sort of like hanging out in the shallow end of a pool. Sure you’re in the water, but there’s little risk of drowning. You’re half spectator, half tactician, tasked with projects that aren’t necessarily mission critical. This is something of a double-edged sword, but overall it can be a nice safety blanket knowing the new kid on the block won’t also be asked to run the show.

Lastly, an internship brings exposure to new people, ideally in an industry you want to move into. This means developing connections that could prove to be fruitful down the road. Assuming you do a good job and take your role seriously, people will remember the honest person trying to learn a craft, and that can be valuable when graduation day comes.

A Different Option

Have you considered starting your own side hustle small business and being your own boss? It can be a scary thought at first, but it’s also a rewarding experience both in the short and long term. You’ll gain real-world experience as a strategic thinker and you’ll develop a skillset that goes far beyond copier collation settings and lunch runs — you’ll be managing expectations and dealing with customers.

As the decision-maker, you have to think through complexities and solve problems to come away with an outcome that’s not just beneficial to you, but tackles a real need for someone else. The experience and portfolio of work created when you’re in charge will go much further in an interview later in life than discussing the few times you sat in on a customer call or took part in formatting a proposal.

To boot, being in charge of your operation incentivizes something you’re passionate about. Your hard work positively correlates to the amount of money you pull in. Staying late and giving extra energy to customers doesn’t just get you a “job well done” sticker; it puts real money in your pocket.

How to Get There

While the problem-solving, customer service experience, responsibility and accountability that come with your own business may all feel like great reasons to do it, that doesn’t make it easy. A few things to keep in mind that helped me along the way:

1. Pursue a talent and a passion: While you may not have experience running a business around graphic design, if you have a talent and a passion for it, it’s going to make things much, much easier. You’ll be able to recognize the challenges and pain points your customers have more quickly and your devotion will go deeper than a pure monetary need.
2. Use technology to make your life easier: It’s hard to find customers when you’re the new guy. Rather than just rely on local marketing or word of mouth, try using online marketplaces to drive business leads. Aside from exposing your business to new customers, marketplaces allow you to quickly set up shop rather than spending a ton of energy creating your own web presence. I found success on Fiverr.com because customers get pushed to me, rather than me constantly having to pull them in. Platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook can also broaden your appeal — just be careful not to overdo it. Friends don’t let friends overshare.
3. Recognize your value: Do your research and figure out whether your business idea is viable and what your time is worth. Nothing is worse than working your tail off only to realize there’s either not enough demand for your offering or that you’re working for way less than the market rate. At the same time, view yourself as the challenger and use special offers or add-on services to get customers in the proverbial door.

While internships check many of the short term boxes we look at when seeking a summer gig, there are a variety of areas where the experience falls short. Being your own boss will give you the tools you need to be successful long after you’re thinking about summer jobs and the journey may very well plant the seeds for your post-grad career. As someone who has taken both paths, the experience I lean on most heavily when talking to prospective employers is the one I had as my own boss.

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Five decades after their TV debut, The Monkees are on the road with a multimedia tour featuring footage from the 1966 television series. The performances are heavy on banjos, ponchos and memories of Hollywood plot lines (plus: guitarist Mike Nesmith and singer Davy Jones – who died in 2012 – aren’t part of the festivities). Yet, in spite of the stage antics and film clips, the show makes it clear that a band invented by screenwriters now has a real rock and roll legacy to defend.

Over the years, The Monkees have pursued everything from horse farming to Broadway roles and other musical collabs (the group’s catchy new album, Good Times, features songs by Noel Gallagher, Andy Partridge and Paul Weller). But original members Mickey Dolenz, 71, and Peter Tork, 74, continue to make their bread and butter in reunion tours, where the guys excel in presenting the hits and acknowledging the classic songwriters who made them famous (see set list below).

In Atlanta on the fourth stop of the 35-date tour, the pair bounced through 31 tunes, including Nesmith’s “Listen to the Band” and “The Girl I Knew Somewhere,” plus a jangly new single penned by Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo (“She Makes Me Laugh“). As an MTV logo flashed on the screens during the 1986 comeback song, “That Was Then, This Is Now,” a full moon rose above the pines and lightning bugs began to blip around the amphitheater. Next, Mickey got behind his drum kit for 1967’s psych-lite “Your Auntie Grizelda” and teased a front row ticketholder for texting on her cell phone while he sang, “She.” Later, he donned his Carnaby Street tablecloth for “Randy Scouse Git” (a replica of the cape could be purchased at the merch booth for $75) and “Johnny B. Goode” before Peter picked-and-grinned his way through a mashup of R&B [“(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher”] and Appalachian folk (“Wildwood Flower”).

Maybe things crackled a bit less crisply than on the recordings The Monkees made back in the heyday of bell bottoms and and beanie caps, but the live interpretations felt loose, fun and groovin’, like songs from the late 1960s should. Even without Nesmith, the outstanding backline of instrumentalists properly repped the band’s catalog of compositions by Boyce and Hart, Leiber and Stoller, Mann and Weil, Goffin and King and, of course, Neil Diamond. “Last Train to Clarksville” and “Shades of Gray” (which summoned the recorded voice of Jones for a sing-along from the vault) were slotted early in the set; the second half saw the band rawking through Nesmith’s “Mary, Mary” followed by a trio of tunes from the soundtrack to the 1968 film Head, a rowdy “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone” and a finale containing “Daydream Believer,” “Pleasant Valley Sunday” and “I’m a Believer.”

This summer may or may not pay off in the form of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nod for Mickey, Peter, Mike (and Davy). Yet, in 2016, when so many musicians from the golden age of rock are leaving us, The Monkees’ joyful 50th anniversary tour offers us a reminder that this band is still very much a part of the story.

Set list

Listen to the Band (Songwriter: Mike Nesmith)
Last Train to Clarksville (Tommy Boyce/Bobby Hart)
That Was Then, This is Now (Vance Brescia)
Your Auntie Grizelda (Diane Hildebrand)
Saturday’s Child (David Gates)
She (Boyce/Hart)
She Makes Me Laugh (Rivers Cuomo)
A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You (Neil Diamond)
The Girl I Knew Somewhere (Michael Nesmith)
Steam Engine (Chip Douglas)
Shades of Gray (Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil)
Randy Scouse Git (Mickey Dolenz)
For Pete’s Sake (Peter Tork, Joey Richards)
Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)
(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher (Gary Jackson and Carl Smith)
Let’s Dance On (Boyce/Hart)
Mary, Mary (Michael Nesmith)
Circle Sky (Michael Nesmith) from Head
Porpoise Song (Gerry Goffin/Carole King) (Theme from Head)
Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again? (Peter Tork)
(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone (Boyce/Hart)
Words (Boyce/Hart)
Pap Gene’s Blues (Michael Nesmith)
Little Girl (Dolenz)
D.W. Washburn (Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller)
What Am I Doin’ Hanging Round (Michael Martin Murphey and Owens Castleman)
Daydream Believer (John Stewart)
Pleasant Valley Sunday (Goffin/King)
No Time (credited to The Monkees)
I’m a Believer (Diamond)

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This is the second in a series of five blogs that we will post on grit and what it means for poor kids.

In the first blog of this series, we introduced the concept of grit, as defined by Professor Angela Duckworth in her new book, Grit:The Power of Passion and Perseverance, and discussed how important it is for poor kids. We ended that blog by asking what can be done to help poor kids raise their GPA.

That’s not grade point average. In this instance it stands for Grit Potential Achievement.
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What can be done? To begin with, following Professor Duckworth’s lead, we need to admit that we don’t know what we don’t know and work with what we do. As Duckworth would advise, it is time to proceed based upon “hunches” using the best research data that is available today rather than studying this problem for the next decade and doing nothing while trying to craft the perfect solution.

It is time for learning by doing and continuous improvement. It is time to put poor kids first. It is time for adults to use their grit to help poor kids get grit.

Let’s examine what is known and being done right now to help poor kids to get grit starting with community-wide early childhood initiatives in Union City, N.J., and New York City.

The Stanford study, cited in the first blog of this series, which showed children in the districts with the highest concentration of poverty score an average of more than four grade levels below children in the richest districts also found that there were a few poor districts that posted higher than average test scores.

Union City was one of them. Its students consistently scored about one-third of a grade level above the national average on reading and math scores.

As we noted in an earlier blog, David Kirp, professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, has written a book and a 2013 op-ed for the New York Times on the transformation of the Union City school system. One of the key ingredients Kirp cited for Union City’s success was starting with pre-kindergarten and enrolling almost all 3 and 4-year olds.

Early this year, Kirp wrote an op-ed for the New York Times on New York City’s implementation of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s promise of a universal pre-K program. According to Kirp, there are now “68,547 4-year olds enrolled in one of the nations’ most ambitious experiments in education…”

That “experiment” required: recruiting 2,000 teachers: opening 3,000 classrooms; securing 300 community providers; ensuring the right quality with teachers, staff and coaches who “know how to talk with, and not at youngsters;” allocating the right level of resources in terms of dollars to ensure quality; and, using independent researchers to assess areas such as the “home away from home classrooms”, and, parent’s involvement in children’s academic and social progress.

Kirp emphasizes that it’s not sufficient just to get these kids off to a good start. He observes, “For the gains made by these 4-year olds to stick there must be a smooth path from prekindergarten through the first years of elementary school and beyond.” We made a similar point in our October 2015 Huffington Post blog, “The Critical Need to Sustain Pre-K Gains by Closing the Educational Chasm.”

In that blog, we stated that while research shows that the substantial gains that kids from poor or lower income backgrounds make in pre-K or in Head Start programs are not carried forward to the early years in school, research does not explain why. The answer may be a lack of grit.

Paul Tough, the author of the 2012 best-seller, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character, would undoubtedly advance this explanation and place the blame on a deficiency of character skills. In stark contrast, Peter Meyer, former news editor of Life Magazine and currently editor of Education Next and others would most likely place the blame on a lack of cognitive skills.

Who is correct? In our estimation, depending on how one looks at it they both are.

That’s because, there is substantial evidence – especially now with Professor Duckworth’s new book – that talent alone is not enough. Passion and perseverance are not enough either. Practice – and we should add perfect practice – makes perfect.

Duckworth’s two part formula for success is: Talent x Effort = Skill and Skill x Effort = Achievement.

In both parts of the formula, “effort” or grit (character skills) is the independent variable. What that suggests is that building cognitive skills that are central to academic success requires grit and that using those cognitive skills to achieve career success also requires grit.

In other words, in combination, character skills and cognitive skills are powerful. In isolation, they are only half of the equation.

In her book, Duckworth relates that she left her job as a math teacher of low income students in New York City and for a while taught math at Lowell, the only school in San Francisco that admits students based on academic merit. There she discovered that “…Lowell students were distinguished more by their work ethic than by their intelligence.” The highest performers on tests and quizzes were not necessarily the brightest students but those who studied the longest hours.

Given the progress that poor kids make in pre-K, it is obvious that they have the capacity to learn and to benefit significantly from an intervention when it is a tightly structured and well designed one. After that intervention, unfortunately, most of these poor kids do not have the ongoing support of “wise teaching” or “wise parenting”,as defined by Professor Duckworth, which are the requisites for grit development.

These poor kids have “grit potential” but they are growing up in gritty circumstances. In the main, those circumstances do not promote the type of parenting and teaching that builds grit.

They do the opposite. They extract grit from the parents and teachers who are caught in stressful conditions with limited economic, social and emotional capital to combat them. As a result, most poor kids have a grit deficiency.

They need assistance in order to achieve their grit potential. Who can provide that assistance and what form should it take?

[We answer that question in the next blog in this series.]

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