Monday Night at Union Square: Tegan and Sara at Barnes & Noble

(Video courtesy IronChefWong)

Saturday Afternoon on the Upper West Side: Individual One at Barnes & Noble

Monday Evening in Union Square: In The Heights Reunion at Barnes & Noble

(Video courtesy Robb Johnston)

Tuesday Morning on the Upper East Side: Bernadette Peters at the 86th Street Barnes & Noble

(Video courtesy mattnyc78)

Tuesday Evening in Tribeca: Nellie McKay at Barnes & Noble

(Videos courtesy capnkoons)

Late Tuesday Afternoon on the Upper East Side: Cast of "Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812" Celebrates Album Release at the East 86th Street Barnes & Noble

(Video courtesy sepirts3)  

Friday Evening at Union Square: Ray Davies at Barnes & Noble

(Video courtesy LongIslandBands)

Tuesday Evening in Chelsea: Denise Duhamel and Amy Lemmon reading at Barnes and Noble at Fashion Institute of Technology

Early this evening we went over to the fabulous Fashion Institute of Technology's Barnes and Noble college bookstore to see two of our favorite poets, Denise Duhamel and Amy Lemmon, read from their collaborative books, ABBA: The Poems and the just-published Enjoy Hot or Iced: Poems in Conversation and a Conversation.

Denise Duhamel is an old friend, and we were glad to see her photo in the New York Times on Saturday although the story of her reading at Horace Mann with another old friend from Miami, Maureen Seaton, was a little discomfiting. It was great to see her in person again as well as hear her read. We've enjoyed Denise's poetry since the 1980s although we didn't meet her until November 1993, when we did a reading together, along with others, for the anthology Mondo Barbie (coincidentally, it got a nice writeup by Dave Housley at The Lit Pub just this past weekend) at the Miami Book Fair International. And it was great to see her with Amy Lemmon, whom we've had the pleasure of knowing since she hired us to teach business writing at FIT in the fall of 2006.

Their joint reading from their collaborative books was a terrific hour of poetry, probably the best reading we've gone to this year. It had an intimate feel, and the poets -- as they do in their texts -- play off one another expertly. Denise has done a great deal of collaborative work, and both the playful ABBA poems and the somewhat more elegant Enjoy Hot or Iced (beautifully designed by the publisher) gave us, and the others in the audience, a great deal of excitement and fun.

Take this collaboration, "Ex Post Facto":

"Remember me?" the subject line. My college beau
was now HUGGYBEAR3@yahoo.com and a VIP at Sysco.
He'd worn tie-dye and Birks on our first tryst. "Oh
you're in a sorority?" he'd said. I'd just made a pledge, though

I couldn't afford the dues. "Um, I joined Chi-O,"
I lied. "It's not Greek at all. We sit around and discuss Tao
and the benefits of soy." "Cool," he said. "Let's go
figure out our charts." I was a Gemini. He was a Leo.

Back at his place, he put on Elvis Costello,
lit vanilla candles, and unwrapped his Tarot
deck and ceramic bong. "In a past life, I was a Pharoah,"
I said, showing him my spread: a sword, a wand, and a fellow

with cups, dead ringer for Benny from ABBA. "Bingo!"
he teased until I became defensive. "Hey, I belong to the AFL-CIO
and NOW." "Not bad for a girl from Ohio,"
he whispered. He was from Miami, land of flamingo-

colored hotels and retirees in low-slung Speedos.
His kisses were sweet, a mixture of grass and Gallo.
In the mornings, we would eat marshmallow
clovers and hearts, Lucky Charms inciting our libidos

and sending us back to the lumpy futon. "Presto!"
I'd say, waving the sheets, beginning my strip show
to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon." Crypto-
karaoke was at the core of our love-manifesto,

"You Spin Me Round" by Dead or Alive. Ergo,
I traded in my shit-kickers for lime green stilettos
and my Tom Robbins novels for Brecht librettos.
Would he recognize me now? My clothes hamper so

clogged with black, my closet full of faux
Fendi and knock-off Manolo Blahniks? Apropos
or no, humming Schubert's allegro ma non troppo,
I typed "Refresh my memory!" and sipped Bordeaux.

Here's Amy's title poem from Enjoy Hot or Iced:

You’ve brewed this stuff, now drink it—
these dreggy-dregs, this filter-silt,
the tiny bits that cling to tongue.
You always liked it strong and now
you’ve got it at its darkest, split
us at the core to brew a full bold flavor,
so each must shoulder/bear the double-weight
of everything except the other’s body.
I hope you have your fun and drink it, too,
iced now as much as it was hot. I don’t. I didn’t
order it this way. I wanted café au lait,
and when the waiter brought it and I asked for water,
he said flat “No” and mugged—a joke, I thought,
but sure enough, he never brought a glass, left me
to fend with froth and squeeze a dollar tip. He thought
he was funny. You think you’re kind, you think
you’re sensible, you think you’re something
I can’t quite imagine. What of the Monet’s
lily-pads of mold on Earl Grey cooling in the jar?
The brown scrub-nulling scum that clings
to the worn Picasso mug? The ghosts of shattered crockery,
the cartoon souls of slain French press carafes?
Yours, yours, mine, ours. It’s a tossup,
so you clay-pigeon it again and pull! Shoot! A hit!
My heart, I mean, that flat and battered thing
you had and lately thought so little of.

And Denise's "Boxed Set Sestina":

I hid my hopes in a cigar box on Christmas, but you gave them away on Boxing Day (in Canada). I clipped box tops for coupons while you gobbled an expensive Bento box lunch. You were a noshow as I waited in line at the box office in the satin pillbox hat I bought at the thrift shop. I collected hatboxes while you flew your box kite wearing only your boxers. Our lovemaking once wore out the box springs, but now you said you felt boxed in. I slumped in the last row while you glowed with someone else in our box seats. You slept in first class while I shivered in the boxcar. I never got your love letter because you forgot to put it in the mailbox. I felt so neglected I ate fistfuls of croutons right from the box in my boxy, unflattering housedress. My shadow box was filled with ceramic figurines of you. Your toolbox was as empty as our icebox. I stayed home, blaring my boom box, while you drank at the bar, wasting quarters on a dusty jukebox. You told me to get off my soapbox. Were our problems bigger than a breadbox? Yes! Especially when I caught you peeing in the sandbox or dipping into the cashbox while you thought I wasn’t looking. It’s true I was a chatterbox, but you can’t deny you put your affection in a lockbox while you played with your vintage Matchbox cars. It was up to me to open the fuse box and fix the problem—up to me to take kickboxing to defend myself. I thought outside the box when I played your favorite song, Daddy Cool’s “Baby, Let Me Bang Your Box,” on my squeezebox. I was hoping to win you back after our most vicious boxing match—thirtynine rounds of screaming that made the German boxer nextdoor growl. It had all started when your word “boxwallah” wasn’t in the Scrabble dictionary; then I won with “carboxyl.” You snatched up your ebony snuffbox while I tore the boxberries from our flowerbox. I stuffed a shoebox with regret. You packed up your Hot Wheels lunchbox and left.

After the reading, the poets signed our books. We're really grateful for the work of Amy Lemmon and Denise Duhamel, and even more grateful to have them as friends.

Monday Night on the Upper East Side: "The Violet Mirror: How LGBT Literature Reflects Its Culture" panel at the 86th Street Barnes and Noble

We were lucky enough to attend a fascinating panel discussion tonight at the Upper East Side Barnes & Noble at 86th and Lex. Featuring the legendary Ann Bannon, whose books we have taught; gay publishing pioneers like editor Don Wiese, the prolific Eric Marcus and veteran activist Erin McHugh (who served as moderator); and the award-winning young literary YA novelist Nick Burd, "The Violet Mirror: How LGBT Literature Reflects Its Culture" proved to be a memorable 100 minutes of commentary and conversation.







We're grateful to the insightful and articulate panelists and to B&N for this strikingly interesting event.

Monday Night on the Upper East Side: Natasha Randall, Anya Ulinich and Keith Gessen on "Why Russian Literature Matters" at Barnes & Noble

We went to the Upper East Side Barnes & Noble tonight to hear a great "Writers on Writers" discussion, Why Russian Literature Matters, with the talented and perceptive Natasha Randall, Anya Ulinich and Keith Gessen.

The man responsible for making Russian literature matter to us was Spencer Roberts, a professor at Brooklyn College, with whom we first took for Russian 9, Russian Literature in Translation, in the spring of 1971, when we got closed out of most of the classes we wanted and settled for any course that sounded vaguely interesting.

We can still remember the excitement of reading the books on Prof. Roberts' syllabus: Pushkin's The Queen of Spades and Other Stories; Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time; Goncharov's Oblomov; Turgenev's Fathers and Sons; great stories ("The Lady with the Pet Dog," "Gooseberries," "The Darling") by Chekhov, whose plays we'd already read and seen, and Gogol ("The Overcoat," "The Nose," "Diary of a Madman" along with Dead Souls) and others; Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (we'd only seen the Greta Garbo movie); Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov; and Zamyantin's We, all of which blew our little minds.

Prof. Roberts would sometimes read stories aloud in a wonderful vibrant manner and he lectured on the course of Russian literature, so we still vaguely recall names, phrases, terms and titles like Belinsky, the superfluous man, Westerners vs. Slavophiles, poshlust, and What Is to Be Done?; he also spoke about his own experiences in the Soviet Union, and given his extremely conservative views in that radical time on college campuses, we students assumed he'd been a CIA agent stationed in Cold War Russia. And Prof. Roberts us told us to avoid at all costs reading anything translated by Constance Garnett.

In our last semester at Brooklyn College, we took Prof. Roberts for Russian 10, Dostoevsky in Translation, in which we read eleven, count 'em, eleven novels by the Russian master (our favorites included not just the big masterpieces but The Eternal Husband, The Double, and of course Notes from Underground, which we now teach), as well as a bunch of Dostoevsky's stories and nonfiction. By then we were a student representative on the curriculum committee of the BC faculty council and knew from our work there and Prof. Roberts' complaints to us that some people from the Comparative Literature Department groused that Roberts, in the Modern Languages Department, shouldn't have been teaching translated books. But we can't imagine anyone doing it better.

We were a little late for tonight's panel and noticed that Natasha Randall, translator of recent editions of We and A Hero of Our Time, had replaced the scheduled Olga Grushin. The other panelists are probably best known as acclaimed young American novelists born in Russia: the n + 1 editor Keith Gessen (All the Sad Young Literary Men, which we can attest can also be enjoyed by cheerful old unliterary men) and Anya Ulinich (the sweet and funny Petropolis). The panel's skillful moderator was the scholar Ronald Meyer, director of publications at the Harriman Institute and head of the graduate program in Russian translation at Columbia University.

Anyway, we're so out of it that we didn't even know the old Barnes & Nobles in this area had been replaced last summer with this brand-spankin'-new one with this incredible auditorium where the panel was speaking. We were late, of course, but we caught Keith and Anya on the TV monitors just outside, in corner of the store. Trying to not to be rude, we slipped into the back row near some bookstore staff and the control room. This will probably be on TV, so this post must be superfluous except for our usual boring alter kocker ramblings.

When we came in, Anya was talking about American MFA fiction and saying one reason Russian literature matters is that students in writing programs all over the place are trying to write Chekhov stories. We plead guilty, but since our MFA was awarded in 1976, the statute of limitations prevents our prosecution.

Natasha said that certainly to her as a translator, contemporary Russian literature matters as she wonders what she can bring to it that will make the works matter to Americans. She said the most frequent question she gets from laypeople (i.e., morons) like us is, "What translation should I read?" (We say stay clear of Miss Garnett and you'll be fine.) Natasha, after offhandedly zinging Pasternak as "ponderous" (we liked the movie Dr. Zhivago, seen at Canarsie's Seaview Theater during the Punic Wars), fell back on the Potter Stewart Gambit: you have to read Russian lit to understand why it matters.

Ron asked the panelists about their favorite works. Natasha said she didn't have one, it's usually the last one she's re-read, but at 16, it was Anna Karenina. (Did you - our mythical reader - ever see the BBC version from the 1970s? Poppy Dave, our adored then-girlfriend's grandfather, saw us watching it one night and said, "I love Levin," which sounded like the title of the sitcom version. We preferred that version's Karenin, played by the saturnine Eric Porter, though to us he'll always be Soames Forsyte - or maybe Professor Moriarty.) Keith recounted the classic Dostoevsky-versus-Tolstoy debate, concluding that one tasted great but the other was less filling. No, we're kidding. They're both filling.

Basically the problem is we can't read our handwriting in our little memo book. For example, we have an exclamation mark, meaning that it struck as important, next to something Anya said, but our notes appear to read "descended from chocolate." We do remember how Anya talked movingly (we're serious here) but funnily about being a teenager back in Russia and reading classic literature not realizing it was. For example, she thought Crime and Punishment was a mystery novel, like Agatha Christie's.

Keith said, and we quote our semi-legible notes here: "I don't like translations; Americans should make better cars." By this, he meant that if our own native (or immigrant) literature dealt with important stuff, we wouldn't have to import it from Russia. (But we find it's thrilling to get those foreign books that accelerate uncontrollably just when you're trying to step on the brakes.) Keith said we need an American Petrashevsky. (We thought American lit was already going around in circles.) Serially, Keith said something fairly profound: that writers explain what's really going on in such an opaque society as Russia, and here, well, we have Gawker (our example, not Keith's, though we've read about him there).

Oh, and a friend whom we forced to read this said Keith actually meant, not Mikhail Petrashevsky but Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, whose There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby Keith has translated. Okay, that makes a lot more sense, even to us.

Agreeing with Keith, Anya said that Russian people look up their writers as if they were priests (of the non-child-molesting variety, we presume). Poetry in Russia is more accessible than that of the U.S., where it can only be appreciated by academics and people appointed Poet Laureate. Anya said that Russian culture is much more direct than American culture and even ruder, something we notice every time we shop for appetizers on Brighton Beach Avenue. Anya said that Americans are too nice. (She may change her mind after this report on the panel.)

American readers expect entertainment, Keith said, and Russian writers don't labor under this pressure; Americans, he (correctly, in our view) noted, take all their cultural references from movies but Russians get their from books (because Russian movies are expensive and hard to find -- Ukrainian ones even more so).

Natasha talked the most about the history and development of Russian literature. Works in the 1700s were mostly extremely derivative of French novels and Sir Walter Scott's convoluted romances. One reason she fell in love with A Hero of Our Time (us too! we mean, we did too!) and translated it for a new audience was that it really was the first modern work of Russian literatue. (Prof. Roberts started our course with Lermontov's book.)

There was an interesting question-and-answer period. We are kind of embarrassed that we have done such a crappy job trying to say that this really, really was a good discussion that we enjoyed a lot. We don't mean to make fun of anyone here, because next to all these writers who know a lot we are an insignificant insect. (Yes, we know Kafka was Czech.) We apologize to Barnes & Noble, the panelists, and anyone reading this because, like 99% of people who come to this blog, you have seen something on Google Image Search that you want to upload to your own blog.

Compared to writers and scholars like Ronald Meyer, Natasha Randall, Anya Ulinich and Keith Gessen, we are just some schmuck who gives first-year college students quizzes with questions like this:

How does the Underground Man prepare for his confrontation with the officer in the park?

(A) He takes boxing lessons
(B) He buys a pair of gloves and a beaver collar
(C) He bribes a park attendant to trip the officer
(D) He compiles a list of witty retorts to use in case the officer insults him

We know we're sick and spiteful, and we despair. But in despair, as in Russian literature, there are the most intense enjoyments, and we're actually grateful to have heard such intelligent comments about Russian literature tonight. To show you (as we cannot) that the panelists (whose books you should run out and buy, they are all worth the rubles) are articulate beings, here they are in their own words:





Большое спасибо.

Wednesday Evening at the Brooklyn Heights Barnes & Noble: Brooklyn Community Arts & Media High School 11th Grade & "Take A Position: Create A Vision"

We are really jet-lagged after a long day hanging around Sky Harbor and a much-delayed flight back to JFK (this time of year Arizona is three hours behind New York since it doesn't observe daylight savings; the last thing you need there in summer is an extra hour of sunshine). But we're glad we roused ourselves from a sleep-deprived stupor to take the G train from our Williamsburg HQ to the Court Street Barnes & Noble this evening.

We went to a really special program celebrating the eleventh graders of Brooklyn Community Arts & Media High School (BCAM) and the release of their new book, Take a Position, Create a Vision: Persuasive Speeches & Campaign Posters, published with the wonderful Student Press Initiative at Teachers College.

It was pretty crowded when we got to the store (we knew we were back in Brooklyn when we walked past Borough Hall and saw pickets from Sunset Park with signs mostly in Chinese chanting in Spanish). Given a program, we stood in the back until B&N workers brought in more folding chairs.

The first speaker was Nita Noveno, the curriculum consultant from the Student Press Initiative whom we know from attending many of the great Sunday Salon events over the years (sadly, while we were in Arizona, one of our favorite Williamsburg haunts, Stain Bar, closed due to a massive rent increase - but Sunday Salon will now take place at Jimmy's No. 43 on East 7th Street starting on June 21.

Nita talked about working at BCAM with the eleventh graders, the school's inaugural class, and how the Take a Position, Create a Vision project is one of the most professional-looking publications to come from a high school class. It doesn't contain cliches or typical "student work," Nita said, and after seeing the posters (some of which were taped to the store's window on both the Court and Schermerhorn Street sides) and hearing the speeches, we definitely agree.

Erick Gordon, the founding director of the Student Press Initiative, praised the rhetorical accomplishments of the students, saying "BCAM sets the bar high."

How high was seen in the speech by the first student up, Camille Adolphe. Her talk, "A Word for the Written Piece," proved forceful and intelligent. For a decade we taught argumentative writing at Nova Southeastern University, and Camille's essay - written, like the others in the 11th grade American literature class of Kevin Greer - was more eloquent than most of the college-level work we've seen, and superior to all but one essay we can recall when we had the experience of teaching an 11th grade English class at a private school in Phoenix.

"We are victims of intellectual genocide," Camille said, referring to media influences that prevent high school students from thinking for themselves. She decried the materialism, trendiness and "blinding narcissism" that turn young Americans into walking advertisements and automatons and urged her peers to reject conspicuous, thoughtless consumption in a speech that could easily have been trite but which was anything but, as she called for people to use writing to express themselves and thus develop their individuality. Quoting the poet Jill Scott, Camille asked us to "write like there's no tomorrow. If you do not, there may not be." This was a great speech.

Similarly, Denise Fasuyi's "Speech to the Police" of New York City was a powerful indictment, here of the general attitude of the NYPD toward the city's youth. Relating a number of incidents of harassment and humiliation (anyone who walks the streets has seen this going on) as well as the tragedies we're all familiar with from the news, Denise delivered a speech that was all the more powerful for stating the arguments why police might sometimes need to stop adolescents and be wary of them. She called for a sincere and frank dialogue between cops and high school students, asking officers to come into the schools and talk to students as human beings, not potential perps.

Kevin Greer, the English teacher who's been working with these students since they were in ninth grade, said that he was a bit intimidated by the previous inspiring speeches and spoke about how essential rhetorical skills are in the world these kids will be facing after high school.

He introduced Trasaya Cyrus, who decried the langugage BCAM students use when they speak to each other, less so for the vulgarity than the "day-to-day, minute-to-minute hate" that common expressions like "fuck you" and "drop dead" exhibit. She asked the students to meet such rhetoric by not firing back but by walking away and by giving a little of, as in speech's title, a "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." If the golden rule seems as outdated as 1980s bell-bottoms, she said, it's not and students only disrespect themselves when they utter mindless profanities and hostility.

Kavon Johnson's "Separate Yourself from the Crowd," began with an admission that when he came to BCAM as a freshman, he was in search of popularity, got involved with cliques and did stupid things like "trying to prove fighting skills" in his quest to be popular and get attention.

But Kevon said he now learned more about the person he is by isolating himself and developing skills and interests that ware truly his own. Quoting Florence Falk's On My Own: The Art of Being a Woman Alone, he asked his peers to harness the power of solitude and use its shaping and transformative power to attune themselves to their own needs and desires as a way of achieving authentic selfhood.

After that eloquent speech, BCAM Principal James O'Brien came up and thanked the many people responsible for Take a Position, Create a Vision, asking them to stand up and be recognized. In turn, he called upon the teachers of the school, the counselor and assistant principal, the parents of BCAM students (most in the first few rows), the Student Press Initiative team, and finally, the BCAM students themselves. Next year is the founding class's graduation, Principal O'Brien said, and it's important that they not slack off.

He then introduced Councilmember Letitia James, saying "Every time we needed something, she was there." If you've ever heard Letitia James speak, you know she can be spellbinding, and this evening she gave a dynamic, inspirational, hortatory talk, warning the students against "the bias of low expectations society has for each and every one of you" and that there were those in the New York City power structure who were even now "preparing a housing program for you in some local jail."

The students represent "invisible voices," Councilmember James said, and she applauded the principal for letting them express themselves freely without any apprehension. She harkened back to the young people of SNCC back in the days of the civil rights movement, the young people who tore down the Berlin Wall, and the young people who fought for and achieved women's suffrage.

All the ability to change society and ourselves lies in education, Ms. James said. "There is no time to waste. I have the highest expectations of every one of you, and I will take no excuses" like "I'm poor" or "I don't have a father" or (eliciting laughter) "that teacher hates me." In the past, others struggled with much less opportunity - she referred to her own experience as the daughter of a single mother with eight kids on public assistance: "If I can make it, you can make it."

Then she warned the students that when she talks to Mayor Bloomberg about the school, he can point to test scores and say, "Tish, they're not doing that well." She said she needed the students to work hard at their studies to "back me up" when she speaks with the mayor and others in power. Then, raising the book, Councilmember James said, "This backs me up. . . But I also need your grades and graduation." And she said she expected every single BCAM graduate to go on to college, that in the audience of kids she didn't see any future basketball players and rap artists - "no B's, no H's" - but instead, future highly educated professionals.

Talking of her recent success in taking on and stopping "the richest developer in New York City" and in fighting for affordable housing on the waterfront of Brooklyn Heights, Ms. James said that for her and everyone else, "Education is the key to success. It's as simple as that." To immense applause, Principal O'Brien presented her with a yellow BCAM T-shirt.

The remaining speeches had more local than global concerns. Rahdell Clause's "Talk of the Cafeteria" dealt with an age-old issue: crappy school lunches. But he put in the context of a serious health issue, not just "broccoli that looks like throw-up" and burgers that look like they're made from beef maggots. Before Rahdell's speech, we were getting kind of hungry.

Pamela Otibu also discussed food as part of "Try Something New, It Might Save Your Life." It was a passionate diatribe against American junk food and its hold on teens. Coming here from Ghana three years ago, she got sucked in to the pleasures of Crown Fried Chicken but that she needed to "try harder" to achieve good nutrition and she discussed what we all know - things like eating more fruit and vegetables - while decrying junk food as as an assault on human dignity.

Christy Herbes, the art and media teacher, who worked with the students, said that it was challenging them to master Adobe Photoshop and the other software they used to create the posters. (We are no experts, but we do teach graphics arts majors at Fashion Institute of Technology a class in Profesional Writing in Art and Design, and from what we've learned from our students, we think the BCAM juniors are doing very professional graphics work.)

We were impressed by the sharp criticism of BCAM High School in the last two speeches by Ajani Brooks and Naomi Lynch. The principal was sitting right in front of us and though he did some good-natured heckling, it's a tribute to how seriously committed he and the administration are to students' free expression that strong criticism is not just tolerated but seems to be celebrated. We cannot imagine our own principal Dr. Bernstein at Midwood in the mid-1960s even envisioning a student delivering that kind of stinging criticism - not that we students back in the day would have imagined it, either.

Ajani's screed against "The Draconian Uniform Policy" was delivered, appropriately enough, with his own individual touch: he kept his backpack on while speaking. As a ninth grader, he wore what he wanted to BCAM, but then the insidious edict mandating uniforms led to the decimation of his preferred mode of sartorial expression and morning interruptions by Dean McHunter as he walked in the halls: "Yo! Yo! Son! You got a uniform?" Clothes are family problem, Ajani said, not an educational one, and the uniform policy is uniformly stressing out students and "creating paranoid adults."

Naomi Lynch's "An Ode to BCAM" asked the rhetorical question, "Where is the BCAM of yesteryear?" - yesteryear being 2007. She explained what an ode is, but it was left to us to figure out what a yester is. Actually, her speech was saved from stridency by touches of humor and self-mockery. She did nostalgically allude to the first year - ninth grade - as "the best," when BCAM seemed like "a hood version of Degrassi" but sadly decried the lack of student input on changes in the school she feels have been detrimental. Naomi called on student input and representation in school staff meetings and the PTA, which she'd like to see become the PTSA.

Principal O'Brien joined Naomi up front and said that they probably do need to partner more with the students and part of that was letting students be heard, as was done on the posters and speeches we saw and heard this evening. We were very impressed with both the students and the BCAM and SPI professionals who worked with them. And we're grateful that they let the public see what they're doing right.