Susan's Musings

Mind-Numbing Birds

My daughter is laughing at me. Having received an iPhone as a present, I went to the library to get books on how to use it. “It’s all instinctive,” she says. “After I do something over and over, then it will be instinctive,” I reply.

I certainly wouldn’t have bought an iPhone for myself, particularly after last Thanksgiving. At a lovely table, surrounded by close friends, our host suggested that we go around sharing what we were particularly thankful for this past year. His rule was that family and health not be mentioned, prodding us to look past the true and important for more subtle blessings. To my amazement, two of the women present mentioned their iPhones. Not as one of many devices which improves their lives, but rather with the specificity and tone of voice usually reserved for a love-struck teen waxing rhapsodic about the adorable local lifeguard.  As a bit of a contrarian, that was enough to convince me that I didn’t want one of those machines.

But with one in hand, I have to admit that I have a sense of what my friends meant. I am discovering that the phone really does do some amazing things and is actually surprisingly easy for even a non-digital-native to manipulate. I have learned to download apps and find it very useful while traveling to have the Grace after Meals as well as an entire Siddur (prayer book) weightlessly at my beck and call. However, one of the apps that I was told is a ‘must have’, namely Angry Birds, is giving me pause.

I try (often unsuccessfully) not to have a knee-jerk reaction that the more old-fashioned way is the better way. While not exactly a first adapter, I love the fact that I can Skype with my daughter overseas and that I can order a wedding present without trekking to the local mall. Nonetheless, I am worried at the speed with which technology is replacing the rest of life. I have been reading Jonah Lehrer’s book, Imagine: How Creativity Works. In it, he makes the point that our brains are stimulated towards creative thinking in certain ways. We’ve all experienced putting a problem out of mind while we take a stroll or a shower and having a “Eureka” moment as the solution pops into our head. I have frequently had that experience while working on a jigsaw puzzle or doing some needlepoint. My mind is concentrating on my task just enough to stop me obsessing on a specific topic, but not so intently that my subconscious is distracted from chewing over whatever challenges I am facing.

But what happens when our ‘down time’ is not spent strolling, showering or in some other activity which engages our brains while still leaving room for rumination? Instead the task at hand completely absorbs us. I don’t know how many hours people are granting to games like Angry Birds, but judging by the T-shirts, pillows and other accessories based on the game, I have to think the answer is many. There are hundreds of other similarly captivating games of which I am unaware. I’m not about to declare these games the greatest threat to civilization (I’m not even willing to state that I will never, under any circumstances, play), but I do think there is a qualitative difference between these down-time activities and previous generations’ fads. Rather than the recess that refreshes, could today’s leisure activities of choice be the pause that numbs?

(If I may make a suggestion, a better use of spare time this summer might be spent reading my husband's book, Thou Shall Prosper, which is on sale this week or my good friend, Judy Gruen's just-released and very funny book, Till We Eat Again.)

 

The Politically Correct Cad?

What’s a man to do? Last week my husband was put in an uncomfortable position.  He had to choose between either betraying his standards for acting as a gentleman or potentially harming a long time business relationship.  What happened? A lot of our work entails flying. On many fronts, flying has gotten less pleasant over the past few years, yet arriving at a destination fresh and ready to start work is imperative.  One of the ways we meet this challenge is by using a car service to get to the airport rather than driving ourselves. Not only do we get extra time to collect our thoughts, but the driver stays on top of the latest traffic news and picks the best route. The biggest bonus is the driver’s handling of the luggage, which can be both bulky and weighty when we need multiple changes of clothing for TV tapings as well as books and papers for speech preparation. Over the years we have come to trust one particular company, providing reliable income for them and the above-mentioned benefits for us. Everyone was happy.

Until last week, that is. Instead of one of the drivers we have come to know over the years arriving at our house, this time a slight woman drove up.  Having been trained as a gentleman by his mother and having instilled the same values in our son, my husband was uneasy standing aside while this young woman wrestled with the luggage. Despite her cheerful assertion that, “I’ll handle that,” my husband loaded the car. Had she been built like a stevedore the dilemma would still exist. Neither her ability to lift the bags nor her desire to do so would make my husband feel less like a cad if he stood idly by.

Fortunately, on our return trip one of our regular, husky male drivers picked us up. We are cautiously optimistic that these men will continue to appear at our doorstep. But what if a woman driver does come again? Play out some of the scenarios with me. While I certainly support a woman’s right to earn a living as a driver if she so desires, I also support my right as a customer to patronize a business only when I am receiving value. I don’t like seeing my husband handling the suitcases and I like the fact that he is a gentleman. As such, the company’s benefit to me is heavily reduced when they send a female driver.  Let’s say we request that only male drivers be sent to us. If we are the only ones who do so, there is no problem. Other customers, perhaps ones needing a small child to be driven, may prefer a woman driver and make the opposite demand from ours. But what if most of the customers are men with lots of luggage who feel as my husband and I do? In today’s society will the law require the company to keep someone on payroll with whom its customers aren’t comfortable in order to avoid litigation?

It is all well and good for the law to call for gender equality in employment. But unless we become a socialist or tyrannical state, individuals still have the choice whether to patronize a business or not. I know women who specifically seek the services of a female obstetrician. Should those women be chastised for depressing employment opportunities for male doctors? One of our daughters turned down a nanny position when she discovered that the toddler’s father had fluctuating work hours and would be in the house much of the day. Had the mother worked from home she would have had no problem.  We applauded her decision. Is our case of the female driver the same as or different from those examples? If on our next trip a woman driver appears, what do we do? If we complain we put the company in a difficult situation. If we stay silent, we will inevitably begin to opt more frequently for driving ourselves, which obviously threatens the company’s viablility as well. What would you do?

Educated and Clueless

There are weeks when I want to grab my husband, children and grandchildren and sail off to an uncharted island, cocooning us away from the rest of the world. Needless to say this idea has serious downsides including that I have yet to effectively grow anything in a home garden and that this voyage would render my library card useless. I’m not even sure that Google Earth, let alone government satellites still allow for the existence of uncharted islands.

Nonetheless, the desire to block out a confused world remains strong. After hearing of the president’s “evolution” on same-sex marriage last week, one of my son’s friends told me that among his peers are those who have strong religious beliefs. They agree that following God’s word on organizing both families and society leads to more successful and long-lasting results.

But, and this is a big but, they also believe that if they vote according to those beliefs, they are not good citizens. Years of higher (mis)education have convinced them that a Marxist can take his views into the polling booth; an atheist can vote his convictions; someone who believes that his cactus tells him how to vote can follow his plants’ imagined conscience, but that the good citizenship forbids one to take religious beliefs into account when voting. These are intelligent, personable and well-intentioned young adults. They are also abysmally ignorant as to the foundations of America (while waving diplomas that inform them that they are superbly educated).

I would like to think my son’s friend misunderstood his peer’s comments.  I fear he did not. Years ago, a very bright graduate student told me how shocked she was to discover that the wording of the First Amendment to the Constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” did not mean that Congress was forbidden to show any respect for religion.

If I had an island I could ban ideologically biased newspapers, manipulative books, TV shows or movies and teachers with an agenda.  In the real world, however, these influences are pervasive.  The onus is on each of us to articulate to our children ideas which are so fundamental that we assume they don’t need to be stated. Unless we make sure that our input is paramount we risk our children’s opinions being formed by other.

 

Happy (Homeschooling) Mother's Day

If you want to be enthusiastic, hang around enthusiastic, people. And there is scarcely a more enthusiastic group than homeschooling parents. I had a wonderful time this week as a keynote speaker for the 4th annual Torah home education conference. Homeschooling has grown rapidly in the United States, and there are churches I know where a majority of parents educate their children at home. However, it is only in recent years that the number of Jewish homeschooling families has grown significantly. There are reasons why Jews lagged behind in this American trend, including ongoing loyalty and well-deserved respect and affection for the system of religious Jewish private schools which has burgeoned in America since the end of World War II. Nonetheless, each year, more parents are assessing their individual children’s academic, psychological and spiritual needs as well as their family’s overall circumstances and declaring themselves homeschoolers. This year’s conference in Baltimore attracted parents from Denver and British Columbia; from Florida and upstate NY. It was a privilege to be there.

While fathers were well in evidence at the Torah Home Education Conference and homeschooling is almost always a joint decision, the bulk of the job usually falls on mom. Why would a Harvard graduate, a successful corporate lawyer, or an entrepreneur whose business is showing signs of exploding, walk away from the possibilities the world offers them? Why would they make a decision that nothing is more important than nurturing their children? How did we become a generation that can even ask that question?

In my sixteen years as a homeschooling mom, one or two days stand out when I hid from the kids in my closet crying that I just couldn’t do this anymore. I remember many more days when I was filled with gratitude for being present when I saw my child’s face beam as squiggles on a page turned into words or when I was able to facilitate a discussion of a current event or book, raising ethical and moral issues. I loved hearing my children answer that question beloved of pediatricians and random people in check-out lines, “What is your favorite subject?” with “history,” “chumash (Bible)” or “poetry” instead of “recess.” The fact that they never even considered reading or critical thinking or hashkafa (Jewish worldview) as a school subject was the hot fudge on the sundae. In the dark days of September 11^th or when a personal family loss occurred, I appreciated hurting together rather than apart. I cherished hours of reading aloud with children ranging from pre-schoolers to teenagers and giving those young adults hours to explore their own interests and transition safely to adulthood. I love that trips and experiences were shared with siblings and parents rather than only peers.

I miss my homeschooling days though I live it vicariously as one of my daughters continues on the adventure with her children. Thankfully, the overwhelming majority of mothers love their children including those who work out of the home and those who focus on the home; those who work for pay and those who volunteer; those who have one child and those who have many; those who homeschool and those who send their children to schools. Nonetheless, in a country filled with intelligent, creative, powerful women who buck the establishment by declaring that encouraging, mentoring and cultivating one’s own child is a worthwhile career choice, not only the children but the nation should say, “thank-you.”

 

 

 

Profiling, Racism and Reality

I am humbled by the responses to last week’s Musing. I asked for readers to participate in a conversation and you did. I truly appreciate the kind words from many of you and I am grateful for those who affirmed, gently chided, and wrote so passionately and eloquently.  Race is an emotional topic and as a country (and a world) we need to feel comfortable speaking openly. I encourage you all to read the comments; it will be a good use of your time.  (I have a culture gap admission to make here: the first comment which used the letters AA had me scratching my head trying to figure out what Alcoholics Anonymous had to do with the topic.  It took a bit of pondering to realize that it stood for African American.)

Rather than quoting from and responding directly to your comments, I’d like to continue the dialogue. The word ‘profiling’ garners much bad press. Profiling has been used as a synonym for racism. But is it? When I am in a building and about to enter an elevator, I profile. When the doors open I look to see who is already in the elevator.  Is it a woman rocking a baby carriage? I enter and her race doesn’t make a difference. Is it a couple dressed up for a night on the town? I enter, and their race doesn’t make a difference. Is it a young man? My mind races through more questions.  How is he dressed? How do I read his body language? What city and type of building am I in? What time of day is it? And yes, what is his race?  In the final analysis, with a split-second in which to make the decision, I go with my gut. One of the strongest pieces of advice women are given by police departments and self-defense experts is to hone and pay attention to their instincts. Those instincts are certainly shaped by one’s culture and past experiences.  

I grew up in New York City. The local college I attended had signs on the women’s bathroom doors which discouraged going to the bathroom alone. I was taught to carry a purse in a manner that discouraged pickpocketing and to survey the occupants of a train car before entering. We called these tidbits ‘street smarts.’ And my peers and I were very aware that criminal behavior was not evenly distributed among all races, genders and ages. Serial murderers? White males. Muggers? Young black males. Pretending otherwise in the name of utopian daydreaming could cost you a great deal.

If I decide not to enter an elevator because a young, black teen in a hoodie with a scowl on his face would be my sole companion, I think it unfair to call me racist. I most likely would turn the same ride down if a white teen presenting himself in the same unpleasant way was there. But I admit that race is one of the factors involved in my decision. I also understand that rather than protecting myself from a criminal, I just might be causing pain to a young man who has just returned from visiting his mother in the hospital or from an all-night shift at a job. Even if my action is the same, the white teenager would not feel the same level of rejection. This is the real world.

I do not know what took place between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. Neither does anyone else. I do know that many in the media misreported, manipulated and slanted coverage to fulfill their own agendas. Every American citizen was harmed by this malfeasance. As more information comes out, after anger was stoked (leading to violent attacks on whites) and few are left paying attention, a different story than originally promoted is coming out. A Reuters piece included information which makes clear that depicting Zimmerman as racist is incendiary rather than factual. It also put the episode in context, quoting a neighborhood resident. "Let's talk about the elephant in the room. I'm black, OK?" the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. "There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood," she said. "That's why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin."

Trayvon’s death and George’s part in it are personal tragedies for their families. The race-hustling, hatred-filled responses expand that heartbreak.  The policies which erode moral clarity and personal responsibility; the liberal attitudes which discourage strong two-parent families; and the failing public schools and programs which keep large groups trapped in the past, are national catastrophes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Cruel and Unusual Susan?

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend relating to feedback on my Musings. Last week offered one example. A reader wrote to my husband, commenting, “Had Trayvon been your son would your wife had been so inhumane about the matter? I think Susan is very cruel, I would like to hear your comment when it is your child's turn.”

What was my alleged cruelty? I wrote in last week’s Musing that after a holiday week, “I am having a hard time getting back to everyday life.” I said that the break had made it difficult for me to “order my brain to deal with anything substantive in time to write this Musing.” As examples of noteworthy issues which I was not able to address, I wrote, “Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman; Obama and Romney; even Iran and nuclear armament recede into the background.”

While the writer didn’t use the word racism in her email, I think it fair to assume that it is the elephant in the room. Exactly what pained her so much? Unfortunately, there are frequent tragic occurrences in the world and I don’t think she is making the suggestion that it is cruel to do anything other than be immobilized by suffering.  Or was she suggesting that a nuclear Iran and the upcoming presidential election are light-hearted subjects and as such my sentence suggested a frivolous attitude towards Trayvon’s death? Unfortunately, she didn’t elaborate on her accusation.

I have received similar negative feedback every time a Black person is mentioned in my blog. It doesn’t matter what the context; someone directly or indirectly accuses me of insensitivity or racism.  No one as of yet has left their remarks as a comment. They send their thoughts to me through my business email or, as in this case, to my husband.  The result is that the writer vents without opening the potential for a public conversation.

Since we don’t ask people to provide detailed information before signing up for Thought Tools (the source of the overwhelming majority of Musing readers) or accessing my Musing, I have no way of knowing how many weekly readers fit into various racial, gender, ethnic or income groupings. Judging from the people I meet at events, I think it’s reasonable to assume that there is a relatively diverse spread in all those categories.

Racism, like anti-Semitism, is a charge which is easy to hurl, difficult to substantiate and impossible to refute. Aside from easy to recognize, egregious examples, I believe that both racism and anti-Semitism often exist more in the mind of the individual who feels victimized rather than in objective reality. Years ago, my husband and I, along with an out of town guest, strolled through our neighborhood. We spent some time on a curvy road which lacked sidewalks. As we rounded one bend, a passing driver tooted his horn. To our astonishment, our guest immediately muttered, “Anti-Semite!” It is true that both my husband and our guest were wearing yarmulkas (religious head coverings) which identified them as Jewish. My husband and I took the beeping as a friendly gesture of warning that a car was going to be passing us on a shared road. Our visitor took it as a hostile gesture. There is no way of knowing what the driver’s actual motivation was, so our differing reactions revealed more about our own ways of thinking than anything else.

I recently read a letter to an advice columnist where a young woman expressed her hurt and resentment towards her mother-in-law, giving a few examples of the painful situations she endured. Like the columnist, I felt sorry for her. Not because her stories proved that she had an awful mother-in-law, but because she was locked into a world view in which she saw herself as maltreated. Rather than giving the benefit of the doubt to her husband’s mother or recognizing that two women from different backgrounds thrust into intimacy don’t necessarily share communication styles, she saw every interaction through a jaundiced prism. Likewise, I found that response to last week’s Musing tremendously sad. It spoke to me of a woman who lives in a world full of offense and antagonism rather than one of good will.

Both the American Jewish and African-American worlds are conspicuously led by spokesmen who earn high salaries from organizations whose existence depends on their respective groups being hated.  Politicians and irresponsible (or true believer) journalists likewise manipulate the truth for their own purposes. While ostensibly decrying prejudice, they often encourage people to bask in victimhood, to the detriment of all.  

I thought of ignoring what, after all, was one email. But on the principle that what one person writes reflects the thoughts of others, I chose to respond in this way. If this Musing provokes negative reaction, I hope it will be submitted as a comment so that it can be posted for all to see. I would look forward to comments whose goals are not to accuse or to insult, but instead to provide perspective.  That is the only way that a conversation can ensue which can encourage us all to expand our horizons and step into one another’s shoes.

Time Out

When your life revolves around the Jewish calendar, certain periods in the year overwhelm time. Passover is one of those occasions which take up so much mental and physical space that there is no attention left for most other things. Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman; Obama and Romney; even Iran and nuclear armament recede into the background.

In those years when my husband and I host Passover observances for our family and friends, preparations for the holiday completely overpower the rest of life. (See 50 Pounds of Potatoes) This year, however, we had the delightful experience of being guests of our daughter and son-in-law at a Passover Conference for about 600 Jews at a Bahamian resort. They arranged for my husband to be engaged as a scholar-in-residence, teaching through the week. The added inducement of spending the week with granddaughter, Aliza, made it an offer we couldn’t refuse. While my husband was busy teaching for the program, I had few demands on my time. 

The holiday and the setting worked its magic. While I am grateful for the many blessings in our lives over the past few years, including weddings, babies and a growing publishing business, there hasn’t been a lot of down time. Having abundant food with no cooking or clean-up in an absolutely stunning setting was incredible. The prayer services were lovely and our fellow participants were congenial and fun to meet. We even got to visit a pirate museum on one day, which delighted my husband as he appreciates knowing that there are alternate career options available. (He has long been quite fascinated with the many Jewish pirates (o.k., privateers) in the 17^th century.)

I am having a hard time getting back to everyday life. This is to say that despite numerous faulty starts, I simply couldn’t order my brain to deal with anything substantive in time to write this Musing. See you next week!

 

 

50 Pounds of Potatoes (April 2010)

At the end of the meal, after proclaiming in a loud voice, “Thank you HaShem (God); thank you Grandma,” three year old Eli noticed that everyone at the table was looking at him. He explained to the group, “I like to thank both those guys.”

This pretty much sums up our Passover. With God’s blessing, we had all our children and grandchildren around the holyday table for the first time in a number of years. While I spent many hours preparing the food for the seventeen to nineteen people at each meal of the eight day celebration (including ten festive meals), it truly was a labor of love.

This is not to say that it also wasn’t a lot of work. The planning started weeks in advance with a lot of unknowns. Would we have a very pregnant daughter at the table or a post-partum one? Or maybe the eagerly awaited family member would arrive during the festivities? Would we have a sparkling new and large kitchen to work in as well as extra bedrooms available or did the east coast winter snowstorms put another daughter’s planned move into a new home behind schedule?

Well, we are still waiting for the baby and about two weeks before Passover it became clear that a tiny kitchen would have to suffice and that we would need to impose on generous neighbors for beds. We rented an extra refrigerator, bought a counter top convection oven and moved the organizing/cleaning/shopping/cooking countdown into high gear.

Is Passover an easy holyday to make? No. But it is hard to think of anything that is worthwhile which doesn’t entail great effort. While this year had its specific complicating factors, other years have featured my own newborns, ovens and refrigerators that conked out, and a variety of other family and technical hurdles to overcome. Still, while I appreciate the times we have spent Passover at friends or relatives as well as the availability of hotel Passover programs, my favorite years are like this one, when we are blessed enough to have the strength and time to do all the preparations and gather our family around our own table. The “easy” Passovers, when others do the work, can be wonderful, but they always feel a bit “Passover style” to me rather than the real thing. Not only are the weeks of preparation an intrinsic part of the celebration, but while the food may be delicious elsewhere, it doesn’t include those items whose smell and taste trigger the explosion of Passover memory receptors.  And had anyone other than I done the cooking, I would have missed out on my grandson placing me in such illustrious company.

As my mother always said at the holyday’s end each year, “May the same hands that put the Passover dishes away this year take them out again next year.” Amen.

 

Beware the Misguided Majority

“Each Passover we should see ourselves as if we personally experienced the Exodus from Egypt.” Jews around the world recited a sentence expressing this thought at the Passover Seder a few nights ago. Shortly before the holiday started, my son, Ari, saw one aspect of this idea come to life.

I think most of us picture ourselves on the right side of history. Had we lived in different times and places surely we would have stood with the abolitionists rather than the slave-owners; would have joined the Resistance rather than the Nazi Party; and would have opposed Stalin rather than embracing him. We more easily picture ourselves following Moses through the sea rather than ignoring him and the God he represented.  But the majority of Jews did not leave Egypt. Eighty percent chose loyalty to Pharaoh and the status quo.  Bad choice.

Being courageous and noble is always easier with hindsight. If we were all virtuous, wise, discerning and proper-thinking people, there would be no evil to defeat in the world. It is obviously quite easy to follow a wrong ideology and be swayed by misguided and evil philosophies. Ideas which sound good can be awfully destructive. Fully aware of how courage is contagious, our son, Ari, took time from an incredibly busy schedule to go hear Ayaan Hirsi Ali, one of the brave and heroic women of our day. If you have not read her book, Infidel, I highly recommend that you do. An outspoken activist against the worst manifestations of Islamo-fascist behavior, particularly as it affects women and children, she risks her life by speaking out and has been forced into exile for her views.

Hearing her speak was a mixed experience. Ari appreciated her words and was glad to support her as she addressed the students at a major university in Maryland. The student reaction, however, was demoralizing. Ms. Ali and America were attacked. Listening to the questioners, one would be forgiven for thinking that the Moslem world is a bastion of women’s rights and peaceful coexistence among all religions while America is a bigoted, repressive society. In Ari’s words, “The questions and questioners were uniformly dumb, rude, antagonistic and illogical.  What was incredible is that the moderator, the president of the university, allowed and encouraged their behavior.  It was truly childish and embarrassing.”

In every generation in which evil triumphs, many who side with it are ‘useful idiots’ or swept along with the crowd. We should never stop looking deep inside ourselves and asking ourselves whether we are on the right side of issues and will be able to look back and declare that we, indeed, did align ourselves with those who chose God rather than Pharaoh.

 

 

 

Barbie, Queen of the Prom

An article about over-provocative high school prom dresses in last week’s Wall Street Journal got me reminiscing. Not about my own prom or my children’s; proms are not a part of observant Jewish life. Instead, my memories are of a board game I played as a girl – Barbie, Queen of the Prom. The object of the game was to be the first player to collect everything your Barbie needed for the prom. My memory is a bit fuzzy on exactly what was required, though I do know a date and dress were two essentials. Four people could play and there was quite a bit of competition to get the best boy (Ken, of course – some poor white-haired lad named Poindexter was always last picked) and prettiest dress.

As a child playing the game with my friends, Barbie seemed very mature and sophisticated.  Surely, by the time you went to your high school prom, you were grown up! And indeed, when high school proms began to be popular in the 1930’s and1940’s, eighteen year old students were usually mature and responsible. High school prom was often engagement night, especially for young women. The earliest proms were akin to a debutante ball for those not in the upper social echelon; a way for middle-class families to mimic the debutante balls which introduced upper-class daughters to society as women of marriageable age. I may be confusing this with Victorian England, (I have a severely restricted research budget for this Musing) but in the college proms of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s men might have even worn gloves so as not to touch the skin of the young ladies.  Those same young men by age eighteen were already, or on the threshold of being, financially responsible for themselves.   So at a time when these formal dances were strictly structured and meant as an acknowledgment of one’s grown up status, the participants truly were standing at the entry to adult society.

That is quite different from what goes on today. Certainly, renting hotel rooms after the dance was over was not a feature of much earlier eras.  Nor was the expectation that marriage might be a decade, or more, in the future. Today, we take nubile girls and testosterone poisoned boys nowhere near emotional maturity and place them in a romantic milieu, after having immersed them with an education which insists that there is no absolute morality. To me the Journal article highlighting how some schools monitor dresses, even providing pictures showing what skin may be shown and what skin must be covered, seemed quaint. Certainly one can understand the desire of administrators to keep the evening from looking like auditions for Amsterdam’s red light district. But is a dress code anything more than providing a box of Band-Aids to victims of a horrific crash?

As I said, I have no emotional connection to prom. Perhaps I am viewing it through cynical and jaundiced eyes. Does the evening have a value which escapes me? I’d be curious to hear another view from those who still see high school proms as not just an exciting evening (tornadoes can be exciting as well), but also as a beneficial and constructive experience in their children’s lives.