July 14, 2009

July 14, 2009

As a child I remember my grandmother as a great aficionado of CNBC. This was mentioned previously, but it shocks me that she still indulges most of her day in the financial network. As a child, the funniest part of CNBC was the ticker tape at a constant run across the television screen. The reporter could have been a terrier and still my focus would have been the stock market. I feel that as a child growing up in the 1980s, I had a better chance at the market than I do as an adult.

The ticker tape still scrolls across the screen, but now it feels like there are more financial programs and less tape. There are many hours where I have to leave the house in order to avoid people like Jim Cramer. Perhaps there were similar sound-effect specialists screwing with people’s finances in the 1980s, but it never kept me from enjoying a quick game of Rock’em Sock’em with my brothers. Despite the nauseating shouting, Evelyn’s main interest is still in the stocks. She follows the market whenever it is open and when it is closed, her sub-conscious is following it. She may not remember which fruit she had for breakfast, but she can always tell you if the market was up or down, (to an exact percentile), on the day that you ask.

This week I will travel back to Indianapolis in order to gather some belongings and see a friend’s wedding. I will stop by Evelyn and Ralph’s old house during my time in Indy. I’ve heard that the current owners have re-done the home both inside and out. Before the house was sold, two years were spent just throwing out what was not needed and moving the rest into a new ranch-style home. Because the main focus was to get as much out as quickly as possible, very few considerations went into remodeling. Besides, the lime-green carpeting might have been in someone’s interest.

When my grandmother began a Montessori school in Indianapolis, it was first in her basement. This was an easy access point for my aunt Annette. Annette has Down's syndrome and in the 1960s, there were few options in education for people with special needs. Evelyn researched various methods of alternative education including Montessori education. At the time, there were no Montessori schools in Indianapolis and very few in the United States, (or the rest of the world). She completed a correspondence course with St. Nicolas training center in England. After completing her training, she began the school to give her daughter a chance in education. My aunt was able to complete high school and is still living in Indianapolis close to my mother. This August she will be 49 years old.

Although the school moved to a church basement and then to its current building in the early 1980s, Montessori materials or other educational materials were found in the final move from the main home. At the time that I was throwing out materials, my grandmother knew that I was studying Montessori education and encouraged me to take whatever I wanted. It seemed that the basement's mold and sludge had first dibs. Piles of water-stained booklets, toys and manipulatives were all that was left of one of the first Montessori Schools in Indiana. I wonder if the current owners have any idea of the amount of educational history that took place in their home. Perhaps in their renovations they found a few jewels of educational history. Perhaps after I threw out most of the rotten materials, they were able to un-earth brand new Montessori materials and start a revolution in education! I can't wait to see whet they found!