Who's Gulliver?

We met shortly after 9 a.m. on May 25, 1999. It was the first day in my new apartment. And what a great apartment it was, with an entire wall of windows looking out over Netarts Bay at the Pacific. At the time, I was an anxious middle-aged woman, clinically depressed and recently devoid of prospects. Gulliver was loud, manipulative, and demanding. But he was also cuter than all get out, standing there on the tar roof outside my window on those splattily flat little pink feet. I was instantly and irrevocably smitten.

I knew even as I threw out the first bread crust that I was being conned. But having the attention of a wild thing was a welcome diversion. Five years before, I’d been forced out of the teaching profession and had devoted every moment since to writing a book that showed how my experiences were a metaphor for why we can’t solve the problems in our schools. However, everything I wrote turned into an angry rant or self-pitying monologue. Trying to flee my failure and despair, I’d taken up residence in an obscure rural village on the northern coast of Oregon. But instead of escape, I found Gulliver.

As the months turned into years, I watched Gulliver survive gale-force winds and the hazards of life with nothing but his bright yellow beak, powerful wings, and the feathers on his back. I began to realize I wasn't fleeing my failure to point out the education system's bureaucratic follies and hypocrisies. I was fleeing my own desire for security and approval that had made me complicit in that system. It was when I finally stood up to this system that I lost everything and gained the opportunity to reclaim myself. Two books emerged from these insights.

Prisoner of Second Grade:
My Life Under the Thumb of That Other Cold War Enemy—
The System That Stifled Art, Humanity, and Reason

Read an Excerpt / Buy the Book

Waiting for Gulliver
What’s Really Missing From Education Reform in America
(For a serialized preview visit The Romance of the Netartians)

Gulliver