For some reason I have been thinking about books, reading, and rites of passage. It seems that, growing up, we not only went through developmental stages of growth, but stages of reading as well. I know that teachers in elementary school work their students through a progression from picture books to chapter books to novels, but as a group of friends, we went a little further. We were, after all, fairly independent.

I don’t remember learning to read. It seemed that one day my sisters were reading the Little Golden Books to me and gradually I took off. I remember, too, the sort of cozy lap time we shared when reading Jean de Brunhoff’s Babar books. Written in lovely cursive, which I could not decipher at the time, I loved Babar and was saddened when, in the first book, some hunters killed Babar’s mother. Perhaps because Babar was “adopted” so soon, it was less traumatic than the loss of Bambi’s mother years later. Maybe I was simply older and could personalize the loss of Bambi’s mother.

Post-Little Golden Books and Babar came the Dr. Seuss books. This was pre-Cat in the Hat and One Fish, Two Fish. The Dr. Seuss books we picked up at the library we read together: Bartholomew And The Oobleck, written in 1949 was relatively new when we read it. When I think of Horton the elephant, I don’t recall first that he heard a Who, but that he hatched an egg. The repetitive “I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one-hundred per cent.” certainly seems to have become a personal mantra. Other great Seuss reads included The 500 Hats Of Bartholomew Cubbins, Thidwick The Big-Hearted Moose, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, and On Beyond Zebra. Eventually I read The Cat In the Hat with my son, but felt really uncomfortable with the behavior of the two children. Why, when you have been told not to let anyone into the house when mom is out, did they go ahead and do precisely that?

At any rate, by my upper elementary school years, when my other friends were into Nancy Drew, I chose Cherry Ames. For whatever reason, I simply decided I didn’t want to mess with mysteries. Little did I know at the time that Cherry Ames solved mysteries as well. She simply did it with a cap and a white uniform. Cherry progressed through many iterations: student nurse, senior nurse, flight nurse, private nurse. You name it, Cherry did it. At the same time I discovered the Black Stallion books–my absolute favorite, even over Cherry Ames. By eighth grade, though, it became clear that Gone With The Wind was THE rite of passage book.

Rite of passage books–you weren’t a reader until you read Gone With The Wind. I suspect the designation was based more on length than it was on the quality of the book. Still, I joined the group of readers, having read Margaret Mitchell’s tome by the end of eighth grade. Looking back, it was just a story and in my opinion, Scarlett was simply a silly, classless girl who chased after whomever in order to either take something from her sister or make Ashley Wilkes jealous. Sometimes both. At any rate, I went back many years later to read it again simply to consider Mitchell’s use of language.

I have since come to agree with those who view Gone With The Wind as a primary source in the promulgation of the myth of the Lost Cause. The Wind Done Gone, a counterpoint to Gone With The Wind, was Alice Randall’s literary parody of Margaret Mitchell’s romance. The Wind Done Gone features Cynara, Scarlett’s mulatto half-sister, who is the daughter of Mammy by Scarlett’s father, Gerald O’Hara. I remember well the hoo-hah over this publication. In the end, Alice Randall was forbidden to use the names of the characters in Mitchell’s work. Cynara referred to Scarlett as “Other.” Randall’s efforts in storytelling became an exercise in making it work without Mitchell’s names. I am not sure how much sense Randall’s work would make to someone who had not read Mitchell. Randall certainly nails her “other side of the story” narrative, creating a complex read that is the counterpoint to Margaret Mitchell’s work. It is my opinion that the story of the antebellum South is incomplete without Alice Randall’s “unauthorized” parody.

I have yet to complete what was the undesignated high school level rite of passage: War and Peace. I did make an effort, but quickly found myself tangled in the number of characters and the ways in which names might change depending on which relationship was involved. I confess that this epic novel is still on my list. Perhaps it will go easier this time given that I am a much more experienced reader and that this will not be my first Tolstoy. Thanks to World Lit II, I can include Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich among my Russian authors. To tell the truth, while my group talked about reading War and Peace, by the time I finished high school, none of us had actually read it. Such if life.

Nevertheless, my list of to-be-read books is long. I may not have completed the list of 50 novels one should read before starting college even now, I am fairly well convinced that I will go on to the next world having left behind a stack of unread books next to my comfy chair. Even now, I am well prepared for the next lockdown, whenever it happens. The reading rite of passage no longer applies, I suspect. Still, I feel the need. . .the need to read.

W. Kamau Bell restarts his United Shades of America broadcast on CNN Sunday night. The new episode takes Bell to Florida where he discusses Woke with a group of young people. I have been teased enough. Sunday night will come soon enough.

So. Woke. One of those on the trailer said that Woke was a pejorative used against people who felt that they had come to an understanding. Bell, speaking to the camera, said that Woke was a Black term that meant to get educated, to learn. I agree, though I had only heard Woke as the former: a pejorative. It is pretty clear that there are those who would rather society stayed as it has been. Change is bad. Frankly, white supremacy has been and should remain woven into our world. Anyone who feels differently is Woke, and Woke is wrong.

But I think it’s not.

Call me Woke. I’ll take it as a compliment. Thank you very much. It means that I have done some homework and have learned something. Moreover, I continue to read, to think, to learn. Some of us learn more quickly than others, but learning is something we need to do if this country is to live up to not only its promises, but to grow and to move forward. I am not afraid of the changes wrought by changing demographics. It might be because I live in an urban area that is already not only multi-ethnic, but more brown than white.

Does my city have problems? Of course. Name a city of several hundred thousand in the US that doesn’t. On the other hand, I have hope. I look around and see city leaders who are working to make positive change. There is support for entrepreneurs, for new small businesses that will grow into larger businesses. There is support within the community for each other and a new positive energy grows. For all this I am grateful. Within myself, I have more confidence, more understanding. The history I have read makes sense and I see it played out in our politics. I may not be able to hit the streets in the way I want, but I can do other things. I am waiting for the canvassers to come around before the August primary. My arguments are ready. Bring it on.

In his book, Hamilton–the Revolution, Lin-Manuel Miranda writes that history is made by those who live it. Agreed. Many people say that history is written by the winners. I suggest that history is published by the winners but written by far more than the winners. Primary source material abounds. We just have to know where to find it. Primary source material, then, is the alarm clock that wakes us up to the depth of the history of our nation. It can’t be taught in a single year in high school. So far, this quest of mine has taken me far more than that. When I consider the story of this country, I feel overwhelmed at its breadth. It’s far more than the political history we learned in school. It feels as though I am standing on a bluff overlooking an ocean that contains all of the stories found in letters, journals, and newspapers—to say nothing of oral histories. It might be easy to drown in it all.

Yes. Absolutely. Call me Woke. I will agree with you and I will smile.

No, I am not writing about a Shakespeare play, but returning for the last time to Independence day celebrations. (Honest) Despite my dire predictions and downcast attitude, all went well. No one set the lot on fire. . .not even close. I watched any variety of illegal fireworks go off and chose to enjoy them. If my neighbors want to spend big bucks to explode in the sky, then who am I to be a Scrooge about any of it? It’s not my cash and really, the colors are beautiful. If I know the bang is coming, it’s all good.

Actually that Fourth of July weekend is also our wedding anniversary. I think it’s either 38 or 39 years. Odd that I am not precisely sure. If I subtract the date of our wedding, then it’s 38, but thinking that one has to move forward a year before one can count a year, then it’s 39. Actually, at this point, I don’t care about specifics. It has been a long time. Ergo, on July 3 we celebrate the anniversary with Butter Burgers. On July 4 we pig out on brats, beans, and corn on the cob. On July 5 and for a few days to follow, we have leftovers.

Someone asked me a while back how we managed to stay married this long. One answer may be that I am a doormat. I prefer to think that I choose the hill I want to die on. Furthermore, as a person who has grown up with a heavy drinker in the house, living with someone with chronic illness is not so different. We adjust our lives to accommodate the other. There are those who think I am a real fool for staying with the Hubs, but on the other hand, knowing the Hubs, I can well imagine his condition if I left. Then there is this compulsion I have about keeping my promises. The more serious the promise, the more I work to keep it even when it is difficult, even when it drives me a little crazy. Wedding vows are serious promises. I save my fights for the fight that enlightens the relationship rather than worrying about whether it is a fight I can win. I am not sure all that makes any sort of sense. Still, pick your battles, choose which hill you want to die on makes sense to me. For every bad day, I find a good day.

In the end, the weekend was far better than I thought it might be. There’s a line among chess players: The threat is greater than the execution. That might be the case this year. The anticipation was far worse than the experience. All’s well that ends well.

I used to love celebrating Independence Day. A glance through former entries tells me that this joy, this spirit of celebration has lasted well into my aged-ness. I loved putting out the flag, looking at it against the usually blue sky of July, making brats and corn. All of it. As a Brownie, as a Girl Scout, I marched in the local park parades. Participation in the annual doll buggy-coaster-bike parade at that same park was a family affair. Children aged 6-12 decorated their wheeled vehicles to address one of several theme-related categories, then marched through the park to receive treats and perhaps, if lucky, a prize. I think there were ten ribbons for each category. One year we managed to win a pink eighth prize ribbon in current events. I write “we” because I certainly didn’t decorate that buggy on my own. We kept an old wicker buggy, topped it with a piece of plywood, then the work began. It took Hours. In the end, every year, whether we won anything or not, it was beautiful. Each of us had our time in the event. Truly, the competition was fierce. Think that it was more a battle of the moms than of the children. If there were limited ways to decorate a bike, the moms found not only the obvious, but went beyond to the highly creative.

As a teen, there were multiple parades as a member of a youth band. One year we did five parades and two stand-up concerts. Marching in parades was an all day affair. We went once or twice to the lakefront fireworks, an event that was wonderful in all its beauty, even if the traffic wasn’t. Then there was the time when we went to the lakefront fireworks on the bus. By the time we got back to the bus stop, it was so late that our usual bus had stopped running. We walked miles, hoping that the cops would pick us up for curfew violation, but no such luck. We finally walked far enough to catch a route that was still working and got home around 2:00 in the morning. I am not sure why we never called home. I think it was hubris. We wanted to work ourselves out of the problem on our own.

This year, though, I feel so different. I cannot pin down precisely when things changed. It may have been when we didn’t go to the parks for the fireworks. People started camping out days ahead of the display. Those of us who didn’t camp out found places that were still good, but then there were those throwing firecrackers while in the crowd. It was more worrisome than fun.

It is against the law to set off personal fireworks in this city. Over recent years, so many people have ignored the law that it may as well not exist. It is impossible for the police to control. I am not writing about cherry bombs or smokey-snakes or sparklers. I am talking about sky-high boomers that rival anything I have seen in the park displays. Add to that the new development of those who discharge firearms into the air. I really don’t feel celebratory. I feel anxious. I can only imagine how much more those who deal with wartime-related PTSD as well as other traumas feel.

Then, of course, there’s the economic issues. It’s none of my business, certainly, but I know that I would not light a handful of dollar bills to watch them burn, yet the cost of fireworks is so high that it makes me think that lighting them to watch a few seconds of color in the air is the same equivalent. Really, we have already paid for the park system fireworks (and there are plenty of parks in our city) I feel no need to pay for more.

On the other hand, an 8X10 glossy black and white photo Mr. Miller put on the bulletin board in 5th grade might be a contributing factor. A classmate brought it in at the request of his mother. We were heading into the summer near the end of the school year when it went up as a warning to the rest of us. It was a picture of the right hand of the classmate’s brother, or what was left of it after a firework exploded as he held it. I can still see it in my mind’s eye–he was left with part of his thumb and his fourth and fifth fingers. It stayed there for days. Clearly I have never forgotten this.

Then there was the study of Frederick Douglass’ “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” an address dated July 5, 1852. He says, in part:

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

We might want to think about Frederick Douglass while we celebrate. It would remind us that for the descendants of enslaved people, the real Independence Day is Juneteenth.

In the end, though, I think it is the trauma of January 6 and the confirmation of the Supreme Court as the judicial wing of the far right that has brought me down. I am paraphrasing here, but I remember one broadcast on The View where Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Senator John McCain, once said that Republicans want to wave their flag and celebrate patriotism. Do we celebrate ourselves as patriots then or do we celebrate the country? Do Republicans somehow have a right to that label of “patriot”?

I can well imagine that my refusal to stand up to sing God Bless America at the baseball game might cause some hoo-hah in the heart of a possibly self-righteous uber-patriot. No, Irving Berlin didn’t write a second national anthem. He wrote a pop song in a revue that sat gathering dust for 20 years before it was resurrected by FDR’s request for something to lift the spirits of the country during WW II.

But I digress.

Liz Cheney, though? There is someone I greatly admire. She, Adam Kinzinger, Cassidy Hutchinsen restore my faith that there are people who stand for more than simple political pragmatism at any cost. Now here’s a patriot. She has probably sacrificed her political career to uphold her belief in the country and its constitution. I pay attention to what she has said:

Our founders provided that every elected official would swear an oath, and it is not an oath to a party. It’s not an oath to an individual. It is a solemn oath that we swear before God to support and defend the constitution of the United States of America.

And the founders established this oath, because they knew the danger of faction. They knew that the survival of this great American experiment, the survival of our Republic, depends upon public servants of Goodwill, doing their duty to the constitution, putting loyalty to the nation and its founding ideals above self-interest. This is no small thing. In fact, it is everything. I think often of the inscription above the fireplace in the state dining room, in the White House. It is part of a prayer, it’s from a letter that John Adams wrote to Dolly and it said, “May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof,” and we must always remember that. Our presidents are entrusted with incredible power. And actually John Adam’s wife was named Abigail, not Dolly. So he wrote it to Abigail. Just clarifying. But we must not elect people who are more loyal to themselves, or to power, than they are to our constitution.

Liz Cheney, comments on 6/29/2022, Ronald Regan Institute

She went on to say in her closing:

So let us all, as we leave here tonight, let us resolve that. We will embrace the grace and the compassion and the love of country that unites us. Let us resolve that we will fight to do what is right. And that we will be able to look back on these days and to say in our time of testing, we did our duty and we stood for truth. Ultimately, that is what our duty as Americans requires of us, that we love our country more, that we love her so much, that we will stand above politics to defend her, and that we will do everything in our power to protect our Constitution and our freedom paid for by the blood of so many. We must love our country so much that we will never yield in her defense.

Ibid

Her words have been helpful. There is still someone out there who is willing to speak, and speak eloquently, truth.

Today, when I think about hanging out our flag, what I see are the images of January 6. Crowds of men waving as many Trump flags as there were Stars and Stripes. American flags used as spears and truncheons to bludgeon those who denied them access to the capitol building. I hear the cries of the injured and the threats to hang the vice-president. I am not certain that I want to hang out the flag if it is now a symbol of January 6.

On the other hand, I will hang it out and as I do so, I’ll do so in honor of Liz Cheney, Cassidy Hutchinson, and Adam Kinzinger as well as any other, known-not-to-me, individual who is willing to stand up and speak out to preserve our republic.

This one’s for you.

Last week I posted my gut-level reaction to SCOTUS’ decision that women are to be forced to carry a pregnancy whether they were raped, had sex with some uncle or cousin or step-father or mama’s most recent boyfriend. It was pretty raw because that was what I was feeling at the time. Maybe raw feelings, a computer, and a blog are not always a wise combination. However, no matter what, I am still outraged. Nevertheless, given the choice between staying in bed with the covers over my head, I chose to be better.

I chose the gym and then the library. Now the problem is to choose not to stop at the vending machine on the way out to get some crisps (or chips, depending on where you are, dear reader). I think I can manage to choose healthy again this morning.

I intend to follow through with my promise to get involved in the next campaign. I may not be good at many things, but still, I can stuff envelopes with the best of them and can input information into an Excel document as well as anyone else. The other side of all of this is to talk to people, and truly, I have no patience talking with strangers with whom I disagree vehemently. It would not be a good thing for the candidate if I were to redline on the street corner.

Yes, this is a short entry. There was no indication that anyone stopped to read the other one, which is probably a good thing. On the other hand, I want the world to know that, yes, I am outraged. Now that there has been a bit of time, the outrage is still there but the red veil before my eyes has faded into something colder–maybe icy blue resolve.

The choice to remain pregnant should not be with the state. It should be with the individual. Health of the mother? Does mental health count? What if the woman asks how hard she has to drive her car into a tree before someone will listen to her? Will the state put her into restraints until she delivers? Inquiring minds want to know.

I liked the sign I saw on TV at a protest: Don’t Like Abortion? Get a Vasectomy. Amen, sister.

It has been a while since I mentioned the book log. To date, I have read 51 books since January, 2022. I do not keep track for amassing numbers, but rather to note what I have already read and rate those books in a thoroughly unscientific ratings system. The log allows me to note patterns of my reading as well. Lately I seem to dive deeply into history, immersing myself in one focus or another, then escaping into YA books, fantasy, or rom-com to take a break from the heavier work. A quick dip into the log reveals a few titles of fiction worth reporting on.

First, consider Danielle Evans’ The Office of Historical Corrections. In a way, it reminds me of Lynn Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why commas really do make a difference. The obvious exception is that Evans’ novel is simply that, a novel, and a relatively short one at that. The members of the WPA-like project Office of Historical Corrections are tasked with travelling the country, checking historical markers, researching their accuracy if necessary, then making the appropriate corrections to the record. Like those of us who are mightily tempted to either add or subtract comma (and apostrophe) errors, the urge to “fix” is difficult to resist. At any rate, Evans introduces us to an interesting and varied cast of characters at one of these small town stops. She establishes how the errors in the marker mask the issues behind the social currents in town. Careful reading and predicting led me to an unsurprising, yet satisfying reveal of the roots (how ever shocking) of the issues. As a recreational read, it is an enjoyable experience. The AHA moment at the end is gratifying.

Lisa Genova, who authored Still Alice, seems to focus on protagonists and their supporting families who have to deal with devastating medical issues such as Alzheimer’s, and traumatic brain injury. I recognized her name when I read a review of Every Note Played, a novel about a world-famous concert pianist who has ALS. It is an incredibly sad novel that deals with the difficulties encountered by slamming the past up against the present. For those of us steeped in the life of the musician, this is tragic. Having said that, is it more tragic than the life of a Harvard professor with Alzheimer’s disease? No. At the end of Still Alice, my heart went out even more to the youngest daughter of the family who was at the beginning of her career, having finally gotten her big break, and who was now saddled with the care of a mother who really should have been in memory care. Genova, a neurologist herself, discusses the issues of brain and neurological health via her novels, educating the reader along the way. For Every Note Played, bring your hanky.

After reading The Sentence, I went on a short Louise Erdrich binge, taking on both The Round House and Future Home of the Living God. While The Round House was well done in Erdrich’s particular style and focus, Future Home of the Living God was the more intriguing. Much like Leni Zumas’ Red Clocks and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Future Home of the Living God is set in a dystopian time where evolution seems to be reversing. Those women who can give birth to “normal” children are gathered together and ultimately forced to be the breeders and sustainers of our current Homo Sapiens lifeform. The main character, Cedar Hawk Songmaker, is thirty-two and pregnant, trying to escape capture by those who would imprison her and force her into this sort of bondage, not unlike those who exist in the world of The Handmaid’s Tale. I find novels of this sort disturbing. I feel that in some ways, we are not all that far away from these worlds. Robert Heinlein might call them future histories. Still, Erdrich blends Native culture with overweening Christian sensibilities and welds them into a compelling narrative that delivered a not with a bang but a whimper sort of arc.

Finally, after finishing Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, a friend recommended that I read his The Nickel Boys, a novel about a young man of promise who, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, finds himself sentenced to a notorious juvenile detention center where the boys are regularly beaten, sexually abused and from where food and supplies regularly disappear. Those who resist are taken “out back,” a place from where no one returns. Our protagonist, Elwood Curtis, has read and taken to heart the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and tries valiantly to hold on to King’s philosophy in this hellish environment. Curtis is a survivor, however, and learns to manage to maintain a sense of self within the system. I found myself outraged at the futility of the boys to find themselves in a better world and at the system that keeps them in this cruel place. Whitehead throws a major league curve ball at the end that left me goggle-eyed and haunted.

Every so often, related but disparate ideas hook up. Occasionally, I can see everything is related. Right now I am reading Deborah Lipstadt’s History On Trial, in which she relates the story of her having been sued for libel by Holocaust denier, David Irving. His issue? In her book Denying the Holocaust, she writes that Irving is “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial.” He took offense and sued her for libel. The trial itself took place in England, where the rules of legal engagement are different from here in the U.S. The burden of proof is on the defendant rather than on the plaintiff. The question is not whether the Holocaust happened, but whether Lipstadt is correct in calling Irving a denier and a dangerous man. Irving’s published writings lean toward the exoneration of Hitler. In the case of Hitler and his henchmen, Irving seems to serve as an apologist. Ergo, I made the cognitive leap from Hitler’s Holocaust and the Myth of the Lost Cause in the United States.

It was not quite a road-to-Damascus moment, but closer to a gentle Aha connection. Does that make sense, dear reader? I hope so. I am well aware that many others have compared the approach Germany takes to its history in the 21st century to the way that we in the US are finally taking account (or not) of our own history. Holocaust denial. . .Critical Race Theory (CRT). . .it all links back to, what? Nostalgia? White supremacy? Dealing with “the other”? In this moment, I am not confident that I can explain this all well. There are others, far smarter than I, with greater knowledge and background in all of this, who are likely more articulate than I, who can do this better. Then, dear reader, please consider this simply a tale of one person’s Aha moment of seeing the interrelatedness of man’s inhumanity to man and how we see it.

First, consider the thing that set this train of thought on its tracks: Richard Evans, in his book In Defense of History is quoted in Lipman: “The past really happened and we can, if we are very scrupulous and careful and self-critical. . . reach some tenable conclusions about what it all means.” Evans was part of Lipman’s defense team and also had criticized Irving. From that line, I leaped to Clint Smith, who in How the Word is Passed, writes “Just because something is difficult to accept doesn’t mean you should refuse to accept it.” That line led me to Flannery O’Connor who wrote “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” The connections kept on coming.

Last night I found I couldn’t put History on Trial down. Even though I know the verdict, the process of defending Lipstadt’s work was compelling. I read until I couldn’t any more. So much of the testimony took me back to Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The origin of our discontents. Wilkerson explains that in dealing with the “Jewish problem,” Hitler looked to the Jim Crow caste system in the United States. We became the model for Hitler’s atrocities. Would that more of those who decry the teaching of the truth of slavery would read Wilkerson. But the connections kept on coming. Of course, Ty Seidule’s Robert E. Lee and Me bubbled up to link the Myth of the Lost Cause in the former Confederate states to our current state of affairs in the US. To me, this all ties together. Hitler. Jim Crow. Holocaust deniers. The fantasy of the Happy Slave (think Margaret Mitchell and Gone With the Wind.) The final moment that woke me up last night was an episode of Sports Night: Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee Tech.

Yes, once I got on the train of link-ups, it is not only the memories of students that wakes me in the middle of the night.

The episode covers a moment when six student athletes refuse to play under the Confederate flag. Here, according to the script, is the situation:

Jeremy: Roland Shepard is a tailback from a small town in western Tennessee called Tipolo. One “t”, one “l”. He rode the bench for two years and then two weeks ago won the starting job when Lillias went down with a torn ACL. He rushed for 218 yards in his first game, 273 in his second.
Natalie: That two game total’s a conference record by the way.
Jeremy: He scored four touchdowns on the ground, two of them against the third-ranked rushing defense in the nation.
Natalie: He also caught a pass for a touchdown and ran a punt back for a touchdown.
Jeremy: He’s carrying a 3.3 GPA with a major in chemical engineering, and the Engineering Department at Tennessee Western is for real.
Dan: So what’s going on?
Jeremy: They’re gonna kick him out of school.
Isaac: They’re threatening to kick him out of school.
Dana: The Confederate flag?
Jeremy: Yeah.
Dan: They fly the flag outside the stadium?
Jeremy: Yeah.
Natalie: Also, students wave ’em in the stands.
Dana: Nothing you can do about that.
Isaac: Yeah, but outside the stadium, that’s the school.
Jeremy: Anyway, there’ll be a press conference at three o’clock, we’ve got it on satellite. The rumor is that Roland won’t play unless the school takes the flag down. The school’s gonna announce that Roland’s been suspended from the team, as a result of which his scholarship will be revoked, as a result of which, Roland will go back and pump gas in Tipolo, Tennessee.

https://sntranscripts.livejournal.com/2913.html

The drama goes on. The managing editor of the show, Isaac Jaffee, initially asks Casey, one of the anchors, to write a piece addressing the situation. Isaac doesn’t want to defend the Confederate flag. As a Black man and as a human, he is also offended by the situation. For him, though, it is a no-win because he fears that the station owner is looking to fire Isaac. Luther can hire a younger man and pay him far less than he pays Isaac. In the end, Isaac tells Casey to dump whatever it was that he had written and goes on air and to say the following:

Casey: Earlier in the show, we told you about Roland Shepard and the six other players who were dropped from their team and then their school for refusing to play football under the Confederate flag. Here’s Isaac Jaffee, managing editor of Sports Night, with an editorial comment. Isaac?
Isaac: Thank you, Casey. Exaudio, Comperio, Conloquor. That’s a Latin phrase that translates: To Listen, To Learn, To Speak. Those words are carved into the stone arches that form the entrance to the undergraduate library at Tennessee Western University. This afternoon, an extraordinary young man named Roland Shepard made what had to have been an excruciating decision. He said he wasn’t playing football under a Confederate flag. Six of his teammates then chose not to let Shepard stand alone. And I choose to join them at this moment. In the history of the South, there’s much to celebrate. And that flag is a desecration of all of it. It’s a banner of hatred and separation. It’s a banner of ignorance and violence and a war that pitted brother against brother, and to ask young black men and women, young Jewish men and women, Asians, Native Americans, to ask Americans to walk beneath its shadow is a humiliation of irreducible proportions. And we all know it. Tennessee Western has produced some outstanding alumni in the last hundred years. People of wisdom and vision. Strength and compassion. One of them is Luther Sachs. Luther Sachs owns Continental Corp, which owns the Continental Sports Channel, which you’re watching right now. Luther Sachs is a generous alumni contributor to Tennessee Western with a considerable influence over its Chancellor, Davis Blake, and its Board of Trustees. Luther, you’ve got a phone call to make. You’ve got to call Chancellor Blake and tell him to take down that flag or he can stop looking for your checks in the mail. You’ve got to put these young men back in a classroom, and I mean pronto. These boys are gonna make you proud one day, Luther. I challenge you to do the right thing. Not an unreasonable request to make of a man whose alma mater declares Exaudio, Comperio, Conloquor: To Listen, To Learn, To Speak. In the meantime, God go with you, Roland Shepard and you six Southern gentlemen of Tennessee. God’s not done with any of you yet.

https://sntranscripts.livejournal.com/2913.html

I confess that I am not at all sure what to do with all of this. The pieces of this entry have been floating around for a week and it has taken me more than two days to write this far. I feel as though I am at a point of convergence, an intersection of ideas that link together. Nevertheless, aside from writing here to point out that this is what I have discovered by way of this path of reading so far, I am at a loss as to what to do next. On the other hand, I have learned that as ideas percolate, the fog will eventually lift and the next step will become clearer. All I have to do is wait and watch. The readiness is all. 

An old US Army recruiting slogan: Not just a job, an adventure. I think that can be said about many careers–and in teaching, it was never just a job. I was never a “plop your butt on the chair behind your desk and work from there” sort of teacher. I was never like the Mr. Ditto of the old Nick Nolte movie, Teachers. That was absolutely not possible across the first thirty-five years in my role as band director. I never even sat down for rehearsals, though some of my colleagues did. Even teaching English, I was not a behind the desk teacher. I was on my feet most of the day, even using a stand-up desk when one was available. I simply think better standing up. Still, teaching was more than a way to pay the bills. I think that for me, it was a calling.

But now, four years from the day I retired, I find myself still thinking about the whole adventure, even so far as to let former colleagues know when I have found something that might be useful. Nevertheless, it is in the dark hours of the night when I am haunted by moments from long ago. How much better could I have done with that moment now than I did in the moment then. I believe I am not alone in being visited by ghosts of classrooms past. Those who were my first high school students are ready for retirement themselves. They are probably grandparents by now. Once in a while I get news of the wonderful successes they have become.

Unlike nostalgia for good days gone by, my midnight hauntings are about the failures and the losses. They are about the wrong words at the wrong times, the mistakes, the students who died far too young. They are about the stupidity that happens when parents lie by omission. Consider, for example, the heart transplant patient in my marching band. The parents didn’t tell the powers that be that the student carried a pager that would notify him that a heart was en route. They didn’t want him to be treated differently than the other students. Ok. So that knowledge would at least inform me to keep an eye on him during the drills to teach the halftime show or the long march in a homecoming parade.

Then there are the bad choices students make on their own. The student who, having fallen into a disreputable group, winds up shot in the head at 3:00 in the morning. He survived, but he is not at all the person he once was. Or the students who were bored one summer and so took up armed robbery for a little excitement. I saw one of the group on television in his orange prison jumpsuit, apologizing to the person he robbed. Then there was the instigator who amused himself by starting disruptions in the classroom and whose parent asked “What are the other students doing?” They are following your son on the road to perdition. In the spring of his senior year, he entertained himself by going to one part of the school to another and shouting “Fight! Fight!” in order to see the other students run through the hallways to that point. Right now he is doing serious time on a murder charge together with some of his followers.

Would that we could have wrangled him into using his gifts for something positive.

Equally disconcerting are those students who died too soon. Some died in auto accidents. I lost two that way. Another was lost in an ATV crash. One committed suicide, an act that has impacted her classmates over the years. There should not be so much pain in one place as there was the evening of the visitation. One clotheslined himself on a barbed wire fence while snowmobiling at night. He survived but had much to overcome having cut all the nerves to his tongue.

There were two particularly sad heartbreakers. Some sort of arts credit was required of juniors at the high school on the Great Plains where I taught for only two years. The administration decided that what students who had no particular talent or interest in music needed was a course in music theory. Now music theory, dear reader, is the course that separates the sheep from the goats among the music majors in college. It involves keyboard, sight singing, ear training, and composition. It assumes that one is competent in reading and performing from the printed page. Students who have no interest or talent in music certainly shouldn’t be in a music theory class, even on the high school level. However, the class was titled music theory in order to assign the band director to teach it. I decided that the idea of teaching theory to this group was baloney and changed the content to humanities. We looked at any variety of art, studied film, learned to listen to a few great orchestral compositions in what I hoped would be a rich and edifying course of study. Yes, the art included a discussion defining the difference between the naked and the nude, and yes, we included slides of nudes including Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.

Little did I know that the only girl in the class came from a very conservative Evangelical family. She was not allowed to read The Grapes of Wrath in English class because the preacher not only lost his faith, but used his position to “get” girls behind the tent after the revival services while they were still high on the spirit. Her English teacher had to substitute Giants in the Earth instead. One day “Lisa” was hanging out in my office and explained to me that she understood why she as the oldest had to be the role model for her younger siblings and that in that understanding didn’t protest about having to spend a significant time alone in the library working on Ole Rolvag’s classic settler’s novel. Still, she chose not to tell her parents what we covered in music theory because she wanted to learn. She related that she was happily anticipating going off to college where she could read whatever she wanted to. I have not forgotten how adamant she was on that point. Two years later, she packed the car and was as excited as any freshman to go to university, more so because she was on a volleyball scholarship. A month into her first semester, she was found dead in her room of an undetected heart issue. Lisa never got to read much of whatever she wanted to.

Sometimes the system fails our students. Students always seem to find their pecking order. One sixth grader was shunned by the others. Her hair was lank, she often smelled of the disinfectant used to wipe the udders of cows prior to milking, her hands were rough and scabbed. She was thin and wan. She never had the sort of energy one would expect from a healthy sixth grader. The district sent out child services to the farm more often than once, but nothing seemed to become of it. Then the day came one winter when they found her curled up in the hay loft, snuggled into the hay but dressed in a light t-shirt and shorts. Even through she wasn’t “my” student, I was heartbroken. Her life was difficult everywhere she went. The cause of death was listed as exposure, but I think she simply climbed into the loft and gave up.

I have learned to contrast the midnight hauntings with thoughts of the many successes I’ve seen over the years–the successful participants in solos and ensembles festivals, the performance of students under the lights on the field. A memory of a wonderful performance of von Weber’s clarinet Concertino that even other teachers from around the state who experienced the moment still talk about “that kid in the three piece suit.” There was the Rhodes Scholar, a former student who enjoyed that step after a free ride at Harvard. That from a public school. There are those who have come back to let me know–the EMT, the Police Officer, the Marines. There was the student who came to chat before his sister’s graduation–he who was starting his career in elementary education. I have had several student go into teaching, several who have become entrepreneurs, even a few who have completed med school. The number of students who have gone on to become positive, contributing members of society far outweighs those who have taken a different path. It might simply be that desire to set things right, to do better, that invites the other group to make a late night visitation.

Will the midnights visitors leave? I think it’s not likely. I suspect it’s true. You can take the teacher out of the classroom but cannot take the classroom out of the teacher.

Today I took time to stroll through the things I have saved on my thumb drive over the past several years. In retrospect, I wish I had included some context for many of these writings. Why was I inspired to save this; what meaning did it hold for me in that moment? In what moment did I find this piece? What was the situation, the occasion, that inspired me to save it?

On the other hand, some things stand for themselves and, in fact, stand the test of time. The Gettysburg Address needs little context, nor does I Have a Dream, or the words a day that will live in infamy. In this case, even today, E.B. White’s response to a request for a statement on democracy still holds true, even the line Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

Perhaps we should send this to our members in both houses of the Legislative branch:

This piece originally appeared in the Notes and Comment section of the July 3, 1943, issue of The New Yorker. “The 40s: The Story of a Decade,” an anthology of New Yorker articles, stories, and poems, will be released on Tuesday.

We received a letter from the Writers’ War Board the other day asking for a statement on “The Meaning of Democracy.” It presumably is our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure.

Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in don’t shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee. Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.

—E. B. White

Years ago we owned a building that housed a ballet studio. Not an all-assortment-of dance studio, a ballet studio. It was run by a woman who emigrated from France and was married to a Citibank executive. As a young woman, she trained in Paris and was planning to make ballet her career until life intervened and a run to catch a train resulted in a broken ankle. The Paris Opera Ballet’s loss was a gain for the rest of the world. Christine turned to teaching and we were the better for it.

She ran the usual group of classes for children, teens, and young future dancers, but in addition to all of that she ran a class for adults she called “Harmonization.” We called “sweat and groan class.” We had barre work as well as work in the center and a particularly grueling exercise for abs under the barre. I loved it. I remember that as a child I signed up for a summer recreation department class in basic ballet. My big worry? I would forget the five basic positions. The class was cancelled before the first meeting and I forgot about all of it. Pudgy little girls who have never seen live ballet aren’t particularly inspired to go all out. Still, all sorts of years later, when the chance to take Harmonization came up, I grabbed it. I certainly needed the work. Yes, I can still do all five positions–good on four and only vaguely sort-of on the fifth.

The day after the first day of class taught me what “sore to the bone” meant. However, over the next two years I understood by the sweat index that I had improved. I got good at the barre and some of the center but really, it was the hops that never really got anywhere. Christine taught us to hop with both feet in position. Other women not only could hop, but they could hop high. Not me. I am strictly a miniscule vertical leaper. One day I was really discouraged when after class Madame said she knew how frustrated I felt, but that I should not feel badly. According to the sweat index, I had come miles and miles.

The sweat index? The better you get, the more you sweat and the sooner you are sweat-soaked because you are working harder. It’s reminiscent of the moments in the TV series FAME when Debbie Allen as Lydia the dance teacher, kept poking the students: “Where’s the sweat?” The more you want success, the more you sweat. At the point in class where I had that particular conversation with Madame, I would be soaked halfway through warmup stretches. Really, keeping one’s glutes pinched tight all the time is an effort not to mention the work on the rest of the body. Pinch your glutes, pinch your abs. Head up. Stretch. More effort, more sweat. I felt good and because of Harmonization, I felt centered.

All this leads to the moment, now 30 years later, a moment of enlightenment in the gym. I was reminded the other day of Madame’s sweat index. Little by little over time, I knew by the numbers that I have been improving. It wasn’t until I peeled off a wet t-shirt the other day that I remembered the sweat index and took some joy in the damp and stinky garments I tucked into the duffel. The sweat index is another measure of progress in addition to the scale and the tape measure. At this point, I will take any move in a positive direction I can find. Where’s the sweat? The evidence is soaked into a t-shirt and running down the back of my neck.