As I embark on a Shakespeare unit with my students, nine graders reading Romeo & Juliet and AP Lit reading Hamlet, we start with questions. Questions Elizabethan thinkers might have pondered in 1598; questions we still ponder in 2018. I am struck with our timeless preoccupation over destiny: Are we the masters of our own fate? I ask students to think and write about their beliefs on this topic. Certainly, these teens, like those penned by Shakespeare, want to believe they are, indeed, in control of their outcomes, while I, I who have screamed up at the Heavens in distress, frustrated by the unpredictability of chance, those ‘why me’ moments; “O, I am Fortune’s fool” situations. As if we are pulled by strings invisible to our own hands. Just when we want/need/hope for a different outcome we must settle for what is… but as I look across the classroom at my students, into their hopeful eyes, their exuberant optimism, I see their uniform belief that yes, they are masters of their fate. They aren’t phased by headlines or politicians’ lies; they see their own trajectory as it slants up and beyond, straight into the starry night. Straight into heaven.
Category Archives: Life
Year’s End
As I flew back east in the early dawn, over rivers and mountains, farmland and city, I was reminded of the greatness that is America. Not the politician’s slogan or the sound bite, but the genuine people below, who tirelessly work this vast and diverse land and still gather for holidays, spread cheer regardless, and continue to hold each other close. After the turmoil and destruction of 2017 what better way to end this year than to come together for these last days and extend the always hope? Promising newness in 2018.
May this year truly open doors. Allow for health, and discourse of a genuine manner. Freedom from strife, and past failures. Brighten our windowsills and lighten our souls. Grow our gardens and our creativity. Move us forward, into what America has already become. Just take a look, and believe. For realz.
I will hold out for all the best, for all of you, and nothing less, for all of 2018. I raise my glass. And my heart.
Candlelight
“In the five years since the shooting, which transformed a fairly anonymous Connecticut town into a buzzword in the caustic national debate on gun violence, armed men have killed people at a nightclub, an outdoor music festival, a social services center, movie theaters, a church in South Carolina and a church in Texas.
The displays of grief follow a familiar routine: Candlelight vigils and makeshift memorials. National offerings of thoughts and prayers. Pleas to tighten gun laws, immediately trailed by calls to avoid politicizing a tragedy” (
