An Irish Goodbye

After 31 years of walking into this almost hundred year-old regal school building greeting all those doing the same, and spending a day discussing excellent texts and fostering student responses I find myself driving away one final time on this hot June day. The waterfall of complicated emotions I’ve felt since I turned in my resignation is Niagara Falls in proportion. Finding myself unable to say a lengthy farewell to students or colleagues, instead overcome by the whole convergence of my living and breathing within this mighty vocation, I slipped away, opting for an Irish goodbye.

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Back to School

Today my classroom is filled with teens and words and art and posters and wood and windows open to the ever-changing sky. This place is one that I have spent close to 200 days a year for 3 decades and has evolved some but mostly stayed very much the same. It pulls me back every August and from within this space one can watch all four seasons come into view and famish into the next. There is often laughter and silliness and curiosity and challenges too. We sit in a circle but that changes too. In this English class there are 20 of us forming thoughts and plotting out ideas and becoming a learning community. It feels a bit daunting at the start of any school year, and today is no different. But time, like water, will soften those anxieties and bring us across the rough spots. My room has wood floors and magnificently tall windows. Along the other three walls hangs student art, much of it reflecting a novel’s theme or character, done in a variety of mediums from collage to watercolor to paint, all adding life and color to the century old walls. The blackboards are covered over but I use the space to share various ideas I want students to consider. This year there is now a wall caddy for cell phones, much to the dismay of many who wish not to surrender theirs, but doing so does help keep a semblance of focus. A classroom is a living breathing place which is always worth a look around. I appreciate mine.

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Democracy will Survive

This afternoon, as I tried to corner my mind into one concise post, “State Representatives Justin Jones, Justin J. Pearson and Gloria Johnson — were facing expulsion from the [Tennessee] House, a dramatic act of political retribution” (New York Times). Jones, along with marchers driven to extremity in the face of obstinate denial, demanded law-makers reduce their gun-lobby-controlled agenda and do something, anything actually, other than offer up innocent citizens to the greed and profits of the weapons’ manufacturers. But, in all seriousness I really don’t want to write about guns in a country that is actually still debating the most basic gun control measures of any civilized country on the planet, like there are two sides to this? I also don’t want to write about the business man faced with 34 charges, all of which point to his sleazy dealings with women or country, anyone really, who stands in his power-mongering way. I did listen to Jonah Bromwich, a criminal justice correspondent for The Times, tell what it was like inside the courthouse as Mr. Trump was first brought in, and then charged, on The Daily podcast. The swagger, the bravado, and all the hype generally seen when this guy hits the pulpit minimized to two words, “Not Guilty.” The only words he uttered in court. Although he was warned by the judge to not rile people up with his harmful rhetoric, “to refrain from comments that incite violence or create civil unrest,” he was barely in the door at his Palm Beach playground when he did all of that. Ugh! This crazy crazy world has us all in knots and nightmares, in disputes over insanity and sanity, with a path that twists like Lombard Street. I’m done expounding words of obvious truth to airy illusion.

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