Month: September 2020

B.C. used to refer to the era Before Christ. Eventually historians changed that to B.C.E. to represent history Before the Common Era. I think that some of us might begin to see B.C. in a new light that stands for Before Covid. In many ways there has been an almost tectonic shift in the way everyone in the world is doing things at the same time that we are attempting to cling to our traditions. 

One of the boys little in our neighborhood was playing with a water table in his front yard while his mom watched him. I was returning from an errand so I was already wearing a mask. I decided to walk over to see how they were doing because I had not seen them much since Christmas when the family across the street had a big party. We spoke of ourselves and our families and discussed how everyone was fairing during the pandemic, noting that we had essentially been staying at home since about February. 

My neighbor mentioned that she had not been inside any building other than her own home in six months and I remarked that with the exception of walking through my daughter’s house to get to her backyard where we visited eight feet apart, I too had been mostly in my digs. She remarked that her sister-in-law had been wary of even venturing outside because of the virus. We both shook our heads in understanding because we agreed that if anything were to happen to any of our friends or family members because we became careless we might never forgive ourselves. Nonetheless we have both been gradually regaining more and more freedom. 

Our brief visit in the yard was a grand moment of triumph. It was nice to feel a bit normal even if it happened behind masks and from a distance. Human contact is so important and it is the very thing that Covid 19 has stolen away from everyone to some extent. Those of us who are older like me hope that one day in the near future we will once again feel free to hug and show our smiles, such little things that we mostly took for granted B.C.

I cut my husband’s hair today. It had begun to curl around his ears and on his neck. He invested in a set of hair clippers and had me watch an instruction video in how to trim a man’s locks. I suppose I did fairly well for a first timer. Admittedly he looks a bit like a character from Peaky Blinders but his hair is now still better than his old hippie look. I have some ideas for improving when I try again in a month. Who knows it might become a thing for me to cut his hair but he spent a great deal of time talking about the talent of his barber B.C.

My own locks have grown and grown. I needed a touch up on my highlights so I purchased a home kit from Amazon. I did something wrong because I ended up with two tone hair that was so brassy that I glowed like a lightbulb. I had to wait five weeks before I applied a solid color that was somewhat better. I could certainly use some styling but I won’t let anyone but a professional touch my hair. If the numbers of cases and deaths in the Houston area continue to stay down I’ll make an appointment with my stylist. She has a blank canvas with which to work. I think I want something quite different from the way my hair looked B.C. People appear to like me better without bangs and with a bit of length.

I haven’t been to the gym since February. I exercise daily but I need those weight lifting machines. My arms are flabby and I even have a semi-frozen shoulder. I’ve gained about five pounds and my mid section really needs some toning. I’d hate to think how bad I would be if I did not watch what I eat and walk every single day. It saddens me to think of how much ground I’ve lost from when I was really looking good B.C.

On the other hand it’s not all bad news. I’ve enjoyed the slower pace of my life. My calendar is rather empty save for the remote teaching sessions that I am doing. Helping my growing number of students has given me a sense of purpose and a feeling of doing something positive that has put a lilt in my step these days. I’ve become a small time essential worker and I’ve renewed that wonderful feeling that was so routine back when I was a full time educator. Retirement is nice but one can only do so much traveling and reading and gardening before wondering what’s next. I was beginning to feel a bit bored and useless B.C.

I have no idea how long all of this will last. I don’t think anyone really does. I do know that it has at times felt like a new era of history. I think of all of those lives that are so unexpectedly gone and I feel a great sadness, especially since we are all so eager to go back to the way things were B.C. I think that we would do well to use this moment to survey our individual lives and the trajectory of society and ask ourselves if it would not be better to make a few changes. I think that many of us have begun to rethink what is most important and we are reluctant to return to a duplication of life B.C. 

I came of age during the late sixties. It was a tumultuous time on multiple fronts. The Vietnam War was controversial, dividing the nation into those who believed that it was important to fight the spread of communism in Asia and those who saw the conflict as a waste of resources and American lives. While civil rights legislation had become law racism was still rampant as efforts to integrate neighborhoods and schools often led to anger and violence. A series of assassinations that included Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had rocked our nation and made many of us wonder if our democracy was finally falling apart. The nightly news programs were filled with unspeakable horrors and there was a collective feeling that we were all clinging to the edge of a precipice with fingers that were broken.

I married my husband Mike in October of 1968. On that evening the priest who spoke the homily noted that it took a leap of faith and a dash of optimism to plan a future life in the midst of all the chaos of the moment. He offered hope but admitted that our journey would probably not be easy. He noted that love finds a way to overcome even the most horrific experiences and urged us to always embrace God and each other in the days to come. 

It has been almost fifty two years since that evening. Many personal and national trials lay ahead but somehow the priest was right that love gave us power over pain and sorrow and loss. Our family, our country and our world continued forward on a pathway that was sometimes glorious and sometimes bumpy and uncomfortable. I suppose that in those fifty two years nothing that we experienced was all that unusual in the grand scheme of things. We grew and changed and so too did the world around us. 

Life will be grand for a time and then we find ourselves facing uncomfortable challenges. Sickness, death, economic struggles, and world problems have invaded our solace time and again, but we always seem to find our way back to a sense of direction and peace. We never know what may come next but we have learned how to navigate with patience and grit. Some days we barely make progress and others we are able to run like the wind. It is all just part of the act of living. 

These days we hear so much hyperbole from the peddlers of fear. To hear them and fall for their rhetoric is to believe that our country and our world has finally been pushed from the precipice and is hurtling toward certain destruction. We are led to believe that our democracy is crumbling and that only one very flawed man is able and willing to save us. Meanwhile political power struggles are crushing the love between friends and family members that had been the glue holding things together. We have been manipulated and pushed to choose sides and adopt a zero sum attitude toward those who dare to disagree with us. We waste our precious time on this earth allowing ourselves to be tricked by incitements that have little to do with caring and everything to do with gaining power. Winning has become an obsessive pastime that destroys relationships and wastes the precious few moments that we have between birth and death.

I try to remember the wisdom of the priest who reminded us on my wedding day that the history of humankind has always flourished best when we love and work together. For that reason I am wary of anyone or any group that would attempt to pull us apart rather than to understand. Back in the late sixties we needed to hear and support those who bravely went to war in Vietnam as well as those who sincerely wanted to help by finding a route to peace. When the civil rights of a whole class of Americans were being denied we should have all come together in love to welcome them into our national family. Progress requires warmth and empathy and sacrifice in the bigger world just as it does in a family. 

In these days of Covid-19, isolation, and unrest I worry about our unwillingness to consider differing points of view. I try to understand how frighteningly difficult it must be to perform the duties of a police officer. I also put myself into the perspective of Black Americans and I hear the pain in their voices when they speak of injustices they continue to endure. I understand those who are horrified when they see a protest turning into destruction of property and livelihoods. What I do not understand is why we seem so incapable of bringing all of our divergent fears to a rational discussion in the spirit of finding real solutions to each concern. 

What is missing in our reactions is love. We cannot even express our true feelings without being personally browbeaten with arguments and judgements rather than efforts to understand. We ignore the complexities of situations and individuals and attempt to apply simplistic remedies rather than lasting and meaningful answers. The sound and the fury is so distracting that we are doing little more than shouting over one another.

In a loving family we do not simply berate a member who is acting out. We realize that this person needs our attention and we listen compassionately to their needs. We discuss how to work things out as a family, making uncomfortable changes or asking everyone to give a little. It’s what loving demands from us. It carries us through upheavals and helps our connections grow even stronger. So too might we approach the concerns of one another in our suffering nation. Flags and boats and parades and unending violence and destruction and snarky memes only pull us apart. There comes a moment even in a nation when we need someone with enough love to bring us all together again. That is what I learned from coming of age in the sixties. I hope that we will be able to find the will to just love.

These are frustrating and often difficult times but they have also been enlightening times. I have essentially been forced to slow down and as I have done so I have finally had the time to think about my life and who and what is actually important to me. As I’ve lived in my jeans and t-shirts without shoes on my feet I have not needed the many changes of clothing that line many my closet. Who needs makeup when staying at home or wearing a mask? Covid hair has become a thing for me with fancy cuts seemingly unnecessary. Those mani/pedis feel like a thing of the past and while part of me longs for the fashionable looks that I once sported somehow they don’t seem quite as important as they once did. If I were to do the Marie Kondo thing of simplifying my life I suspect that I would be hauling out bags of clothing and shoes that don’t seem as necessary as they once did. 

On the other hand phone calls, FaceTimes, texts, and notes seem like precious treasure. Those momentary links with people mean all the world. I find myself giddy with delight anytime I am able to spend a few moments conversing with those I love. When long time friends grew a lovely plant from seeds and left it on my doorstep I felt as though I had found a great treasure. Everyone knows the saying that plants from friends are always the strongest and the best and that concept is doubly true when we can’t even spend much time with each other anymore. Thoughtfulness is more wonderful than gold.

I have heard of so many people struggling to survive these days. There are even horrid persons who are taking advantage of the situation but more often than not the innate kindness that resides in people is rising to the occasion. I have shed many happy tears upon hearing stories of compassion and generosity from all across the globe. My faith in humankind has grown as exponentially as the virus. It seems as though the tougher times are the more heroes I discover among us.

There have been political marches and rallies but there have also been special parades for the elderly and the sick replete with balloons and streamers. Last weekend I watched with delight as a long line of cars drove past a neighbor’s home were a little boy was celebrating his third birthday. He laughed with unadulterated joy as people honked their horns and shouted birthday greetings. Some threw confetti and others left little gifts and treats. I could tell that the lovely gesture not only made the child feel special but his parents also understood the love behind it. I had almost as much fun as they did just watching the proceedings. 

Teachers and parents have bent over backwards doing their best to make the first days of the new school year as safe and special as possible. Everyone knows that nothing is quite as normal but in many ways it gives a clearer picture of how much we all love our children both small and almost adult. People are working together to accommodate each person’s needs and while it is not always a smooth or perfect process surely just the fact that everyone is trying so hard should mean the world to everyone. 

I miss being face to face at church but my parish continues to stream the daily masses for those of us who are supposed to stay at home. I feel a closeness the the members of my Catholic community more strongly than ever and I suppose I have a renewed appreciation for my faith. God has walked with me and calmed me when I have become anxious. It is has been wonderful to know that He is always next to all of us whether we purport to need Him or not.

I suppose that each of us has lost one or more friends or family members during this time. It has been tough to know that we will never see them or hear their voices again. The loss of such dear ones makes our relationships with those who are still with us ever more important. We long for hugs and the human touch and even smiles that are hidden behind masks but know that one day we will have them and value them more than we ever dreamed. 

I have finally learned how to still my mind and listen to my breathing and the beating of my heart. I have never before been able to meditate without have my attention deficit disorder take my thoughts away from the moment. Now I am able to become totally relaxed and able to feel my spiritual self coming alive. It is an unexpected gift that helps me through the long days of isolation.

Somehow my thoughts are clearer than they have ever been. I glow from inside, not from artificial products that I paint on myself. My life has never been more simple and it makes me feel happy and free. I know that even in the midst of the chaos of the world I have found inner peace. I only wish that everyone might experience the calm and the optimism that I feel. 

I know that for so many the road is far too bumpy and complex to gain the level of joy that I have experienced. Sometimes when I have grown weary at the end of day I think of them and dwell on them and a sadness creeps into my head. I have learned how to find ways to help, even if it is just one soul that I am able to reach. I focus on love and find it in so many places. I only wish that everyone might somehow realize that life it tough but it is also good. 

Last summer I was in Sacramento,  California for a Junior Olympics track meet. The event is held each July in venues considered to be generally cooler than most parts of the United States at that time of year. Sadly the young people were running their races in heat nearing the one hundred degree mark. While the short sprint events were not too bad, the longer distance races felt unbearable for both the runners and the spectators alike. By the end of many of the runs the contestants were vomiting and collapsing from heat exhaustion. Those of us in the stands were sweating and feeling faint even under the protection of umbrellas and canopies. The myth of milder weather in northern California exploded under the reality of climate change. 

While we were visiting there fires along the roadways were a common sight. The vegetation was dry and brittle like kindling and it occurred to me that it would not take much for the whole place to go up in flames. I found myself thinking of what I would do if I were suddenly caught in a flash fire, a feeling that I had also felt a few years earlier when we traveled to southern California in our trailer. Ironically only a couple of weeks after we had returned from that vacation the area where we had been camping went up in flames. 

It is apparent from droughts, hurricanes, typhoons, and other freakish natural disasters that Mother Nature is unleashing a fury unlike any in my lifetime. When I lived in San Jose, California as an eight year old the landscape was lush and green, not parched. I have watched as the forces of weather have become more and more extreme as in the destructive winds of hurricane Laura which recently devastated Lake Charles, Louisiana. I would be remiss if I simply ignored the warnings that we have been hearing from scientists about the human impact on our planet. For decades now they have insisted that we must curb the habits that are wreaking havoc on our atmosphere. 

There are many among us who would decry the evidence and data regarding the heating up of the earth as just another hoax like the furor over Covid-19. They insist that we are being fooled by individuals who are crying wolf when all that is happening is a kind of adjustment that the earth has always experienced from time to time. Their arguments sound somewhat convincing until I read information and see time lapse photos from NASA scientists insisting the climate change caused by humans is real. Even my skeptical brother who is the epitome of rational thought has agreed that climate change is indeed certain. He is a man who would make doubting Thomas look like someone easily fooled with his insistence on having mathematical and scientific proof for any phenomenon and yet he tells me that we will have to find some solutions for our dilemma or face increasingly more difficult weather events in the future. 

The biggest challenge that we face is the possibility of having to drastically change the way we live and behave. That does not come easily for most of us. We become accustomed to a routine of doing things and push back on the idea of having to sacrifice in some way. Just look at how many people refuse to wear masks to help prevent the spread of Covid-19 because they are uncomfortable and restricting. Asking people to raise temperature settings, convert to new forms of energy, waste less, consider new ways of living appears to be a step back in the evolution of progress. We humans like to move forward and we enjoy our cool homes and those flights to exciting places. We like our plastic water bottles and the packaging of our convenient foods even as we notice how much trash we are producing. It’s too hard to have to expend more effort on creating an all new lifestyle but it’s not so difficult to insist that we really do not need to change.

My grandparents were born about one hundred forty years ago in the nineteenth century when the Industrial Revolution was just beginning. Their early lives were hard by today’s standards. My grandfather often described his childhood noting that there was no glass in the windows of his home nor were there screens to keep insects and dust from finding their way inside. They used oil cloth tacked to the inside wall to cover the windows during the cold winters. They relied on ice blocks and underground cellars to store food in the summer. His job as a young boy was to chop wood for cooking and keeping warm. Candles and oil lamps were the only forms of light. 

I doubt that we need to go back to such draconian lifestyles but certainly we can begin to think about ways to conserve our resources that taken together will have a cumulative effect. We should also be investing in scientific endeavors to create new less destructive ways of powering the world. There are many ideas out there that have the potential to revolutionize the way we live just as my grandparents witnessed over their lifetimes. We should be encouraging the inventiveness of humankind with a nod toward the future, not holding tightly to our old ways out of doubt and fear. 

Our future can be bright and hopeful if we simply admit that we have a problem that must be addressed. We went to the moon because we were willing to focus on unlocking our ability to travel in space. We made incredible medical advances because we invested in research. If we have the will we can meet the challenges of climate change to make our world more inviting. Accepting that we have to do something now is not evidence of defeat but rather the kind of thinking that has moved us forward throughout history. We may not like the idea of being chided by a young girl in pigtails about the urgency of our problems but we would do well to hear what she has to say. Doing things the same way again and again even as we see evidence that we are hurting the earth is foolish. Surely we can see that it’s time to get serious about our future.   

Now that so many lessons from teachers are streaming into homes parents are eavesdropping and becoming agitated at times by what they are hearing, particularly when it comes to Social Studies classes. I have witnessed a few adults asserting that some teachers are indoctrinating their children rather than simply teaching the facts. The question becomes what the most appropriate way of presenting history and politics and other subject matter should be. Are some of the methods being used a means of introducing critical thinking or do they indeed represent a kind of indoctrination of our young?

Many years ago I spent Saturdays attending lectures on how to teach students to think critically. The idea behind the movement was to provide students with the tools for looking at information from differing points of view before drawing conclusions based solely on emotions or allegiances. For example we considered accounts of what happened on the village green in Lexington where the first shots of the American Revolution were fired. As part of the discussion we read primary and secondary accounts from both the British and Patriot points of view. We were asked to consider what biases may have entered into each account and then compare and contrast what we had read. 

It became immediately apparent that each summation of that historic event was affected by both the political views of the writers and whether are not they had been actual participants in the melee. As expected I discovered that we each see a particular event through somewhat prejudiced eyes. Critical thinkers attempt to unravel all of the emotional aspects of history and get to the bare bones of what seems to have actually happened. In the case of Lexington Green it appeared that tensions were already high with lots of rumors and a bit of drink at the tavern fueling suspicions and anger. To this day nobody is totally certain who fired the first shot but once it rang out everyone took action believing that each side was acting in self defense. Both the British sympathizers and the revolutionaries used the shootings as a reason for taking action. 

The first hand accounts of the “shot heard round the world” were the most radical regardless of whether they came from loyalists or revolutionaries. Later historical tracts made more of an attempt to tone down the rhetoric and appear to be stating only facts but most of them still contained leanings toward one side over the other. Parsing the information and the rhetoric was an interesting task that demonstrated the need to be wary of accepting ideas as truth without research. 

Most social studies teachers today have been well grounded in critical thinking skills and they intentionally instruct their students with multiple sources that often contain divergent ideas and philosophies. Their purpose is not to indoctrinate but to teach students to be circumspect in accepting something as absolute truth without considering the motives and leanings of the authors. They also focus on simply presenting historical and political philosophies as means of understanding how beliefs influence how people behave. The idea is to help students to open their own minds to the process of asking questions and exploring the reasons behind the ways people and cultures believe and behave. 

I attended an International Conference on Critical Thinking sponsored by M.I.T. one summer and I heard from speakers from around the globe and from virtually every kind of organization. I became more and more certain that isolation and blind loyalty to any person or group is not only dangerous but detrimental to the vibrancy of human interactions. Critical thinking saves corporations and governments. Even our Founding Fathers understood that our nation would grow and evolve. Many who allowed slavery to be part of our country’s beginnings believed that it would be outlawed given time. They created mechanisms for creating change when situations demanded them and rules for making certain that those changes were well thought out. They warned us that following political cults was dangerous to the health of our country which is why George Washington was so insistent about stepping down from the presidency as quickly as possible. They were great thinkers who gazed into the future while shying away from radical ideas that they believed would nonetheless ultimately come to pass.

We should not condemn teachers who open students’ eyes to a way of critically assessing any historical event, idea or decision. It is essential to democracy that we proceed with honesty and attempts to justly and fairly provide the ideals of the Declaration of Independence to all regardless of race, religion, sexual identity or philosophical views. Our Constitution was designed to protect every single one of us and to change when any of us are left out of that calculation. It takes critical thinking and open discussion to reach rational conclusions for the good of all. Many of our younger citizens are better at that than those of us who are older who only memorized facts in the classes of old. We should be happy that we are helping our young to really think rather than simply react. 

I would urge parents to go ahead and listen to their children’s lessons and then engage in additional research and honest discussions as a family. There is never anything wrong with learning more about the world around us and seeking answers to the many questions we have. Open your mind and find the long thread of history and discovery that has led us to this moment in time. It is not indoctrination. It is a precious gift that unravels the mysteries of our human natures.