Month: August 2025

I am large. I contain multitudes” —Walt Whitman in Song of Myself

Who are we? How do our encounters with others affect us? What thoughts are stored inside our brains? How do our intersections with the world around us affect the way that we live?

Such are spiritual questions with which each of us grapple. We all want to be the best versions of ourselves, persons who bring meaning and joy to whatever we may be doing. Walt Whitman suggests that as we navigate through our lives we become microcosmic versions of each of the people who impressed us along the way. Every encounter whether large are small has the power to change us, to create our full personalities and our beliefs. 

The movie The Life of Chuck, inspired by a story written by Stephen King, is a thought provoking metaphor for living a good life in spite of any tragedies that one my endure. It is a fairytale of a man named Chuck who found ways to enjoy the people and the small moments of his life with a gusto that made the ordinary extraordinary. 

The Life of Chuck is a film that we need right now when the emphasis on toughness and independence seems so cold and indifferent. Chuck is a person who gives of himself in both small and large ways. He finds joy not just in himself but in the special people that he sees as he walks through life. He lives as though there is no tomorrow making it important to reach out to those around him today. 

I read about the movie when I was surfing through the Internet on a hot day when I was feeling a bit lethargic and bored, not just in the moment, but in the grand scheme of things. I found my self worrying incessantly about the problems of the world even as I knew that there was so little that I might accomplish to change the course of history. I was feeling the march of time in the aging of my bones and joints. I wondered what joys and trials lay ahead for me. Somehow I felt a need to flee from all responsibility and so I was suddenly and randomly reading about a movie that seemed to be changing people’s lives. 

The personal reviews of The Life of Chuck were stunning. Those who had viewed it spoke of leaving the theater with a new outlook on life. Some felt the need to return days later to watch the story unfold again so that they might have a clearer understanding of what they had seen. There were folks who wanted to discuss their feelings that seemed to have been captured in the rendering of this story. I sensed that there was more to this tale than just a cute flick about a man named Chuck.

I was unable to find the movie in theaters but saw that it was available to purchase or rent on Amazon Prime. I decided to schedule it for a date night with my husband. It was an ironic choice given that he was nearing the end of his radiation treatments on the evening that I planned for us to watch the movie together. We had popcorn and movie candy to enjoy as we watched in our upstairs hideaway. I wanted it to be an experience and in that regard it did not fail. Somehow even the timing of our introduction to Chuck felt cosmic and appropriate to our own situations. 

I am not one for spoilers with any movie so I intend to be careful in describing this one so that each person may see it from their own perspective. As my dear friend and incredible educator, Dickie Written, would say to his students it is the epitome of a story outlining “the human experience.” I can promise you that you will not leave the movie without a reaction of some kind and hopefully it will be as positive as it was for me. You will love all of the characters and most especially seeing Mark Hamill as Chuck’s grandfather. You will laugh and cry and most of all you will think. 

Don’t hesitate to find a way to watch The Life of Chuck. Then come back and tell me what you think. I can’t imagine anything more wonderful than having much of the world discussing what it means to be large and contain multitudes. We are indeed the cumulation of all that we have seen and heard. There are people, places and events who live inside us forever. When we know this, sharing and compassion become so much easier.

No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory of Time — Virgil

In the 9/11 Museum there is a wall created with hundreds of watercolor drawings attempting to depict the color of the sky on that fateful morning. As I stared at the work of art on my visit there I found myself vividly remembering how lovely that September day was, not just in New York City, but in Houston, Texas as well. I was getting ready to a attend a monthly meeting at the administration headquarters for HISD. There I would meet with educators from all across the city to discuss ways to enhance the many magnet school programs that allowed students to choose schools offering specialties designed for their interests. 

I was the coordinator for the magnet program for math and science at Revere Middle School and I was looking forward to mingling with some of the finest educators in the city. Since my drive would take me to a bustling part of Houston I was happy that the weather was so serene, a truly beautiful September day. I readied myself with eagerness to get on the road and avoid as much of the ever present traffic as possible. As I put the finishing touches on my makeup and hair I watched Good Morning America at the very moment when the first plane hit one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Like everyone my first instinct was to think that somehow a pilot had strayed from the proper course. I wondered if he had perhaps had a heart attack or if something had distracted him. My brain was not ready to accept what had actually happened. 

With only a bit of anxiety I had to leave for my appointment. As I drove I tuned in to one of the local radio stations where the talk was now buzzing with theories about what might have happened. Then came the shocking second plane plowing into the other tower. That’s when my chest tightened and my imagination went crazy. I was so shocked that I called my husband to find out if this had really happened. When he verified the incident I did not know what to think or what to do. Somehow I ended up in the parking lot of the building where the meeting was supposed to take place realizing that I had gone blank and driven for many miles without actually seeing the road in front of me. 

I hurried inside the building to see my fellow educators sitting silently watching a television tuned to one of the local stations. The mood was somber and it felt as though nobody was moving or even breathing. I wordlessly moved toward an available seat only to get settled as one of the towers began to collapse before my eyes. A few people screamed. Some began to cry. It was a nightmare scenario that is burned forever into my memory. Little did we realize that within minutes the other tower would also collapse and a kind of hysteria would overtake the room.

Everything changed in the United States on that day. While we began with a state of national unity the reality of what had happened left fissures in our society. Some wanted justice while others demanded vengeance. We spoke of staying strong and not allowing the terrorists to damage our democracy but bit by bit over the ensuing years we began to quibble with each other. Years of war made us weary and sometimes even angry with each other. We retreated into bubbles that made us feel safe. We created a kind of tribal behavior in which we competed with one another in defining who we were as Americans and what we needed to do to keep our nation from imploding under the grief and fear that was so palatable after that tragedy. Somehow without meaning to do so we gave the terrorists what they had hoped to achieve. We stopped working together and attempting to hear and respect differing points of view. Now we find ourselves under the thumb of a leader who used the divisions to rally votes for a worldview that seems unwilling to accept alternative ideas for repairing the damage done to our nation.

Today the area that was once the scene of death and destruction is serene and beautiful. There is a memorial dedicated to all the souls who lost their lives on that horrible day. There is a new tower that rises in the sky announcing that we were not undone by the violence. There is both remembrance and resurrection on top of the ashes. It is a moving place, a spiritual place, a place of reverence and hope. Sadly we have not worked as hard to repair the cracks and despair that exist between us. We choose sides, going even far enough to destroy long time friendships with our disagreements. We classify each other according to our individual beliefs with an unwillingness to live together in peace and harmony. The ruination of the glory that was once our American dream has become a kind of nightmare where the rule seems to be to concur with the man in charge or face the consequences. Innocent people are being rounded up and sent away. We seem unable to work together for a common good rather than a single point of view. 

Perhaps the healing will not come until we are all able to see and agree that the damage to our relationships with one another are as terrible as the loss of those two towers and the people inside them on that day. We have yet to walk away from that tragedy with the right message, the right resolve. No day should erase those people from our memory but honoring them would require us to rebuild our relationship under the leadership of an individual who understands how important it is to walk out of our bubbles and embrace each other with unconditional love regardless of how different we may be. 

I know that this sounds impossible, far too much of a dream, but if we are to overcome the pain and hurt inflicted on our entire nation on that horrific day we must find the determination and the resolve to resurrect the love and respect that we should have for each other. Our nation was never meant to be selfish and stubborn. We were world leaders in embracing the tired and lost and giving them hope. Perhaps that is the job on which we must embark. It’s an ideal set forth time and again in our nation’s history. It’s a place where I long to return. 

As I grow older there is less and less that i want. I like to travel and haven’t done nearly as much as I would like in the last few years, but what little I have enjoyed is more than most people in the world ever have the privilege of doing. Once my maternal grandmother traveled across the ocean from Slovakia she never left again Texas. The truth is that she rarely left her house. Day after day she awoke and prepared a big pot of coffee. She swept and mopped, washed clothes and cooked for her family. She was quite content to live exactly as she did. It took very little to bring a smile to her face. A loaf of dark rye bread or a visit from one of her many children was enough to make her day. 

Grandma Ulrich wore cotton dresses with the sleeves cut out so that she might stay cool. She was not one to use the air conditioner in the window of her living room unless she had a guest. The rest of the time she adjusted to whatever temperature Mother Nature sent her way. The only time she wore shoes was in the winter. The rest of the year she kept her chubby feet free from any kind of impingement. She wore her hair in a long braid that trailed down her back until one of her children tried to modernize her with a pair of scissors. She often wore an army hat that must have once belonged to my Uncle Paul who never married and stayed in the house to take care of her. Nothing about her suggested that she wanted more out of her life than she already had. 

I often think of my grandmother’s contentment with her life and realize how unique she was in wanting only what she needed and nothing more. Growing up in a middle class society in which possessions, money, status are so often valued I know that in spite of myself I many times had a less than satisfied attitude. I wanted a bigger house, a flashier car, beautiful clothes, wealth that was a bit more conspicuous. Now I am at a stage in life at which I realize that most of those things matter so little. 

Of course I want a safe and sturdy house that will see me through the storms of life but the idea of a showiy mansion or more upscale neighborhood no longer tempts me. I mostly like to keep things clean and repaired around the place and I enjoy working in my garden unless it is really hot. Sadly the high temperatures endure for most of the year so I spend a great deal of my time just looking out the windows of my great room into the back yard that is filled with my favorite flowers. The birds that come to my feeders are especially fun to see but even they take a break and hide out somewhere on especially hot days. That’s when I pull out my books and read.

My father read to me from the time I was small. He made me believe that reading is one of life’s greatest gifts. It’s how he relaxed after a long day at work and his taste in genres was as eclectic as mine. When Hurricane Harvey was inundating much of the Houston area I moved my favorite tomes to the second story to save them in the event of water flooding the downstairs rooms. What’s funny is that I never thought of moving my jewelry. I guess I figured that I would just dry it off if it got wet or maybe I realized that it did not mean as much to me as my books.

I enjoy quiet, solitude. I am happiest when I only hear the sounds of nature and my neighbors moving about. I mostly enjoy the laughter of the children who are growing almost as fast as my own daughters did. Their games and interactions change as the years go by and I know that I will miss them when they grow up and move away. They do not know how much delight they have given me just by being themselves. 

I get very excited when I have an opportunity to go teach math to someone. I have been with several families who homeschool their children for many years now. I still have a few of the youngest ones left and I look forward to being with them during the school year. My teaching genes run deep and I have not yet been able to completely retire from the vocation that has been my holy grail. 

I am quite content with my life at pesent save for what I see happening in the political arena in my country and my state. It seems as though the only irritation that I feel with my present life comes from the worries that I have regarding how so many horrific decisions are hurting people who are not as fortunate as I have always been When I shop at the grocery store I find myself thinking about how anxious my mother would have been over the prices. I can almost picture her working hard to feed us within the confines of her means. She had to be quite creative with her spending even sixty years ago but the challenges would be so much worse today.

I wish that everyone might feel as content as I do. I know that I have been quite lucky to be able to enjoy the mundane. it’s a clear sign that I have always been one of the lucky people on this earth. I have had all that I need so that I have the time to immerse myself in simple pleasures. I wish that it were so for everyone but I see the suffering in the world and feel a fracture in my heart. If only I were able to send food to those who are starving and provide a safe place to sleep to those who are homeless. Those are my only wants. Sadly they are pretty big wants in the moment but I can still find joy in the mundane while hoping that we humans learn how to share a bit more.

One of my all time favorite college classes was called Folklore. It was an offering from the English department but it might just as well have been considered sociology, history, psychology or even political science. It focused on the stories, jokes, songs, propaganda, and hoaxes of everyday people. As the professor noted one can learn much about individuals, regions, and nations by studying the interactions of the common folk and what they had to say about the times and the places where they lived. 

Folklore can be divided into many different categories but the ones that fascinated me the most were the oral histories from people who spoke about how they viewed the times in which they had lived. I truly enjoyed reading the letters and essays from individuals who had endured the Civil War or who had experienced the Great Depression. It’s one thing to hear an academic describing certain times but when the words come from the mouths of people who lived those moments it is extraordinary.

While oral histories may not be totally accurate with regard to the particulars of a certain events, they indeed provide very personal views of how people felt in those moments. One of the tracts that we studied included reports from both the American colonists and the British soldiers during the onset of the Revolutionary War. It was fascinating to read how differently each side was feeling. Their words made sense of how strained the atmosphere must have been. It was a very human experience and those oral histories that someone wrote down were as enlightening as a listing of facts, possibly even more so. 

I ended up writing an oral history based on the memories of my paternal grandfather. I recorded hours of Grandpa speaking about his boyhood, his life as a young adult, his journey through two world wars and a depression and his evaluation of modern times. The themes in every single story that he told were focused on hardship, strength, innovation, and our human tendencies for both good and bad. Spanning one hundred years it was an American tale with editorial passages. Overall it was a chronicle of hopefulness and gratitude as well as understanding that our nation was not finished and had much more work to do.

Since having my father-in-law in our home I have tried to encourage him to tell his story that began ninety six years ago in a small mountainous town in Puerto Rico. Because his family was somewhat wealthy and powerful his tales are very different from those of my grandfather. He was the son of a doctor and he enjoyed the respect of the townspeople because of that. He lived a very insulated life typical of a small town where everyone knows everyone. 

One tale that my father-in-law returns to again and again involves a time when he was quite young and enjoyed playing baseball. By his reckoning he was rather good at the sport and spent a great deal of time honing his skills. Back then there were no helmets protecting the head of the person at bat. The baseball was hurled with as much force as the pitcher was able to apply and it did not always miss the body of the batter. Thus a time came when my father-in-law was hit directly in his head as he was swinging at the pitches coming his way. 

At first his head seemed to only hurt a bit but he decided to rest in the dugout until he felt better. By the time he was heading home he thought that the worst was over and he would soon be laughing about the headache that seemed to be slowly going away. Once he arrived home his father noticed fluid coming from one of his ears. Immediately my father-in-law was heading for the hospital where a team of doctors were waiting to examine him. 

The last thing he remembers as the physicians probed him is suddenly feeling dizzy and falling asleep. When he woke up the room was filled with a priest administering the last rites and his aunts praying the rosary for him. A number of doctors and nurses hovered near his bed as well. It seems that his concussion was far worse than he had thought and there was fear that he would not make it. Instead he lived to repeat the story over and over during his long life. In every telling he always mentioned how lucky he was to have a doctor for his father. He has always wondered if a less educated person would have known to rush him to a hospital. Given that all of this happened in the nineteen thirties it is easy to believe that he really might have died but for the quick thinking of his father. 

His story has always struck me because so many people during that time truly would have died. It points to how limited healthcare was back then, especially for someone living in a very small town. Sadly there are still those among us who might just go to sleep given the same situation without realizing the danger they are in. Our healthcare system is far better than it was in the nineteen thirties but not everyone enjoys the same level of access and excellent care. We still have much to do just as my grandfather always believed would be the case.

The stories of old should push us to try to make things better. Progress should be our goal. Lately we seem far too content when people roll things back, forgetting why we made improvements to begin with. We would do well to listen to the tales of the old timers whose words tell us why we don’t ever want to move backward. My father-in-law knows all too well that one’s status in life should not be the way we determine how we care for the people around us. He knows how good his fortune has been and wants to share it with everyone. His tale should inspire us to look out for everyone, not just the son of a doctor.

Like most of his fellow Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin was an extraordinary man. He was a thinker, an inventor, a writer, a printer, a business man and one of the most renown scientists of his era. While he did not have a degree, he was nonetheless often called “doctor’ because of the knowledge and scientific experience that he possessed. He was a strong athletic man who swam alongside the ships that took him across the Atlantic Ocean on diplomatic journeys. The museum dedicated to Franklin in Philadelphia is testament to his multifaceted intellect. 

Benjamin Franklin was also a well read man. He had studied history and considered the pitfalls of nations that echoed through the ages. When asked what kind of government he and his cohorts who signed the Declaration of Independence had created he famously answered, “a republic, if we can keep it.”

That cryptic phrase has served as a warning for all of the two hundred fifty years that the United States of America has existed. The founders had created a republic based on the central idea that the governing would be for and of the people. The Constitution’s intent was to make certain that no single individual would rule as a despot or king. The laws and the structures were chosen to distribute the duties of elected officials so that all three branches of government would in essence place limits on each other. The greatest fear of Franklin and his coauthors of our nation’s new form of government was that a tyrant might find a way to seize power. 

Franklin had studied other republics like Rome. He understood how rot and corruption had a dangerous track record in history. He was thinking ahead when he quipped that we had a republic if we were able to keep it. He understood that making certain that the republic would survive required the Ameircian people and those that they sent to govern to operate with a dedication to protecting the freedoms outlined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He knew that it would be imperative for society to value free speech, the rights to protest and to understand the dangers of blurring the lines between the state and religion. 

A republic is a form of government in which the power is held by the people and their elected representatives rather than a monarch. Leaders are chosen by the public through elections. The republic of the United States is also a democracy. The constitution specifically defines the limits to the powers of the elected officials and specifies the individual rights of citizens. Furthermore there is a division of power between the national and state governments. 

It would be fair to say that the United States of America is in danger. Franklin’s warning should cause us all to analyze what is happening and voice concerns that our republic is presently looking quite fragile. Our president appears to work from the idea that only he understands what we the people need to make our nation great. He is consolidating power through executive orders that trample on the right of many citizens. He is using the Congress and loyal states to seize even more power. He has secured a group of individuals to carry out his demands without reservation. He ridicules and threatens those who dare to question what he has done. He seems to believe that the wishes of those who do not agree with him should be ignored and quashed. He is ruling in a way that threatens the viability of our republic. 

The opposite of a republic can be defined by words like monarchy, autocracy, oligarchy, dictatorship, despotism, authoritarianism, and tyranny. Republics do not have kings or queens. In a republic no one person holds power over the other branches nor would there be a small group of people dedicated to maintaining the power of one individual. An authoritarian keeps a strong grasp on centralizing power, reducing liberties and using the rule of law to punish those who do not follow his desires. Anti-republics are often cruel and repressive. 

It may seem farfetched to some to even think that our nation and our freedoms are in danger. They hear warning cries as hyperbole or unnecessary hand ringing by liberals who lost the election. They do not see that while Trump did win by just a little under fifty percent of the vote, the other half of the nation did not choose him. It was never intended for our government to be rigged in such a way that the voices of the opposition would be undervalued or squelched. The most important limit provided by our Constitution is the guarantee of freedom in addressing problems that the people see. It was never intended that one group would gain so much power that they would be able to trample on the voting rights of the other side. Nonetheless, our president is asking his loyal state government to fix the districting lines to ensure that Congress is dominated by his supporters even if doing so is disproportionate.

In Texas there are thirty eight Congressional Representatives. Through gerrymandering thirty of them go almost automatically to the Republican party and only eight to Democrats. With the new maps drawn by the Texas House that number is threatening to take five more to the Republican side. That would mean that in a state with millions of Democrats only three seats in Congress would be a sure thing. How can that be consistent with the intentions of a republic to protect the voices of all of the people?

I don’t like to sound like a crazed woman singing the same tune over and over again. I do not write because I hate Donald Trump. I do not have Trump derangement syndrome. I am simply analyzing what I see happening and sending a warning to all citizens of the United States that we are dangerously close to losing our republic if we continue to allow one person to dominate every decision regarding the laws of our nation. We have to make our voices and concerns heard. The futures of our children and grandchildren demand that we protect the nation that our founders risked their lives to create. This is our time to have courage. It is our time to protect our republic. I hope we can keep it.