Category: Commentary

It’s been so hot in my part of Texas for so many days that any thought of being outside is absurd. It only takes a short stroll from the car to the entrance of an air conditioned area to break into a massive sweat. I find myself anxiously longing for the slightly cooler days of October. I dream of the lovely climate of Maine when I visited there in late May and was able to participate in outdoor events without feeling as though I was on the verge of passing out. 

I am certain that climate change has indeed made summers in Texas far worse than they were when I was young but I still wish that I had the fortitude for laboring in the heat that I once possessed. I don’t know if my disdain for the high temperatures is the result of age or enjoying the luxury of air conditioning. What I do know is that the high temperatures don’t just annoy me. Of late they send me into a state of lightheadedness that tells my brain that I will literally faint if I don’t immediately cool down. 

When I was a child we visited my grandparents during the summer on their farm in Arkansas. They would rise early in the morning to tend their crops, feed their animals and milk their cow. By the time we woke up for breakfast they had already spent four or five hours taking care of business to insure that they would have a bumper crop of fresh fruit and vegetables for the winter but also to avoid working during the worst heat of the day. 

There was no air conditioning in their home but the house had been built in such a way that opening the right windows would create a breeze that cooled down the rooms on most days. They understood how to parse the hours of the day to make the most of the cool times for physical activities and then shut down in the afternoons when the sun became almost unbearable. Dealing with the clammy weather without appliances was something that my grandparents had done for all of their lives. 

I recall one day when the temperature was so high that it was even hard to breathe for us kids who were accustomed to running and playing all day long in the summer heat. In that moment my grandfather announced that we would go visit “the lady on the hill.” Of course I was immediately intrigued at the thought of an adventure and surely going to a place where a woman actually had a title like that made it all the more exciting. Besides riding in my grandfather’s car with the windows rolled down would at the very least create a breeze to blow over the sweat that was overtaking us. 

We climbed higher and higher on the road that lead from my grandparents’ home to the place where the mysterious sounding woman lived. Her property was the highest point in the tiny community and it was covered with the shade of trees that had been left in place to create a kind of oasis. Sitting under a big oak was an old woman so wrinkled that she appeared to be a hundred years old. She waved at my grandmother and grandfather as we exited the car and pointed to some chairs that seemed to be ready for our visit. We eagerly sat down immediately enjoying the coolness of the shade.

The old lady sat in a rocking chair holding a tuna fish can that she used to spit as she chewed on tobacco. While she seemed to have noticed that we had arrived she began telling a number of stories talking to herself as though she was the only person there. She mumbled and spat as though she was in some kind of trance. Now and again she would look at as like we were an apparition rather than a presence. I took my cues of how to act from my grandmother who would now and again touch my hand and smile at me as if the say that everything was quite normal and I should just enjoy the storytelling that the woman was providing us. 

Before long other people from the area arrived as though they understood that being there was part of a ritual on extremely hot days. Each time the lady would stop her speeches only long enough to wave the newcomers to the many chairs that stood under the trees. Then she would return to her performance of talking and spitting and telling tales that made no sense. 

Somehow I never felt uncomfortable in that situation. Instead I was entranced but I never really made sense of what I was witnessing. I only knew that the people there seemed to admire the lady and showed their appreciation of her with their silent attention to her soliloquy. Besides it was so cool in that place that I found myself feeling a bit enchanted. I surely had never before experienced a person like this woman in all of my short life and I knew in that moment that I would never forget her. 

Before long my grandparents decided that we needed to leave. More people were arriving and the seating was getting full. We had enjoyed our time getting cool and “visiting” with the lady and it was time to go home. Besides nature was calling one of my brothers and there was no bathroom on the property. In fact my grandmother explained on the way back to her home that theirs was the only house on the mountain that had indoor plumbing, a fact that astounded me. I had assumed that everyone in America enjoyed such modern conveniences and could not imagine anyone still wandering out to a pit in a little enclosure to relieve oneself. 

On the way back to my grandparent’s farm my grandmother schooled us in how the old time outhouses worked. She was always the supreme educator in spite of her illiteracy. I loved hearing about the whole process and the items that they used to be sanitary but had no desire to actually try such a system on my own. 

I have thought about that “lady on the hill”many times on really hot days. I even laughed when our current vice president claimed to be a hillbilly simply because he visited his grandmother who lived in similar conditions in the summer. I suppose that because of my grandparents and those adventures on their farm I might be a bit of a hillbilly as well. I certainly had my feet in a very different world each summer when I left the city of Houston and traveled to Caddo Gap, Aransas where the people seemed to be from a century other than my own. In many ways those ties widened my vision of the world and taught me to appreciate all people even when they felt a bit strange.

That lady had a kind of grace and stature in spite of her down-home ways. The people who knew her seemed to understand how important she was to their community. I’d love to be able to go back to tell her how much I enjoyed that visit. I suppose she is long gone by now and maybe enjoying sitting under a heavenly tree talking to the angels.

Way back in the middle of my career as an educator I was working at a Catholic school teaching math to sixth, seventh and eighth graders. It was an enjoyable time when I felt that I was giving back the kind of education that I enjoyed when I was a young girl. The school had been losing students and had begun to feel rundown but a new principal had turned things around. In fact, she had reached out to recruit me at a time when I was rather content with my job in a public school. 

When I told her that I was not in the market for a change in my work she asked me to just come by for a discussion in which she would explain the kind of dynamic that she was attempting to build in the school. So without any thought that I would change my mind I went to see her as a kind of courtesy. It had been a Catholic school that provided me with my first job after graduation when nobody was hiring. I wanted to at the very least give the principal a moment of my time.

The principal was a tiny woman bursting with energy and enthusiasm about her role. By the end of her pitch I had decided that I really wanted to work for her and so I reluctantly turned in my resignation at the school where I had been contentedly teaching for three years. Happily from day one I knew that I had made the right choice. The atmosphere of the place was in keeping with my own philosophies about how to educate young men and women. 

The school had certain traditions that I also found to be enticing. One was a yearly International Festival, a gala created and presented by the teachers and students. The idea was that each teacher would draw the name of a country from a box and then create a learning experience for anyone who came for the event. 

I was quite excited about the prospect of teaching my homeroom students about a place in the world that may not have been particularly familiar to any of us. I knew that we would have to create a booth with artifacts and information, plan a food festival in the classroom and produce some kind of entertainment that would embody the spirit of whatever country’s name was written on the folded piece of paper that I pulled form the box. 

I suppose that I was initially a bit disappointed when I excitedly looked a the name of the country that would be the focus of my students. On the piece of paper was the single word “Canada.” Somehow it did not feel particularly exotic or exciting but I knew that I had to help my students come up with ideas about how to proceed. In the end it would become one of the most enriching experiences of my life.

Almost immediately a student stepped up and told me that his mother was friends with a woman from Canada who had an extensive collection of Canadian artifacts. After a quick phone call the woman immediately agreed to loan us her treasures for our booth. A trip to her home revealed a trove of items that seemed to have come from a museum. These were unique and valuable treasures that the woman eagerly loaned to me and my students along with detailed explanations about what they all were and how they related to Canadian history and culture. She seemed to be delighted to share her collection with the students who also felt as excited as I did when they realized what we would have to show as we educated the rest of the school about Canada.

Next we met as a class to decide what kind of food to present in our classroom restaurant. Several of the students had already done some research and insisted that having a tea time with Canadian tea and biscuits would be the most appropriate way to go. Of course maple syrup had to be somehow featured as well. 

For the entertainment the students came up with an hilarious skit about a Canadian Mountie who saved a damsel in distress from a terrible villain. We were set to go and only needed to shore up our knowledge of Canada and practice the skit. 

On the day of the event everyone was ready and every aspect of our efforts was a hit. The crowds around our booth were amazing as students and their families and friends got a close up look at wood carvings, brilliantly colored blankets, native artistry, and stunning artwork. There was a long waiting line for the tea time as my students dressed in finery poured tea into delicate china cups and served maple and lemon cookies on silver trays. In the grand finale of entertainment the skit received a standing ovation. At the end of the day my homeroom was presented with first place prize for their efforts. 

We were all over the moon but I reminded the students that without the artifacts and continued guidance of the sweet woman from Canada it is doubtful that our offerings would have been so unique. We all understood that she had to share in our glory and so every one of my students wrote a heartfelt letter of appreciation to her which I delivered when I returned her treasures. 

I suppose that since that time I have felt a special connection with Canada. I have gone to visit there many times and found the people to be more inviting than anywhere else I have been. In fact they seem to go out of their way to make me feel welcome. 

With the new trade wars and insults that our president has initiated against Canada I have felt a bit of shame. I know the people there to be our friends and neighbors. They are also generous and somehow turning on them in this way has felt so wrong. I hope that this insult will soon be rectified. In the meantime I have attempted to show my support for Canada by purchasing goods from there. It is a small effort but one with a message however mute it may seem to be. 

Canada is a really good neighbor. I know this to be so true. It is time we offer an apology and attempt to regain the trust and kinship that has been there for so long. At the same time that great lake that bleeds into both Canada and the United States will always be Lake Ontario for me. Being silly and insulting to Canada simply cannot stand. The very idea of it is wrong.

I taught fourth graders in the early years of my career. I often brought books from my home that provided extra information for topics that we were studying. I left them on a table and encouraged my students to feel free to borrow them or simply scroll through them when they had the time. Many of those books disappeared forever but that never bothered me the way it probably should have. I realized early on in that school that many of my students had little or no print material in their homes. I rationalized that if a student felt compelled to take a book forever I was providing a bit of the joy that reading had always been for me. I said nothing and often just replaced whatever had gone missing. 

Teaching disadvantaged children was enlightening for me. My family wasn’t exactly rolling in money after my father died but we still had all of the books that he had purchased before he was gone. They were proudly on view in bookshelves in our hallway and my brothers and I often read and reread them. My mother subscribed to one of the local newspapers and took us regularly to the library. Books were a central part of our lives from the time we were born. I witnessed both of my parents reading on a regular basis and so I just assumed that every family was like mine. Realizing that the majority of my students in that school had little or no access to reading material at home was distressing to me so I kept bringing volumes that might pique their interest without worrying about whether or not I got those items back. 

I watch the young mothers who are in my circle reading to their children on a daily basis. I see them taking their little ones to the library and putting them in early learning situations that provide them with advanced levels of learning from the start of their lives. It saddens me to know that many other children who live in economically deprived situations do not enjoy the luxury of books and educational experiences. Such children are often lucky just to have enough food for the duration between paychecks. Libraries are often too far away from where they live to make it convenient for them to visit regularly and so they exist in a kind of literary desert.

Most of the teachers that I know reach out to friends and family to purchase class sets of books for students to use. They bring in magazines and newspapers for which they have subscriptions. They do their best to provide their youngsters with opportunities to read. Some schools even have wonderful libraries and book fairs but the modern day trend has been to economize by eliminating librarians and reducing funding for free standing libraries. Emphasis in reading too often focuses only on learning certain skills rather than providing the wonders of reading self selected titles. Students begin to associate reading with a kind of drudgery rather than a beautiful journey into the world through words and illustrations. 

I have witnessed some masterful Reading and English teachers over the years. These men and women know how to bring the written word alive. They relate books with the human experience. They magically transform students from reluctant readers into young people who treasure books as much as a big screen television. Literacy becomes a joy rather than a task that is timed and judged by choosing multiple choice answers. 

Somehow with concern over test scores we all too often create a student’s association with reading as something onerous rather than wonderful. We force students to quickly read a few paragraphs and then answer silly questions that take the joy from learninshg. In some schools kids are now taught with scripts and timers that turn reading into a drill. For those children who have no print material in their homes such methods create a lifelong dread of reading. 

When my father and mother read to me the message from them was very clear. Because they loved me they wanted me to be able to know the joys of the written word. I associated reading with fun and laughter and most of all with comfort and security. I wanted desperately to learn how to make those letters strung together on a page make sense in my own mind. I wanted to read so that I might explore the world on my own. The result is that I have books tucked away and on view all over my home. They cover virtually every kind of genre and are in truth my most precious possessions. When hurricane Harvey was threatening our homes with flooding I moved my books to higher ground lest they be damaged if the water came in through my walls. I did that because I had learned the value of reading from my infancy into the present moment. 

We too often quibble and grumble about reluctant readers but when it is time to reallocate funds we take away the libraries and shut down the newspapers. We turn reading into a kind of algorithm of rules and questions to determine comprehension. We set timers and ignore the reality that many of our students have little or no access to books. Then we complain that literacy is falling and we point fingers at the teachers being pushed to teach from scripts while the librarians are ushered out the door. 

Creating avid readers begins when we are young. All it takes is the loving presence of someone who shows they care by making reading fun. We need only change the emphasis of instructions from test scores to the joy that reading brings into life. It can and should be the focus of education with opportunities for all. 

I find myself harking back to lessons that I learned from my grandfather long ago. I suppose it might be said that he was first of all a stoic who found ways to accept whatever fate might send his way and then make the best of it. Surely his life was difficult but he seemed to approach it with a dogged determination and a never ending sense of humor.

His was an interesting life that is filled with mystery to this very day. In many ways he had to write his own biography because the adults who should have been helping him shape it were never really there save for a woman that he called his grandmother, a lady named Sarah Reynolds. Born in the nineteenth century, he lost his mother, Marion, at birth. She was a woman whose name he seemed to know who has never turned up on any historical documents. His father, James, immediately panicked upon the death of his young wife and handed my grandfather over to Sarah who does not appear to have any familial links to either James or Marion. 

It is difficult to believe that my grandfather’s existence in the United States does not show up until he married my grandmother in the early nineteen twenties even though he claims eighteen seventy nine as his date of birth. For over thirty years records show nothing about him, not even after his who grandmother died when he was only thirteen or the fact that he had to go before a judge to determine who would be his guardian. 

As it turns out he chose a man named John Little who had graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point to guide him into adulthood. My grandfather called this man his uncle but I have never been able to trace his ancestry to that branch of the family. Sadly John Little died rather young while serving in Puerto Rico after a devastating hurricane in 1900. I have reached out to his descendants but none of them seem to recall that he was a guardian for anyone, including my grandfather. 

It saddens me to think of how alone my grandfather must surely must have felt at times and yet he never expressed such feelings. He spoke fondly of living with his grandmother and I suppose that she gave him the kind of love that every child needs to feel strong. He had little to say about his father who seemed to be only peripherally in and out of his life. He expressed great pride in the accomplished uncle that he chose as his guardian. Somehow Grandpa learned to read and write and take care of himself and he often spoke of how he quietly moved from job to job in one state after another. It was not until he met my grandmother in his forties that he found a long lasting relationship that seemed to finally provide him with an anchor.

Still, he and his family struggled greatly during the Great Depression when work was difficult to find. Just as he had always done from the time he was born he found ways to weather the storm and come out whole. There did not seem to be any kind of tragedy that kept him down, not even the death of his only son who was only thirty three at the time. His stoic nature and perennial sense of humor kept him going year after year. Somehow he understood that life can be brutal at times and he weathered great storms without complaint. Only the death of my grandmother seemed to set him way off balance for a time but eventually he found his way again. 

Grandpa spent his last twenty years in a rented room in a house with a widowed woman whom he would eventually call his “daughter.” The two of them created a kind of family life that allowed them to survive the blows of the world. Even together their income was minimal but they did not seem to require as much as people do in these times. They were content to have a roof over their heads and food to keep them alive from day to day. Grandpa thrived in that environment and grew older and well past one hundred years while the woman completed her career and retired to spend her days with the man who had become a father to her. 

Grandpa was a storyteller with a sharp whit and the mind of an historian. He had lived through the Gilded Age, the so called Cleveland Panic, the march of Coxey’s Army and multiple wars. He was living and working in Oklahoma when oil was found on the Osage reservation. He recalled seeing the first city lit by electric lights and celebrating the first flight of an airplane. His sense of what is important in life was tempered by one hundred eight years of living almost anonymously through great upheavals and change. Somehow in spite of the many losses and needs in his life he retained an upbeat philosophy about the world.

I am now slowly but surely moving in the direction of the last chapters of my life. Like my grandfather I enjoy telling my story which has been so much easier than his. At times I have to remind myself not to fall into a trap of despair when the world seems to be so awry. I turn to the wisdom of my grandfather that taught me that nothing in life is static. Good times always come back around. Good people inevitably win the day. Patience and determination keeps us moving forward. Survival can be difficult but humor and optimism will keep us motivated. 

I feel blessed to have listened to my grandfather and his philosophies on life. A man who might have been bitter instead learned how to find the best in the world around him. He believed in the honor of humanity even in the toughest of times. He always insisted that the present is where we find the good old days if only we are willing to look beyond the ugliness to see the brilliant lights of humanity. He lived history and his personal story was a treasure that he gave to me.

I was busy doing what I best like to do yesterday morning. I was teaching math to three delightful children who brought as much light into my life as the relentless August sun has done. It was our first time back to work since the summer break and they were in a joyous mood that kept a smile plastered on my face for hours. It was only when I returned home and opened my laptop that I learned that Dolly Parton had died and I felt a crushing blow in knowing that she had left us here on this earth. 

I did not personally know Dolly Parton but I felt as though I did. I was enchanted by her many talents, her beauty and that smile that came so naturally to her. Like everyone I knew her story of growing up poor but determined to fulfill the dreams that propelled her into becoming one of the beloved entertainers in the world. I enjoyed her presence on this planet because the light that she brought to us was brighter than the most luminous star. 

Some people preach to us but Dolly simply showed us how to live by example. She was a generous soul who embraced people exactly as there were. With Dolly there was no need to put on airs or pretend to be a caricature of some ideal kind of person. She loved people unconditionally. 

Dolly had grown up without much luxury so she understood what life was life for so many Americans who live on the edges of society. She was unimpressed by titles or wealth even though she herself had earned so many. She wanted to make a difference in the world beyond the trappings of success and so she shared the good fortune that she had built with her singing and writing and enormous talent and creativity. She understood how important reading is for the soul and so she launched a program that would put books into the hands of millions of children. 

Dolly Parton was the kind of person that we needed to bridge the gap in our differences and pull us together in a spirit of community. Her smile was genuine and her thoughts were comforting. She didn’t just light up a room, she lit up the entire world. We all saw that she was genuinely kind and understanding. The softness of her lovely southern drawl wrapped us into a warm blanket that felt so soft and so unlike much of the hate that is tossed around far too much in our daily lives. She was comforting and wise.

My Facebook feed filled up with tributes to Dolly Parton from people who knew her intimately to people like me who admired her from afar. She brought us together in a kind of harmony that has been missing of late. She reminded us of what is really important in our lives without scolding us. She was simply herself providing everyone with a beautiful example of how to live a wonderful life. 

I know that we will miss Dolly Parton. She is gone far too soon but I think that we will remember how she showed us the power of giving and loving and accepting without ever preaching. She simply was what she was, the epitome of grace and compassion, a guiding light in a time that too often feels so dark. 

There will be lowered flags and tributes from people in all walks of life. We all know how much we have lost with the death of this diminutive woman with a heart so big that it somehow reverberated to us all. Our sorrow will be on view but I would like to believe that it will prompt us to follow her lead and look outward to serve the needs of all of the people we encounter without judgement or demands. That would be the best way to honor this incredibly wonderful person who united us in a time when we have been encouraged to stay apart. 

Dolly Parton took life by the tail and managed to touch the hearts and souls of the world. May she rest in peace with the angels and saints where she will surely join a heavenly choir. She was one of the best among us and her life will continue to remind us that love is the answer to all of our problems. Like Dolly we can also be the change that we wish to see in the world but first we must give away our smiles.