Category: Commentary

I suspect that every human has at least a tiny bit of tunnel vision. Some have blinders coupled with living in a bubble that make it almost impossible to understand the thinking of people unlike themselves. I suppose that this has always been the case in this great big world of ours. We each grow up in a particular place with certain beliefs that color our thinking about those who are different from ourselves. Bringing us all together is a daunting task that has never been easy. Sometimes fighting for a common cause makes us strange bedfellows and brings about new understandings, but most of the time we tend to stay in our safety zones of thought, hoping and believing that we are doing our very best to be wonderful and kind. In a worst case scenario we are actually guilty of self-righteous behaviors even though our intent all along was to be inclusive and loving. Finding a way of being truly open and loving to one another is not nearly as easy as we would hope it to be. 

There is a great deal of talk about what constitutes love of country, most of which centers on the beliefs of one group or another. I would propose that each faction in its own way truly sees itself as the bastion of democracy. The people who came out for the Black Lives Matter protests sincerely think that our freedoms depend on our ability to recognize the injustices that still exist in our society. Those who wave Trump and American flags insist that we must adhere to laws and traditions if we are to truly honor our Constitution and the American way. Both have devolved into riotous behaviors from time to time because of frustrations that nobody is hearing them. Some among them believe that only force will provide their causes enough attention to foment change. Most of the members of each group only want peaceful demonstrations, but realize that just being silent is too often not enough to bring about change. Each in its own way honestly thinks that they are accomplishing something critically important for the good of our country. Each is guided by a zealous desire to make our nation a better place while the rest of us leave the battles to them because we truthfully just want to be left alone. 

A few nights ago I watched an old movie, Nicholas and Alexandra, based on an historical text written by Robert Massie. In a three hour epic, the film outlined the fall of the three hundred year old Romanov dynasty and the rise of a socialist/communist society in Russia. It focused on the blunders of Tsar Nicholas in underestimating the needs of the people he ruled. It demonstrated the schisms that arise when one group is clinging to a past that is no longer relevant for a huge swatch of the society. Through one miscalculation after another Nicholas abdicated what should have been his role in reforming the ways of governing just as had been done in his cousin’s country of England. 

Nicholas believed that he was chosen by God to rule his people. That idea had been superseded by a powerful Parliament in Great Britain long before. The King of England, Nicholas’ cousin Bertie, was only a figurehead, not the person who determined every aspect of society. When it became more and more apparent that the same thing should happen in Russia if the country was to survive in the modern world, Nicholas stubbornly held on to his power with an iron fist., answering protests from the starving peasants with authoritarian force. He assumed that he knew more about what Russia needed than its people and in the process he lost everything while the country itself fell apart. 

As I see it, there is a great deal of stubbornness and very little willingness to understand one another at play in our country today. Very few people are listening to each other right now. Instead there is more judging and insulting than making attempts to truly hear the concerns of each of the many factions. Perhaps the ways that we are reacting are driven by 24/7 outrage in multiple forms of media. There is so much noise, much of which we ourselves are making, that we tend to move where we can only hear what we want to hear. Like Nicholas we are caught in our own self deceiving bubbles that shelter us from difficult but critical truths.  

From where I stand right now I see a world and a nation in which change is not only inevitable but necessary. History demonstrates that we do indeed progress in positive ways whenever we are willing to take note of our problems and attempt to solve them not just for our own protection and betterment, but for all of the many stakeholders who essentially just want enough justice to feel that they are valued. A wise leader brings as many viewpoints to the table as possible and then actually manages to bring disparate ideas together for the good of everyone. 

Right now we are fighting with one another all too often without being willing to genuinely ask what has made so many of our citizens so angry. What has driven our Black citizens to protest in the streets with an anger that sometimes bursts forth in acts of violence? Why are many of our white citizens so mad and fearful of moving into the future that they would attempt to overthrow the legitimate votes of the people? Why are we in a state of inertia in the halls of Congress? Why does a bipartisan way of legislating seem to be dead? Why are we encouraging a kind of vigilante society in which we turn on one another when we don’t agree? What can we learn from each other that might prevent the potential of a total breakdown of our society? 

Nicholas did not understand what he might have done differently until it was too late. Those who lead a revolution did not see how wrong their total rejection of the government would ultimately be. Our lessons from history should demonstrate that an entrenched unwillingness to face the flaws in our society and work on them together can be fatal. The message we must send to our lawmakers and to one another is that we want to be inclusive and that what really matters is growing the freedoms and quality of life for all people, not just those who appear to be like us.

Every time we have a time change, controversy ensues. Some like having more light in the afternoon and others prefer having light in the morning even if it means getting dark sooner in the evening. Then there are those who just want to choose one of the above and stick with it all year long like the folks in Arizona do. The fact is that there is going to be the same amount of light during the various seasons of the year regardless of whether we have standard or daylight saving time.

For morning people standard time is the bomb. It’s tough to get up when it feels like the middle of the night even for souls who seem to automatically wake up at five in the morning. It’s even worse for children and nothing bothers me more than seeing little ones standing at the bus stop when it is still so dark that the cars have to use their lights. It really seems unnatural and maybe even a bit cruel to watch little folk trudging half asleep into school. Sometimes the smallest ones have to be carried inside wailing that they want to go back home. In cases like that  I cast my vote for standard time so that our smallest folk can sleep until the sun peeks out over the horizon. It seems far more humane than what now takes place for too much of the school year. 

When I was kid the school day did not even begin until almost nine o’clock. I walked to the campus everyday and I don’t ever recall doing that in the dark. By eight thirty when I left home for my journey the sun lit my way and I felt quite rested. I did not know at the time that our bodies react to sunrise by stopping the flow of melatonin in our brains. If it is dark outside when we must awake it is far more difficult than when the sun is shining because our bodies are often still producing a sleep inducing chemical. We have to fight to get the energy to drag ourselves from our beds. Little wonder that there is so much crankiness on those dark mornings of daylight saving time.

The other side of the argument is that people who work end up coming home in the dark when during standard time. By the time they reach their homes they can’t putter in their gardens or just enjoy the sights and sounds of their neighborhoods. They miss the joy of daylight hours and sometimes don’t even see the sun at all in their windowless offices and work areas. Without even a hint of sun all day long they get the winter blues or find trouble sleeping because their internal clocks don’t know what time it is. At least the children have a bit of sun in the afternoon to get doses of vitamin D and their share of happy signals to their brains. Working adults sometimes go months without even a hint of natural light until it is spring and daylight saving time returns. 

It’s been proven that we humans need a certain amount of sunshine each and every day if we are to feel our best. People who live close to the Arctic circle sometimes spend entire days, weeks and months in the dark. It has a disastrous effect on their emotions, their sleep habits and their general well being. We crave sunshine, even if only for a few minutes every day. If we can’t get it naturally we have to seek out artificial light sources or risk becoming depressed or even physically ill. It’s something that our bodies and brains demand. 

I suppose that it’s not particularly good to keep changing back and forth between one time frame and another. Aside from the aggravation of adjusting all of the clocks two times a year, we all know that our bodies rebel each time we add or steal an hour from our day. I suspect that most of us would be far happier if we simply stopped this annoying routine once and for all. As it is, in typical fashion we started this for reasons unbeknownst to most of us. In truth it was not until World War I that the practice first came into being first in Germany and then in the United States.  It was instituted as a way of conserving fuel by minimizing the use of artificial lighting. It became uniform in all states of the USA in 1966. 

An analysis in 200,7 demonstrated that there is no significant preservation of fuel because of daylight saving time. Our modern lifestyles allow us to run appliances and keep our homes lit well into the night. People no longer retire for bed early simply because it is dark. The original rationale for the biannual switch is now essentially moot.

Medical studies have also shown that there is a negative health effect associated with changing the time twice a year. Regardless of which system we are switching to use, there is a correlation of increased visits to hospital emergency rooms for serious health issues like heart attack each time the switch takes place. Our bodies seem to do best when we establish a routine and stay with it.

I suppose that we are victims of the age old rule that once something starts nobody knows how to get rid of it whether it seems to have any purpose or not. We can’t seem to bring ourselves purge meaningless traditions even when most of us don’t like them anymore. It’s too bad that we don’t give the time changes a Marie Kondo kick in the pants. We should seriously consider getting rid of things we do not need. Pick one or pick the other, but don’t keep doing something that has virtually no benefit to any of us.

Every teacher has a great deal of material to cover during the course of a school year. What they must teach is outlined in the standards which have been approved by the state board of education. It is like running a marathon to plan lessons that ensure that students will fully comprehend the required concepts while also making certain that every morsel of essential knowledge is presented before the end of the school year. Any idea that teachers are inventing their own curriculum is sheer fantasy. Their yearly appraisals rely heavily on evidence that they have toed the line in following the scope and sequence of topics assigned for a particular subject in a particular grade. While there are some renegades in schools, they are usually found and told to stick with the program as outlined in the essential knowledge and skills documents that they all have. If they do not they are urged to leave.

I am intimately familiar with such things because of roles that I played in the schools where I worked. First I was a team leader for my pod of seventh grade teachers from each subject area. Later I became the Mathematics Department Head and held regular meetings to outline methods for coordinating the transition of students from one level of mathematics to the next. We relied heavily on being certain that all of the grade level topics were covered thoroughly enough that students would have the necessary foundations to proceed through the sequence of skills from in each future grade. Eventually I became the school’s Peer Facilitator and as such I made visits to the classrooms of every single faculty member while also checking their lesson plans and analyzing the results of their students’ scores on standardized tests. Lastly I was the Dean of Faculty in a public high School where I spent my days keeping track of literally all of the teaching happening anywhere on the campus. 

In three different schools I found that the vast majority of teachers were highly educated, dedicated, and hard working individuals. They tended to focus on their students and on developing their lessons with an intensity that is not found in many employees in other fields of endeavor. They took their work and hearts home each night with a serious desire to improve their own pedagogy and the knowledge of skills of their students. Their ultimate goals were always to teach their pupils how to think and to do research and become lifelong learners. Teachers enrolled in classes outside of the school day just to learn new techniques and to become better at their jobs. Most of the time they did this at their own expenses of time and money. They were continually stressed with worry that they were not doing enough, not helping as many students as much as they wanted to do. If they had a general flaw it was in being too wrapped up in their work.

We have been hearing much negativity lately about schools and teachers who are supposedly introducing students to Critical Race Theory or bringing books into classrooms that make students feel bad about themselves. Most of what is being bandied about as truth is pure bunk or a wrongly reasoned anecdote about a single teacher. Some parents are becoming unhinged at School Board Meetings as though this alternate reality they are speaking against is a general situation overtaking our schools. Nothing could be further from what is really happening. 

First of all there are not school districts instructing their teachers to convey the tenets of Critical Race Theory, a general theory that is almost exclusively the domain of Law Schools. It is a specific study of systems that either intentionally or unintentionally foster inequalities based on race or religion or country of origin. Most teachers in elementary, middle, intermediate and high schools know nothing about Critical Race Theory because it has never been part of their curriculum. Nonetheless some parents are incorrectly viewing honest presentations of historical events fit attempts to influence students with Critical Race Theory. In fact, they are wrong. 

It is impossible to teach about the Holocaust with any honesty without producing strong emotional responses from students. There really is no other point of view that can ever be acceptably taught as a counterpoint. A teacher cannot and should not defend the practice of incarcerating and killing individuals based on race or religion. Such horrific historical moments are gut wrenching, but they are not intended to make students hate themselves. The purpose in teaching about them is to help students understand that sometimes humans have gone gravely awry. Learning about and discussing such things helps to to emphasize the importance of critical thinking, research, and active listening in observing the impact of events in the present and watching for warning signs that we are drifting away from the ideals of freedom.

Teachers particularly in Advanced Placement high school classes are charged with challenging their students with college level readings and ideas. Parents must understand that expanding students’ minds by showing them worlds beyond the bubbles of their own backyards is not a destructive thing, but a way of making them more aware and understanding. Teachers help their students to gradually pivot into the adult world. Hiding truths from them is wrong and can be destructive. 

I grew up during the Jim Crow era in the south. I saw firsthand how badly Black citizens were treated. I can still remember the separate water fountains and bathrooms. I saw the Black people sitting at the back of the buses that I rode on to get to downtown. I had no Black students in my school or neighborhood until I was in high school and the push to integrate was happening all across the south. I recall visiting my grandparents in Arkansas and hearing about the horrible treatment of the young Black students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock. It was so horrified that I was afraid of even driving through that town for many years after even though I am white. I cried watching the freedom marchers attempting to cross the bridge in Selma while being victimized by snarling dogs, water from hoses that knocked them down, and police officers who beat them. Why would we want to hide these truths of our history from our children? Life is not make believe. So what if they feel bad just as I did when I saw it happening. Hearing about abuse is never as horrific as being the victim. I learned from being a witness to such brutality. I became a better person. I was able to understand the cries for justice from people around the globe.

I can assure parents that they would be better served spending their time asking what schools and teachers need to support the incredible efforts they are making. I am much more worried about the lack of funding for up to date technology or classroom sets of books. I have purchased books for teachers countless times when there was no money available in their budgets to provide their students with the texts they needed. We spend more on stadiums than on science labs. We worry about a phantom theory that does not even exist in schools but do little to make teachers and students feel safe from shooters. Our priorities have been dictated by politicians whose only experience with schools is once having been students. Right now too many parents have it all wrong only because they are afraid of something that they cannot even define properly. So they are striking out randomly at anything that might evoke strong emotions or require students to consider different points of view. It all reeks of book burning and dystopian futures.

The schools and the teachers have a great deal of work to do. None of it involves making anyone feel sad or bad. Let’s not allow propaganda to make us believe differently. The hysteria needs to stop!

COVID-19 has taken me back to the roots of my childhood. Back then we rarely went out to eat. Having a meal at a local cafeteria or Mexican restaurant was a big deal that only happened once in a blue moon. The rest of the time we ate at home where my mother was the master of performing miracles with only a few ingredients. Steak was too much for her budget just as it is for most of us now with rising prices. Her idea of a steak dinner was to purchase a fairly inexpensive round steak and pound it to death until it was incredibly tender. Dinner was a grand adventure made with whatever she could find on sale. She was the queen of creating delicious soups and big pots of yummy beans. So too have I become a homebody when it comes to eating. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve eaten at a restaurant in the past eighteen months. My desire for food from outside my home has greatly diminished. 

I’ve alway leaned toward introversion and my tendencies to prefer staying home with very small groups of people with whom I am totally comfortable have become more and more my cup of tea. I have actually enjoyed not having to rush around meeting the demands of a very full schedule. Having no special plans is rather nice, and when I do get an invitation I have to nudge myself to go. Nonetheless, I really have been delighted anytime I’ve had an opportunity to be with friends. I just feel more comfortable these days with smaller groups. 

For a time I missed going to the movie theater, but I have a great sound system and a nice big television screen, so there’s not much to miss if I stay right here at home. My sofa is more comfortable than the loungers that are the rage at the theaters these days. Even better is that I can watch the film in my jammies and not have to worry about looking somewhat presentable. I can purchase a liter of soda and enough popcorn to fill a washtub for a fourth of the price of purchasing such things at the movies. As time goes by, I miss those kind of outings less and less. 

I used to adore shopping for hours. I liked looking at all of the new products and observing my fellow shoppers. Now I go to stores armed with a list and I’ve become one of those people who rushes from aisle to aisle getting just what I need without pausing to inspect items that distract me from my task. I can’t imagine spending as much time as I once did lingering in a mall or department store. Suddenly such an activity holds little interest for me. 

I been slowly getting rid of excess baggage. I’m finding that I have too many things that I rarely use or, even worse, never use. This birthday and Christmas I don’t want things. I’d prefer making repairs on my home or planning a nice trip or experience. I’m culling so much but still can’t bring myself to let go of a single book. I’ll have to practice doing that in stages. 

Life was quiet and simple in my youth. I lived by a routine that kept my days interesting but infrequently included events that cost more than a few gallons of gas. The outdoors were the source of most of my joy. I walked or rode my bicycle for miles around my neighborhood. On Sundays I went with my family to the beaches that are not far from my current home. We’d bring a picnic lunch and walk through the sand or jump with the waves. We often visited friends and relatives who feted us with homemade snacks like cinnamon toast and lemonade. Back then I loved just sitting with my grandfather and listening to the amazing stories of his life. Now my greatest joy is spending time with my ninety-two year old father-in-law. Just hearing him laugh is a precious gift.

I think this year’s Halloween celebration was my favorite ever. I almost cried with joy to see all of the children scurrying from house to house again. They were so adorable in their costumes and their innocence. Their laughter filled the streets just as I remember the Halloweens of old. Nobody seemed to be expecting anything more than just the joy of celebrating again. It’s amazing how much we lowered our expectations but ended up enjoying the moment more than ever.

If I have learned anything during the time of COVID-19 it is that so much that I thought was important before now seems unnecessary. All of my value is now focused on people and memories. My husband, Mike, and I get joy out of seeing a new rose bloom on one of our bushes. We love sitting on our patio listening to the children playing all around us or watching the antics of the birds in our garden. Sunrises and sunsets seem more beautiful than ever before. Knowing that people that I love are still doing fine brings me a priceless sense of contentment. 

COVID-19 is a horrible virus that has left death and sorrow in its wake. I would not want to wish to endure its damage if I had the power to go back in time, but somehow it forced me to change and to reassess my life. In doing that I have realized how much I had taken for granted. Now I am finding more meaning in leading a less harried and complex doing things. In divesting myself of possessions and materialism I am rediscovering the joy of simplicity and maybe even beginning to help heal the earth in a small way. I don’t think I will be going back to the before time. Where I am now is a wonderful place to be.

We humans come in all shapes and sizes and ways of thinking. With our diversity running the gamut it’s only natural that we react to tragedy and setbacks differently as well. There are the consummate optimists who find a silver lining in every cloud and the realists who believe that sometimes life just sucks and there is nothing redeeming to be found in horrific moments. Nonetheless, we tend to do our best to be flexible whenever we find ourselves reeling from some horrible situation. We look for ways to make sense of the unacceptable. We create trite sayings about learning from our mistakes or becoming stronger from life’s trials. If we are incredibly spiritual we may even insist that God never gives us more than we can handle, even as we struggle under the weight and unfairness of some tests of our human spirit. 

I am among the millions of humans who has managed to recover from the challenges and tragedies that have marked my life, but I would lie if I did not admit that I have deep scars from many of those difficulties. I am able to put on a good face because I know that people have a limited capacity for understanding how some hurts never really heal. I have learned that most humans want to be kind and helpful, but if a tragedy lingers for too long they lose interest. Thus I, like many, have often simply masked my suffering with forced smiles, fake courage, empty expressions of positivity that I knew were not true. It’s what we tend to do whenever we realize that society has deemed it time for us to move on from our pain. We have learned that the rest of the world generally prefers for us to be strong. 

Our truths can make everyone else uncomfortable. If we are lucky we have one or two people with whom we might be totally honest. Otherwise we are forced to bear up under our woes, not speak of our sorrow or losses. I learned from my mother’s experience that only the strongest of our friends and acquaintances will stick with us in our most profound moments of darkness. When she was a beautiful, happy married woman she had more friends than anyone I had ever witnessed. After my father died they rallied for a brief time but then slowly dwindled away when her tears lingered longer and threatened their comfort with her. I remember hearing people tell her to get a grip, to just pray, to think good thoughts, to try harder to be her delightful self again. 

I suppose that their advice was well meaning, but in some ways it was cruel and ill advised. They did not allow her the time she needed to emotionally deal with the shocking reality of my father’s death. She had no job, no money, no education, three children to raise alone, and most horribly, a mental illness growing in her brain of which she and everyone else was still unaware. She eventually managed to create a facade of normalcy, but by then her circle of friends had shrunk to an abysmally low level. Only the most loyal and loving stuck with her as her world continued to unravel while her bipolar disorder took hold of every day of the remainder of her life. 

There are indeed situations that are so horrific that to insist that the affected person find something positive in the circumstance is absurd. Asking them to believe that such events are making them stronger is too often little more than a big lie. In our own feeble efforts to make ourselves feel less uncomfortable around someone who is suffering we all too often reach for platitudes that only worsen their condition. The individual whose child has been murdered or the soul who has learned that a beloved family member is going to die just needs our love, not our lectures. Sometimes the best thing we might do is hold someone while they cry. The understanding warmth of our silence may be the best comfort. 

I once had a student who seemed to leave a trail of havoc wherever he went. One day he was such a problem in my classroom that I told him to get out and wait for me in the hallway. I was intensely frustrated with his horrific behavior and needed to calm down before confronting him. When I finally felt comfortable enough to talk with him I blurted out a terribly insulting question. I wanted to know what was wrong with him. I insisted on learning why he was always intent on ruining the usual calm of my classroom. 

With a poisonous look on his face he angrily responded that I would be like him if I had lost my father the way he had. Not missing a beat, I countered that I too had lost my father to death when I was only eight and that I had never once acted the way he did. Not to be outdone by my refutation he screamed that my father had left because of an accident, but his had left because he no longer wanted to be with the family. He noted that I knew that my father loved me, but his father had demonstrated that he did not care about anyone but himself. “Why should I bother caring about anything?” he blustered. 

At that moment I silenced my urge to lecture him and simply let the tears of understanding that were welling in my heart fall freely. He in turn fell forward into my arms and we both sobbed uncontrollably while we hugged. We needed no more words. There was an understanding between us that we both needed. We acknowledged the hurt that we had hidden from view in our own ways. We both felt the raw honesty of that moment and from that point forward we no longer battled each other in the classroom. He became a model student, but more importantly he understood that he was not alone, nor was I. 

We would all do well to support the people around us with understanding and empathy rather than platitudes and trite sayings that may in fact do more harm than good. We need to allow people the time that they need to work through the tragedies, losses and disappointments that befall them without expecting them to have a false optimism. Thoughts and prayers are nice, but sometimes just being that silent shoulder to lean on is the best option of all. We probably do indeed grow from our cloudy days, but the truth is that most of us would rather grow without the pains. Sometimes clouds are just dark and dreary.