How Many?

57 years ago today, right about the time this is written, I remember exactly where I was.  On this hot Southern California afternoon, I was not swimming with neighborhood kids.  I was not playing baseball or records, or even getting ready for my Junior year in high school which was just two weeks away.
I was watching television, or rather watching history.  This was the day and time of the March on Washington, D.C. and the list of speakers and entertainers held my attention.  I recall trying to get my sister and a couple of her friends to watch with me but they were only interested in their social scene about to be revived with the approaching new school year.  My mom was in our pantry sitting by an ironing board.  Periodically, I'd run back there and scream, "You gotta see this, it's history in the making."
"You can tell me all about it," was all I got in reply.
So I returned to sit by the old Packard Bell TV with the well-worn dials that adjusted volume or turned the channel.

I knew about Peter, Paul, and Mary, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez.  Their music was just beginning to make an impact in my world of 16 year-olds.  Of course, it was the oration of Martin Luther King Jr. that made the most impact.  A year earlier I had found a copy of his book Why We Can't-Wait at my local drug store and was all too familiar with King's Letter from the Birmingham Jail.  I marveled at the energy that King created within the crowd.  The call and response of a Black preacher was still new to me, but it was spellbinding.  Earlier, I had seen Black funerals televised as civil rights workers were laid to rest in news coverage.
57 years have passed and there is another March on Washington today.  As police shootings continue and the Black Lives Matter movement continues to move the social justice agenda forward, it sometimes seems as if very little has changed.  This is hardly the case because real change moves much slower than most would like.  But in Dr. King's words, "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice."
Let's hope so.
Point of Interest: That year 57 years ago was 1963.  Later that year, for my US History class I did a research paper on voter registration in the South.  From an article in Newsweek magazine, I learned about the history poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and literacy tests for Black people.  I read of a Mississippi literacy test that asked potential voters, How many bubbles are there in a bar of soap?" This was real...documented...systemic racism in the USA.
It's often said that what a person sees at crucial times in his/her life stays with them and impacts their values the most.  For me, that is definitely the case.

Scatterings

I heard recently from a former colleague of mine.  We talk from time to time.  He calls me, truth be told, and seems to have a need to fill me in on life in the Bay Area.  I moved 14 years ago after living there for about 35 years.  I'm fortunate to have his friendship because I do value the newsy updates.
This latest call was consumed by our discussion of life after COVID and the upcoming opening of the school year.  We both are fortunate to be retired and not have to deal with the online challenges currently facing our colleagues still in the classroom.
Always, he fills me in on who died, and who is and is not doing well.  This last call, however, had something with a twist.  We talked about the daughter of a former colleague of ours who died about 6 months ago.  The daughter was charged with scattering her mother's ashes at the mountain camp that they both attended every summer for many years.  The camp is a beautiful, woodsy sight in the mountains where inner-city kids spend a week or two every summer.  My friend and her daughter have worked there every summer and the place came to be a sort of Eden for them.  I can easily see why she like to have her ashes scattered there.
The daughter went to the site a few weeks ago, but for some reason was not able to complete the chore.  She returned recently and could not follow through again.  My phone call friend and I discussed the possibility that it is just too difficult right now to let go of her mother.  This makes sense and says much about their relationship.

I think that someday, maybe next year, the request will be fulfilled.
In the same vein, I recalled a couple of times that I was fly fishing on a couple of Central Oregon's most beautiful rivers.  While following the trails that run parallel to the flowing water, I encountered small groups of two or three people carrying an urn and looking for a good spot to fulfill the request of a loved one.  I recall nodding to the people as recognition that I knew what they were doing and would certainly move out of the way and allow them all the privacy they need.
One of these sites, the Metolius River would definitely be in my top 3 places where I'd like to have my ashes scattered.  It's a place of beauty and mystery.  A place where I could spend endless hours.  I really do mean endless.  I have a couple of other sites in mind, but I do leave open the possibility that the final decision has a way to go before being necessary.

I once thought that having my ashes scattered at the Finish Line at a race track would be great.  Not sure it would be possible, but for me, another place of beauty and mystery.

Rookies Again

Like many retired teachers, I get the pull come late August.  It's always been an exciting time for those who enter the classroom because the teaching profession enjoys the luxury of starting over every year.  That little renewal is often what it takes to keep fresh, keep motivated, keep going.  The job itself is exhausting and predictable is the loss of anticipation and the subtle depression that slides in by late October.
I continue to have school dreams too.  Most educators have them and even after retirement, they continue to surprise.  Last week I had two such dreams, the most significant being one where a class of seniors, feeling done, did not want to stick around so they slowly bit by bit exited the classroom.  I was powerless to do anything short of issuing threats, pleas, warnings, or immediate consequences.  Easy dream to interpret. Powerlessness figures heavily in educating another human being.

My feeling is that this latest cluster of what I call "school dreams" occurred because I've been thinking about and watching and reading news stories about the opening of the new school year.  It would seem that virtual school or distance learning, as the euphemisms go, seems to be the rule this year.  With that in mind, I checked the web sites of my old district and school to see what was happening and what I'd have to do to teach in this new reality.  That was the trigger, no doubt.  What surprised me was that even though the message was clear about when and what the new school year would look like, there was very little else on the web site.  A few links from a few teachers but that was all.  I'm sure it's all a work in progress at this point, and my former colleagues are scrambling as I write.
Former colleagues...there were very few left.  I only recognized the names of four teachers and knew none of the administrators.  That's the key to bringing school dreams to an end.  The school I knew, the people I knew, and of course the world I knew do not exist anymore.
Last week I received a phone call from a friend I made while I was supervising student teachers a few years ago.  After we renewed our friendship and how life during the pandemic, we got to the inevitable topic of the 2020 school year.  My friend is no longer in the classroom.  We hit it off when a student teacher I was working with was placed in his classroom about 10 years ago.  A former Oregon Teacher of the Year, Michael, my friend, works now in the State Dept. of Education.  Shortly before our conversation ended he said, "you know Bruce, all the things we were good at, the skills we developed over so many years, might be obsolete now."  We'd be rookies again!  Michael is a rabid baseball fan so the rookie metaphor was no surprise.  What was, I fear, is the truth of his statement.  I fear...fear... Hmm, more dreams ahead.

Open Up

When all the "what was it like?" questions about the great pandemic of 2020 are asked I wonder how many will answer with only the physical conditions and ramifications.  The mental consequences are beginning to add up now.  People are depressed.  They are beginning to talk about their mental health freely.  Simply put, there is much to be depressed about.  

Unforeseen was the fact that personal freedoms would collide so sharply with the good of the order.  There has emerged a basic misunderstanding about what exactly basic freedoms are, and how they manifest themselves in a democracy.  My first government teacher used to use the old cliche, "your rights end at the tip of your nose."  Simply put, your rights and freedoms are not absolute.  I supposed we could say that those rights end at the tip of your unmasked nose for some.

One of the first things I learned to do when I taught seniors American Government was to draw a continuum with a scale in the middle.  On one end of the continuum was order or authority, the other was labeled freedom or liberty.  A good way to teach the concept of ordered liberty, which is what our rights are all about.  The old standard of "yelling fire in a crowded theater" comes in handy here too.  People generally understand that our freedoms are not absolute and that our social contract involves modifying our behavior for the benefit of all.  

In our current policy of virtual education, this seems a good lesson to begin the school year.

We're almost 6 months into our quarantine.  What's becoming noticeable, as more and more TVs are on longer, is that commercials are adapting like sports, audience participation, panel discussions, and studio audiences disappear.  The use of the soundtrack is enjoying a renaissance.  Even commercials are digging deep to find relevant content.  

An old R&B song from 1958 is enjoying renewed air time.  Open Up That Door, by Nappy Brown is the perfect way to announce that many previously closed businesses are back in action.

So, as people begin to open up, so do the archives.  This is good news for all those who hold on to things because "you never know when you might need it.