Over Reaction

 Last week was tough. Try as we might, the students and staff at our school are struggling to avoid the stress that hangs in the air like the scent of musty coats in the lost and found. Teachers facing the ongoing fight to keep the school open are hanging around late and getting up early to prepare for whatever the next action will be. Making signs. Having meetings about making signs. Creating agendas for meetings about making signs. It seems like our waking moments are spent at school or figuring out how the school can stay there so when we get there we have a place to meet. 

And all of this stress rolls downhill. An early blast of spring-like weather would have been enough in any given year to send our students into a tizzy. The little things become big things, and the big things that hover over them every day of their lives are compressed by the pressure of a bunch of grownups who are not managing their tension as well as they might. Some of our most at-risk kids are more sensitive than they usually are, which is a lot. This means one person cutting in line on the way to the cafeteria can become an afternoon of misery for all those involved. A shove on the playground can blow up into a brawl among first grade soccer players. 

And who is there to calm these stormy seas? A group of adults who are carrying around their last nerves, holding their stretched composure at the end of a day that seems to stretch on and on, with yet another zoom meeting to be had once all the short people have gone home. 

All of which is to say that I understand why Florida's "governor" snapped at a group of high school students during a visit to the University of South Florida last week. All because some of the students were wearing masks. “You do not have to wear those masks. I mean, please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything. We’ve got to stop with this COVID theater. So if you wanna wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous,” he said, letting out an audible sigh and shaking his head. "Governor Ron" was obviously at the end of one of those days when that extra straw of encountering a group of children protecting themselves from a deadly plague set him off. Ironically, out here on the left coast, I find myself getting testy when I have to remind eight year olds to put their masks on. 

But let's just say that I understand the reaction. As awkward and misdirected as it was. I suppose we should congratulate the "governor" for not reaching out and snatching the mask off the kids. And to the kids who didn't knock him out for his trouble. 

Many Hats

 Ten years ago, I was recognized by my principal at the time and by the school district as The Outstanding Teacher. To commemorate this honor, my wife made me a set of matching baseball caps. These were to acknowledge all the different jobs I held down at my school, Horace Mann Elementary. One said "teacher" on the front. Another said "coach." Another said "liaison" for my connection to the after school program. Of course there needed to be one that said "tech" for all the things I fixed. Or turned on. She made one that said "principal" for those days when I had to step in to that role for a moment. And the sixth one just said "slash," which made the others less useful since it described best the way I moved through my day.

Ten years later, I am still doing pretty much the same thing. What makes me happy is that I work with a group of people who could also wear any one of these hats as they go about their day. That is because they take the same approach to teaching I do: It takes a village. It always has. It always will. 

When I first got to Horace Mann, it was a year round school. There were so many kids enrolled here students alternated being here for three months and would then take a month off. Things have changed a lot since then. Somewhere in there, charter schools started popping up around Oakland. Someone even came by to sell us all on the idea of converting our school to a charter. We sent him away. We are a public school, named for the man who invented public education. We are a school for the community.

And we will continue to be just that.

The school district wants to point at our declining enrollment as a reason for closing our school. They do this without acknowledging the impact of the past two years of COVID. They do this without outwardly acknowledging the number of students in our neighborhood that are attending charter schools. Rather than finding ways to grow our student body, the district is using this opportunity to close a school that has been the center of a community for much longer than the years I have been here. I am just a tiny part of the history of Horace Mann. All of those students, families and educators who came before me and all those who come after I am gone will tell the rest of the story. 

Right now we are gifted to have a dedicated staff, and a principal who has brought all kinds of services and programs back to our school. The fact that our library is open for business after years of being used primarily for storage and meetings is a blessing. The same can be said of our after school program and all the ways we connect with our kids and their families every day. 

We are asking for your help to spread the word about our school. Horace Mann is down, but not out. We deserve the right to show everyone what a special place we all make it. Let's tell everyone: Horace Mann is here to stay. 

The Day Before

 Back in those giddy days of the late seventies, there was a phrase that was bandied about by those Me Generation types who were mining the humor of mankind's eventual destruction. "One nuclear weapon could ruin your whole day." This was a direct attempt to deflect the quiet certitude we all carried around in our heads that eventually the missiles would be launched and we would all hasten the directives of the Civil Defense films with which we had been inculcated in our youth. Duck and cover, thus providing us all better posture for kissing our collective posteriors goodbye. 

It wasn't until the events of September 11, 2001 that our heads were jerked viciously away from missile silos to airports across our country and the potential threat they served. Suddenly there was a mass casualty event on American soil that did not involve nuclear weapons. Security in those airports was ramped up to ensure that no one's shoes or underwear could ever pose a threat to us again.

Meanwhile, all those missiles with atomic bombs attached to them sat in their holes, awaiting launch codes carried in a briefcase just behind the president of that moment. Some of us wondered how comfortable we felt with some of the men who had access to the "Football" as it was nicknamed. But mostly we turned our eyes to the non-conventional war of terror. Part of that concern was focused on the potential of these radical splinter groups gaining access to the ways and means of generating "dirty bombs," and a number of lighthearted Hollywood romps included electromagnetic pulse devices as plot points. This was their response to a change in our fears. The teenage hacker teaching us all a lesson about the terrors of nuclear war by playing tic tac toe with a computer disappeared. In his place came wild-eyed fanatics bent on the destruction of our way of life, one block or passenger aircraft at a time.

And still those missiles sat, part of the highest stakes poker game ever imagined while we set up another game: One of economic sanctions and diplomatic shame. A welcome turn to be sure, but no one thought to tell all those guys sitting down in their silos or flying endless missions in bombers awaiting orders to stand down. Every so often a nuclear submarine from one of these superpowers runs into something and we are reminded of the true terror of the deep. 

Now we have started to have discussions of "the nuclear option" in a realm outside of firing a professional football team's entire coaching staff. The weapons that are currently targeted at Ukraine are not metaphors. The ones that dot satellite maps of our own Midwest are a reminder to the rest of the planet that would last about twenty minutes in the event of a full-on exchange between Russia and the United States. China might have something to say about that too, but that would be (if you'll pardon the expression) overkill. 

Everything old is new again.  

Peace Sells

 Give peace a chance. 

Not unlike the little seedlings in our planter out front, we would like to offer peace a chance to take root and grow.

Wild. 

There are, of course, a lot of things that keep this from happening. Not the least of these is capitalism. I know this because I play this game on my computer called "Civilization," and I know that I can get lots more gold in my treasury if I topple the tiny kingdom adjacent to me. Anyone who tells you that the reasons for Russia's invasion of Ukraine is any more complex than this is lying. 

Making trade deals and treaties takes a lot more time and negotiating than simply rolling in the big guns and stomping neighbors into submission. The image of the "liberation" of Iraq is not complete without the sea of oil derricks in the background. The United States has not been in the business of freeing oppressed people without a pretty cool cash incentive. Hitler was killing people by the thousands and toppling governments for years before the United States decided to get into the fight. It took the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to get us off the bench and into the game. Hitler and his goons had steamrolled across Europe without much of a fight and were on their way to England when his Axis friends finally pushed things a little too far.

We have not spent a lot of time in the intervening years fighting unless there was a price tag on the territories being engulfed and devoured. It just so happened that the Domino Theory worked the other way, allowing democracy to rise up and topple oppressive regimes without firing a shot. This is one of the reasons Ronald Reagan gets so much applause. He once insisted that "Mister Gorbachev tear down this wall," just before it was going to happen anyway. The most likely reason for this action was not an overwhelming rise in the need for freedom as much as free enterprise. There was a GAP store located on the western side of the Berlin Wall and button fly jeans were fifty percent off. 

So if we can get a brief cease fire and a really good deal at all eastern European Toyota dealers, we could wrap this whole deal up in a weekend. 

What Did He Say?

 I remember seeing somewhere on Al Gore's Internet this question: "Did William Wallace really scream 'Freedom' just before he was pulled apart?" Hard to imagine that Scotland's favorite son/savior having the presence of mind while he was hung, disemboweled, drawn and quartered after having been dragged to his place of eventual execution to say something meaningful. But this is what screenwriter Randall Wallace would like us to believe he said: "Freedom!" Not "Arrrrgh!" or even "Wish I hadn't worn a kilt!" or any less powerful sentiments. We could all use a good writer to punch up our final scene.

Which is precisely why I have such admiration for Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. History has finally delivered on its promise to bring us someone memorable, staring down overwhelming odds. His training as a comedian turns out to be just the thing in the face of most of the Russian army rolling toward your hometown. When asked by American President Joe Biden if he needed to be extracted from his tenuous position, he replied "I need an ammunition. I don't need a ride." Not exactly a laugh line, but he is very clear that he is being seen by the world. And all the world is a stage, I am told.

Which makes it all the more confounding why we can't get our own politicians right here in the US of A to provide a little more in the way of cogent comment. Once again, we turn to the source of so much ridiculousness, Representative Lauren Boebert: “I pray for Ukraine, and I wish them the best. But we also have neighbors to the north who need freedom and need to be liberated, and we need that right here at home, as well.” Yes, that's right. the congressperson was suggesting that the plight of the American people and our "neighbors to the North" need more ammunition too. She was referencing the trucker's protest that was recently broken up in Ottawa, where a group of protesters blocked streets and highways for weeks, waving flags and shouting (you guessed it) "Freedom!" Not from an invading force, but from public health. In their ongoing struggle against reality, these truckers provide unintentional ironic counterpoint to that found in Ukraine. In Ukraine, men, women and children are taking up arms against an invading force. This is the kind of sticky dream for Boebert and her followers, who only wish that they had a reason for wielding all the firepower they chose to lug around on their Christmas cards. The difference is one is for showing off, and the other is for survival. 

The trouble with history is that there wasn't always a way to take down the final utterances of heroes. And the trouble we are having now is that those who are far less than heroic have access to way too much of our bandwidth. And now back to our regularly scheduled debacle. 

Fair Practice

 The talk around here continues to be about what is right and what is fair. It's a big discussion. One of the places this discussion is heard most loudly is in the lower left-hand corner of our continental United States in the sleepy little burg of Hollywood. There are all kinds of voices raised in anger and frustration about his and that injustice, so much so that quite often the rhetoric spills over into the award shows that they hold on a regular basis to remind themselves of their own importance. 

I should stop at this point to confess my ongoing infatuation with all things Hollywood and an embarrassing infatuation with these same award shows that I am currently about to slag. I am the one who fills out his Oscar ballot with a conscientious eye toward winning the family/office pool. In other words, I try to vote as I imagine industry types would. 

Which is why I cannot imagine how the powers that be in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences chose to simply flick a switch and move eight of the previously major categories into a montage piece wedged into the beginning of the big broadcast. The awards for Documentary (Short Subject), Film Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Music (Original Score), Production Design, Short Film (Animated), Short Film (Live Action), and Sound will be  "folded seamlessly into the live broadcast," according to the folks at the Academy. The suggestion of seamless folds occurs to me as a physical impossibility, but I still trying to figure out how Orson Welles got the camera to fly through that sign on top of the El Rancho nightclub and into the skylight. 

Of course, I know the real answer. It's about getting the periodically dirge-like procession of awards and presenters to match the pace of our modern world. Watching a four hour telecast is a burden and a waste of valuable network time that should perhaps be filled with more Dancing With The Stars. This is why over the past few years all the management types have been trying to sap any and all extraneous weight of musical numbers and acceptance speeches that run over the ninety seconds winners are allowed to describe the arc of their careers that ended up with them holding a statue. 

So why not just blow on past those trophies that "no one" cares about? 

Well, back in the olden days, they gave a couple of Oscars to Walt Disney for making Best Documentary Short Subject. I would imagine that if they defrosted Walt's head and asked the man who would be the titular head of the corporation that runs the network that will be broadcasting the Oscars. Or maybe the fair thing to do would be go ahead and do just that and see if the severed cranium of Disney Inc. would be happy to be played off. 

The Process

 From the backseat of my son's car, my wife said, "It's democracy we have to look out for now." These words came after a long day of bumping into all the impediments we could imagine to the way of life we once held dear. Democracy, a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state. When the people are united, they can never be defeated. 

That's what we've been told, after all. But somehow it doesn't seem that way from where we were sitting. Back seat or front seat. Thousands of people in Oakland have spent the past few weeks voicing their displeasure and indignation to the democratically elected school board. The school board that decided to close schools. One of those schools is the one where I work. And if you can believe this: I once helped get the president of that school board get elected. I gave glowing quotes to his campaign. I voted for him. I would like very much now to have that vote back. But that's not how democracy works.

Then there's Ukraine. A democratically elected government is being threatened by its former empirical overlords. If shelling its cities and rolling tanks into their streets can be considered "threatening." It's more like turning back the clock. Back to the bad old days. All that voting and participating in elections turns out not to mean so much. Not in the face of artillery and carpet bombing. 

And speaking of counting votes, we are still, as a country stuck wondering if the results of every election will be subject to question and potential insurrection. The guy who was impeached after losing not one but two presidential elections via the popular vote is still trying to to contest the results that have been certified by Wikipedia and other important bodies. This same guy was impeached, as I was saying (twice), the first time was for trying to extort some dirt on his opponent from (wait for it) the president of Ukraine. What did the former game-show host want to give Ukraine in exchange for misinformation about Joe Biden and Russian interference in U.S. elections? Military aid. 

Oh, and I wonder if Russia will close down any schools in Ukraine once the smoke clears.